The work cited by the Nobel committee was done jointly with the late Amos Tversky (1937—1996) during a long and unusually close collaboration. Together, we explored the psychology of intuitive beliefs and choices and examined their bounded rationality. This essay presents a current perspective on the three major topics of our joint work: heuristics of judgment, risky choice, and framing effects. In all three domains we studied intuitions — thoughts and preferences that come to mind quickly and without much reflection. The author reviews the older research and some recent developments in light of two ideas that have become central to social-cognitive psychology in the intervening decades: the notion that thoughts differ in a dimension of accessibility — some come to mind much more easily than others — and the distinction between intuitive and deliberate thought processes. Section 1 distinguishes two generic modes of cognitive function: an intuitive mode in which judgments and decisions are made automatically and rapidly, and a controlled mode, which is deliberate and slower. Section 2 describes the factors that determine the relative accessibility of different judgments and responses. Section 3 explains framing effects in terms of differential salience and accessibility. Section 4 relates prospect theory to the general proposition that changes and differences are more accessible than absolute values. Section 5 reviews an attribute substitution model of heuristic judgment. Section 6 describes a particular family of heuristics, called prototype heuristics. Section 7 concludes with a review of the argument. (Author/publisher)
Abstract