Preference, Belief, and Similarity Selected Writings

Amos Tversky (19371996), a towering figure in cognitive and mathematical psychology, devoted his professional life to the study of similarity, judgment, and decision making. He had a unique ability to master the technicalities of normative ideals and then to intuit and demonstrate experimentally their systematic violation due to the vagaries and consequences of human information processing. He created new areas of study and helped transform disciplines as varied as economics, law, medicine, political science, philosophy, and statistics. This book collects forty of Tversky's articles, selected by him in collaboration with the editor during the last months of Tversky's life. It is divided into three sections: Similarity, Judgment, and Preferences. The Preferences section is subdivided into Probabilistic Models of Choice, Choice under Risk and Uncertainty, and Contingent Preferences. Included are several articles written with his frequent collaborator, Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman.

Amos Tversky (1937–1996) was a mathematical psychologist whose research in the cognitive and decision sciences has been enormously influential. From 1978 to 1996, Tversky taught at Stanford University, where he was the inaugural David-Brack Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Principal Investigator at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation.

Eldar Shafir, a student, close friend, and collaborator of Tversky's, is Class of 1987 Professor of Behavioral Science and Public Policy at Princeton University.