Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky are pioneering Israeli psychologists whose collaboration profoundly impacted the the science of judgment and decision making and behavioral economics. Their partnership, which began in the late 1960s and continued until Tversky’s death in 1996, led to the development of groundbreaking theories that challenged traditional economic models based on rational choiceLink to Wikipedia entry More. Kahneman, a Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, and Tversky (who would certainly have won the Nobel prize alongside Kahneman had he been alive when the prize was awarrded) are best known for their formulation of Prospect Theory, which describes how people make decisions involving risk and uncertainty, and for their contribution to the heuristics and biasesIn decision science, bias refers to systematic and predictable deviations from accepted models of rationality. In scientific language, "systematic" and "predictable" are not meant to... tradition. They introduced concepts such as loss aversion, the endowment effect, and the representativenessLink to Wikipedia entry The representativeness heuristic is one of the most widely researched and demonstrated cognitive heuristics (short cuts or rules of thumb putatively... More and availabilityThe Availability Heuristic is an automatic cognitive process by which individuals estimate the likelihood or frequency of an event based on how easily examples or... heuristics, which they compellingly argue explain cognitive biases that cause people to deviate from expected utilityIn decision science, "utility" refers to a quantitative measure representing an individual's preference or satisfaction with respect to a particular outcome. In this framework, utility... theory. Their work laid the foundation for the field of behavioral economics, demonstrating the effects of psychological and cognitive factors on economic decisions and market outcomes. Kahneman and Tversky’s influential partnership reshaped academic and public understanding of human judgment and decision-making, making their contributions some of the most significant in the social sciences.
Learn more about Kahneman and Tversky on their respective Wikipedia pages in the links provided.