"Endlessly complicated and interesting"

This blog began and still emanates from an unsavory desire to create a diversion from real work, and though it is much more fun than working, I am starting to feel guilty for it. So I made a compromise with myself today that sometimes I would write about work-related things (no gossip, though...sorry!).

Daniel Kahneman is one of my heroes in the field of cognitive psychology and currently works at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School (why did I leave New Jersey again?). He is best known for his work in behavioral economics, namely Prospect theory which basically describes how people make decisions based on their evaluations of potential losses and gains. (Similar ideas have been applied in the area of religion, like the "Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis" of my former professor Dominic Johnson and current adviser Jesse Bering, a theory which in my opinion doesn't suffice for explaining economics of religion, so I spent the whole day writing about why not...) But anyway, I thought of this quote by Kahneman today- one that has always stuck out in my mind as partly his reason for entering the field of psychology. He recalls being a small boy in Nazi-occupied France:

It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others – the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting (Kahneman, 2003, p. 417).

So very true. And even still, the field of behavioral economics continues to explain human behavior especially as we analyze it through an evolutionary lens. But enough work for today. Next time, I'll tell you about monkeys and morality....to be continued!