Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli-American scientist and professor who was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics.
Kahneman (born March 5, 1934) was born in Tel
Aviv, Israel, and lived in France during the World War II. In 1946, he came back to Israel and studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. While serving
in the Israeli Defense
Forces, Kahneman devised a system for interviewing recruits that continued
for several decades.
In 1961, he received his Ph.D. from Berkely. Kahneman's work is mainly in the field of psychology;
however, he shared the 2002 Nobel
Prize in economics "for having
integrated insights from psychological research into economic science,
especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty."
Kahneman argued that people think in terms of gains and losses, but,
in the short-term, especially, fear loss more than gain.
In one experiment to demonstrate their theory, Kahneman took two groups of people and gave one attractive coffee
mug, the second group was given nothing. The first group was allowed
to choose whether they desired to keep the mug or to trade it for money.
The second group was offered the choice between a mug or money. The
researchers found that those without a mug were willing to accept less
money than those would would have to give up the mug they already had.
This implied that an individual's emotions, rather than cold rational
calculations affected their decisionmaking.
Among Kahneman's other awards are the Distinguished
Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association
in 1982 and the Hilgard award for contributions to General Psychology
in 1995. In 2013, Kahneman was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Kahneman is married to the award-winning cognitive psychologist Anne Treisman.
