Richard Thaler Character Analysis in Thinking, Fast and Slow

A behavioral economist and collaborator of Kahneman and Tversky’s. Thaler coined the different classifications of Econs and Humans, which draw a distinction between the way economists view people and the way psychologists view people. As a graduate student, Thaler discovered people’s behavior was often inconsistent with accepted economic theory, and was attracted by Kahneman and Tversky’s work on prospect theory to help explain some of those inconsistencies. Together, the three men explored different behavioral economics principles like the endowment effect and broad framing, significantly advancing and defining the field.

Richard Thaler Character Timeline in Thinking, Fast and Slow

The timeline below shows where the character Richard Thaler appears in Thinking, Fast and Slow. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Human Fallibility and Overconfidence Theme Icon

In 1984, Kahneman, Tversky, and a friend named Richard Thaler visited a Wall Street firm. Kahneman remembers being struck by the stock market and wondering... (full context)

...as neither fully rational, nor completely selfish, and as anything but stable. Behavioral economist Richard Thaler designates these ideas of people using the names Econs and Humans. (full context)

Behavioral economics got its start with Richard Thaler in the early 1970s, who was a graduate student at the time. He liked to... (full context)

Thaler spent a year at Stanford while Kahneman and Tversky completed their work. During this period,... (full context)

Kahneman, Thaler, and a local economist named Jack Knetsch, designed an experiment that would highlight the contrast... (full context)

Thaler, Knetsch, and Kahneman next designed a survey to examine people’s view of fairness in economic... (full context)

Intuition, Deliberation, and Laziness Theme Icon

Kahneman concludes the chapter with an anecdote from Richard Thaler, who had a discussion with 25 managers of a large company. He asked them to... (full context)

In an essay, Richard Thaler describes another example: the credit card lobby pushed against gas stations that charged more if... (full context)

...gallons. The mpg frame is wrong, and Cass Sunstein, a psychologist who worked with Richard Thaler, helped to change policy that now requires fuel economy information to be printed in gallons-per-mile... (full context)

In Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s book Nudge, they address the dilemma of how to help people make... (full context)