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Kahneman And Amos Tversky: Article Analysis

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As a recipient of many prestigious awards, including a Nobel Prize, psychologist Daniel Kahneman has worked rigorously for nearly 45 years to advance the way in which we understand human cognitive processes. Kahneman and his longtime colleague, Amos Tversky, began working together in the 1970s and almost immediately made an impact within the fields of psychology and behavioral economics. These contributions centered around the notion of human irrationality, or the basis we subconsciously use to make decisions each day. Beginning with their discovery of human decision making heuristics and biases, Kahneman and Tversky went on to uncover many intuitive theories that helped evolve the field of behavioral economics into what it is today. Of …show more content…

One of his original publications is titled, Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability. Written by Kahneman and his long-time colleague Amos Tversky, the article highlights their initial conclusions about errors in our decision making. This paper explored a judgmental heuristic where a person assesses the frequency or probability of events by way of availability (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). In other words, how easy common certain instances come to mind. They suggested a large contributor is our reliance on the availability heuristic, which is judging a situation based off of examples from a similar situation (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). For example, assume one enjoys shopping at Costco and they have gone to the same Costco once a week for the last 10 years. Therefore, they are extremely familiar with the general layout of that specific store. However, this person is on vacation and they visit the Costco in their vacation spot for the first time. The person arrives and, in a search for produce, walks to the location it would be in the store they are familiar with. In the new store it may or may not be in the same location. This example illustrates our vulnerability for error when using the availability …show more content…

Anchoring occurs when individuals make judgments based off of an initial starting point. To demonstrate anchoring effect, the authors conducted a simple study in which subjects were asked to estimate the percentage of African countries in the United Nations. For each quantity, a number between 0 and 100 was determined by spinning a wheel of fortune in front of the participants. Participants were then required to state whether the number the wheel landed on was higher or lower than the percentage, and then to estimate the value of the quantity by moving up or down from a given quantity (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Different participant groups were provided with different numbers, which always had a marked effect on the answer given (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Therefore, the authors concluded that answers derived from this heuristic are highly dependent on the starting point. Furthermore, as a result of anchoring, people will be subjected to overestimate probability in some problems and underestimate probability in others (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Similarly, the authors conclude that the cognitive biases that result from reliance on judgmental heuristics, such as representativeness, anchoring, or availability are useful and somewhat reliable, but tend to lead to systematic

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