Judgment under Uncertainty
1974
Daniel Kahneman (b. 1934), Amos Tversky (1937–1996)
A friend suggests that you go on a blind date with a person whom he describes as very attractive, quiet, and thoughtful. How do you make the judgment whether you want to go out with this person? Cognitive psychologists suggest that you are likely to use one of several heuristics, or mental shortcuts, to help you decide.
In an article published in Science in 1974, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky analyzed how we use heuristics to help us make decisions. As a result of their work, we now better understand the reasons we often make mistakes in our judgment. By extension, they have shown that humans are not necessarily the rational creatures that science supposes. In the article and in subsequent publications, Kahneman and Tversky showed how humans are very susceptible to erroneous intuitions, regardless of intelligence. Their article opened up a new domain of research in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. Kahneman and Tversky then turned to the study of decision making, which led to their development of prospect theory, which proposes that humans use heuristics to make decisions based on the possible value of losses and gains and not on the final outcome. The theory helped spawn the modern field of behavioral economics and led to Kahneman receiving the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 (Tversky had died in 1996, and the Nobel is not awarded posthumously).
Here is an example of one such heuristic. We may wonder if taking the surface streets to work during rush hour is faster than taking the expressway. We recall our own experiences of driving to work to determine which strategy works best. If the thought of arriving sooner at work by taking surface streets comes to mind more easily, then our judgment may be that doing so is the best strategy. This is the availability heuristic. But judging by ease of recall may not be a consistently good strategy, as the expressway may frequently be faster in reality.
SEE ALSO Psychoanalysis (1899), Cognitive Dissonance (1957)
Eight hundred women strike for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis on 47th Street near the United Nations headquarters in New York City, 1962.
President John F. Kennedy confers with Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, at the West Wing Collonade of the White House, October 29, 1962—the day after the Cuban missile crisis came to an end. The Kennedy administration’s notoriously ill-conceived invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs in 1961 is often attributed to “groupthink,” in which a group’s desire for harmony leads it to make decisions without proper attention to critical evaluation or alternative viewpoints.