Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who pioneered behavioral economics that greatly influenced the discipline and won him a Nobel Prize, has died at the age of 90.
Kahneman, who wrote best-selling book Think, fast and slowargued against the idea that people’s behavior is rooted in a rational decision-making process – rather that it is often based on instinct.
Kahneman’s employer, Princeton University, where the Israeli-American academic worked until his death, confirmed his death in a statement on its website on Wednesday.
“Many areas in the social sciences simply haven’t been the same since he arrived on the scene,” Prof Eldar Shafir, a former colleague, said in a press release. “He will be greatly missed.”
In 2002, Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in recognition of his research in the fields of psychology and economics.
Described by Steven Pinker as “the world’s most influential living psychologist”Kahneman’s most popular theory opposed traditional economic approaches that people were fully rational and self-interested.
Instead, the theory argued that people have mental biases that can distort their judgments.
“I had limited ambitions, I did not aspire to great success,” Kahneman told the Guardian in 2015. “I was very hardworking, but I didn’t expect to be a famous psychologist.
“I’m very capable of great pleasure, and I’ve had a wonderful life.”
With Agence France-Presse
