Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who pioneered theories in behavioural economics that heavily influenced the discipline, and won him a Nobel prize, has died at age 90.
Kahneman, who wrote bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow, argued against the notion that people’s behaviour 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 on Wednesday in a statement on its website.
“Many areas in the social sciences simply have not 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 for his research in the fields of psychology and economics.
Kahneman, and his longtime collaborator Amos Tversky, reshaped the field of economics, which prior to their work mostly assumed that people were “rational actors” capable of clearly evaluating choices, such as which car to buy or which job to take.
The pair’s research focused on how much decision-making is shaped by subterranean quirks and mental shortcuts that can distort our thoughts in irrational yet predictable ways.
Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv and did his Israeli national service in the 1950s.
His partner, Barbara Tversky – the widow of Amos Tversky and a Stanford University emerita professor of psychology – said the family was not disclosing the location or cause of death.
Steven Pinker once described Kahneman as “the world’s most influential living psychologist”.
“I had limited ambitions, I didn’t 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 quite capable of great enjoyment, and I’ve had a great life.”
With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press