ABSTRACT
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s 1974 paper “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” was a summary of their work on bias and decision-making. They believed that this general overview of bias and the shortcomings of human decision-making would be of interest to readers outside the discipline of psychology, so they chose to place it in the journal Science— a generalist scientific journal with a large readership from all disciplines. Tverksy and Kahneman took a novel approach to their work, using experimental questions to study decision-making. That is, instead of tackling the problem from a theoretical angle, they created experimental questions and puzzles for people to solve. Tversky and Kahneman are often credited with the invention of the field of behavioral economics. But their work did build on previous research. Even early economists such as the Scottish thinker Adam Smith were aware of the many psychological subtleties involved in human decision-making.
