Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton University psychology professor and a recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economic sciences, has earned the 2003 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. Kahneman's former colleague, Amos Tversky, who was a professor of psychology at Stanford University, shared the 2003 award posthumously. The $200,000 prize recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of psychology.
Kahneman has been the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and professor of public affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University since 1993.
Working as a team for nearly three decades, Kahneman and Tversky revolutionized the scientific approach to decision-making, ultimately affecting all social sciences and many related disciplines. Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated in experiments that normative mathematical models of probability and choice don't account for most intuitive human judgments and decisions. Instead, a series of psychological principles, often leading to simplification of a problem, guide human behavior in the face of uncertainty. By identifying biases that guide human judgment, Kahneman and Tversky have impacted fields such as economics and medicine.
As a result of their work, Kahneman and Tversky are among the most frequently cited authors in behavioral science. "It is difficult to identify a more influential idea than that of Kahneman and Tversky in the human sciences," the Grawemeyer committee noted.
The full story is available in a news release.
Contact: Lauren Robinson-Brown (609) 258-3601
