Intro
Amos Tversky was one of the most influential psychologists when it comes to changing the way that people thought about decision-making. He not only helped found behavioral science but also revolutionized the field of economics. He was even a pioneer of prospect theory, alongside long-time colleague Daniel Kahneman.
Together with Kanehman, Tversky’s work showed that people did not behave according to perfect rationality and logic. Instead, they revealed a number of heuristics and cognitive biases that influence people’s decision-making, especially under uncertainty. His matriculate observations of people showed that many of the hypotheses traditional economists modelled did not uphold in real-life behavior. He opened economists’ eyes to the fact that humans are not robots and that their emotions need to be taken into account if we are to truly understand human behavior. Unfortunately, his untimely death at the age of only 59 cut short the career of an ingenious man, brave thinker and bold psychologist, but his contributions advanced human understanding nonetheless.
It’s frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what is going on
– Amos Tversky 1
