Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman (1934-2024), psychologist and Nobel laureate in economics, supplied the cognitive architecture on which modern marketing thinking about consumer behaviour rests. His distinction between System 1, fast, automatic, associative thinking, and System 2, slow, effortful reasoning, explains why buying decisions are rarely the rational trade-offs classic models assume. With Amos Tversky he mapped the systematic biases, from loss aversion to anchoring, that gave behavioural economics its toolkit. The implication for marketing is fundamental: ease, recognisability and feeling steer choices more than arguments do, and research that asks people for their reasons mostly measures after-the-fact justification.

Key work Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

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