Last updated: April 2026 The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias where the first number you encounter distorts every judgment that follows, even when that number is obviously random. Discovered by Tversky and Kahneman in 1974, it inflates salary offers, real-estate prices, legal sentences — and, as 2025 research confirms, the outputs of large language … Read more
Last updated: April 2026 Cognitive biases are systematic, predictable errors in human judgment that arise from mental shortcuts called heuristics. First mapped by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 1970s, researchers have since cataloged over 180 distinct biases affecting memory, perception, and decision-making. Understanding these biases is critical not only for personal choices … Read more
Last updated: April 2026 Behavioral finance studies how psychological biases — loss aversion, overconfidence, herd instinct, mental accounting — systematically push investors toward irrational decisions. Founded on Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s prospect theory (1979) and expanded by Richard Thaler’s work on market anomalies, the field explains why even professionals sell winners too early, hold … Read more
Last updated: March 2026 Prospect theory, developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979, explains why losing $100 hurts roughly twice as much as gaining $100 feels good. The theory describes three core mechanisms that drive irrational decisions: reference-dependent evaluation (gains and losses measured from a starting point, not absolute wealth), loss aversion (losses … Read more