Daniel Kahneman facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Daniel Kahneman
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Kahneman in 2009
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| Born | March 5, 1934 Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel)
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| Died | March 27, 2024 (aged 90) |
| Nationality | American, Israeli |
| Education | Hebrew University (BA) University of California, Berkeley (MA, PhD) |
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| Partner(s) | Barbara Tversky (2020–2024) |
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| Thesis | An analytical model of the semantic differential (1961) |
| Doctoral advisor | Susan M. Ervin-Tripp |
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Daniel Kahneman (born March 5, 1934 – died March 27, 2024) was a famous Israeli-American thinker. He was a psychologist and economist. He is best known for his work on how people make choices and decisions.
Kahneman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002. He shared it with Vernon L. Smith. His ideas showed that people don't always make perfectly logical choices, which was a new idea in economics.
He worked with Amos Tversky to create prospect theory. This theory helps explain why people make certain choices, especially when there's risk involved. They also studied how people make common mistakes in thinking, called biases.
In 2011, his book Thinking, Fast and Slow was published. It became a bestseller and explained many of his ideas. The Economist magazine called him one of the most important economists in the world in 2015.
Contents
Early Life and Moving to Israel
Daniel Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv, which was then called Mandatory Palestine, on March 5, 1934. His parents were Lithuanian Jews who had moved to France. Daniel spent his childhood in Paris.
When Nazi Germany took over Paris in 1940, his family faced danger. His father was arrested but later released. The family had to hide for the rest of World War II. Daniel's father died in 1944. After the war, in 1948, Daniel and his family moved to British Mandatory Palestine. This was just before the country of Israel was created.
Kahneman once shared a story from his childhood during the war. He was walking home, trying to hide his Jewish star. A German soldier stopped him, hugged him, and gave him money. This experience showed Kahneman how complicated and interesting people can be. This helped him decide to study psychology.
Education and Early Career
In 1954, Daniel Kahneman earned his first degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He studied psychology and mathematics. He found psychology more interesting because he wanted to understand why people believe things, not just what they believe.
After university, he joined the Israeli Defense Forces. He worked in the psychology department. He helped create a special interview process to choose soldiers for combat. This method was used for many years. Kahneman said his time in the military was very important for him.
In 1958, he went to the United States. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley and earned his PhD in Psychology in 1961.
Academic Work and Big Ideas
Kahneman started teaching psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1961. His early research looked at how people see things and pay attention.
Working with Amos Tversky
In 1969, Kahneman met Amos Tversky. This meeting started a very important partnership. They worked together for many years. They published their first paper in 1971.
Their most famous work was developing prospect theory. This theory explains how people make decisions when they are unsure about the future. It shows that people often focus more on avoiding losses than on gaining something. For example, people might take bigger risks to avoid losing something they already have.
They also studied heuristics and biases. These are mental shortcuts (heuristics) that people use to make quick decisions. Sometimes these shortcuts lead to mistakes in thinking (biases). Their work showed that these biases are common in human thinking.
Kahneman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for this work. He shared the prize because his ideas helped connect psychology with economics. He said he never took an economics class himself.
Behavioral Economics
Kahneman's work with Tversky helped create a new field called behavioral economics. This field combines ideas from psychology and economics. It studies how psychological factors affect economic decisions.
Richard Thaler, another famous economist, was influenced by Kahneman's work. Thaler's ideas, built on prospect theory, helped shape behavioral economics. This field helps us understand why people sometimes make choices that don't seem completely logical from a purely economic point of view.
Understanding Happiness
Kahneman also studied happiness and how people remember experiences. He looked at two types of "self":
- The experiencing self is how you feel right now, in the moment.
- The remembering self is how you look back and remember an event later.
He found that how we remember an experience is often different from how we felt during it. For example, he found that people often remember an experience based on its most intense part and how it ended. This is called the peak–end rule.
He also studied the focusing illusion. This is when people think one thing will make them much happier, but they forget about all the other things that affect their happiness. For example, someone might think moving to a sunny place will make them much happier. But they might forget about other important things like friends, family, or work.
Teaching and Later Life
Daniel Kahneman taught at several universities. He taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the University of British Columbia, and the University of California, Berkeley. Later, he became a professor at Princeton University.
He was married to Anne Treisman, a cognitive psychologist, until her death in 2018. He later lived with Barbara Tversky, the wife of his long-time friend and collaborator, Amos Tversky.
Kahneman passed away on March 27, 2024, at the age of 90. He left behind a huge impact on how we understand human thinking and decision-making.
Awards and Recognition
Daniel Kahneman received many awards for his important work:
- 1982: Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions from the American Psychological Association (with Amos Tversky)
- 2002: Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
- 2003: University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology (with Amos Tversky)
- 2007: Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology from the American Psychological Association
- 2013: Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama
- His book Thinking, Fast and Slow won the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Award.
Honorary Degrees
Kahneman received many honorary degrees from universities around the world, including:
- 2001: University of Pennsylvania
- 2004: Harvard University
- 2004: University of British Columbia
- 2013: Cambridge University
- 2014: Yale University
Notable Contributions
Kahneman's work helped explain many important ideas in psychology and economics, such as:
- Anchoring and adjustment (how an initial piece of information influences later decisions)
- Availability heuristic (making decisions based on how easily examples come to mind)
- Cognitive bias (systematic errors in thinking)
- Loss aversion (the tendency to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains)
- Peak–end rule (how people remember experiences based on the peak and end)
- Planning fallacy (underestimating how long tasks will take)
- Prospect theory (how people make decisions under risk)
- Status quo bias (preferring things to stay the same)
See also
