Layers of choice
Nobel laureate, psychologist, and best-selling author Daniel Kahneman joined Cass Sunstein, Harvard’s Robert Walmsley University Professor, for a wide-ranging discussion on behavioral science Tuesday at Harvard Business School. Kahneman, an emeritus professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, won the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on “prospect theory. Developed with his colleague and longtime friend and collaborator Amos Tversky in 1979, the theory asserts that a person’s decision-making process is based on an assessment of perceived risk measured in gains and losses, and that people more often make decisions based on the perceived gains versus the perceived losses. The work, instrumental in the creation of the field of behavioral economics, is explored in Kahneman’s 2011 book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” Sunstein was a fitting moderator for the discussion, having co-authored, with economist Richard Thaler, the 2009 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.” During the talk...