- Photo
- —
- Name
- —
- Field
- Behavioral economics / psychology
- Year
- 1979
- Lead author
- Daniel Kahneman
- Core idea
- People value gains and losses asymmetrically and hate losing more than they like winning, breaking classic expected utility theory.
- Why it hooked me
- Reads like someone finally quantified every bad sports bet and publishing gut-call I’ve ever seen.
- Best for
- Reframing how you think about risk, pricing, and why people cling to losing strategies.
- Length feel
- Long but modular—can graze the key sections without swallowing the whole thing at once.
- Vibe
- Calm, devastating, politely overturning the table on “rational actor” models.
- Nerdy flex
- Casually drop “loss aversion” and “value function concavity” into a meeting and watch eyes widen.
TheLysts
