The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Amos is the other half of the Kahneman-Tversky collaborative team, the partnership that produced some of the most influential work in the field of psychology in the 20th century. Amos left an indelible impression on most people who encountered him. As Lewis writes, “It was a very common thing for Amos’s friends to ask themselves: I know why I like him, but why does he like me?” (99). Born in 1937, Amos served with distinction in the Israel Defense Forces as a paratrooper. Later, during the Six-Day War in 1967, he was given an infantry unit to command, five years after he had last jumped from an airplane. Amos is portrayed as bold, altogether indifferent to others’ perceptions of him, including those closest to him. Amos would only do or say what he wanted, when he wanted, despite what anyone else thought. This attitude provided the fuel and stamina for a lengthy and influential career in his field while also permanently damaging some of his friendships and professional relationships. Still, Amos’s primary legacy is perhaps best summarized by the impressions of Donald Redelmeier, a doctor who had been changed by his time working with Amos: “the man [Amos] was so vivid that you could not confront any question without wondering how he would approach it” (237). Amos’s mind would not stop working, turning these questions over in an attempt to make practical sense of the world around him, as evidenced in his children’s final memory of him: They “heard from their father’s bedroom the sound of footsteps and his voice. Talking, perhaps to himself. Thinking. On the morning of June 2, 1996, Amos’s son Oren entered his father’s bedroom and found him dead” (349).

Barbara married Amos Tversky in 1963, when the two were fellow psychology students in Michigan. Eventually, Barbara became a notable psychology professor herself (she currently teaches at both Stanford University and Columbia University). In 1966, when she moved to Israel with Amos, she experienced culture shock, which was intensified by the perpetual danger of war that loomed over Israel. As Lewis explains, “In Israel the danger felt present and personal: If the Arabs at every border every stopped fighting among themselves, there was a sense, Barbara said, that they could overrun the country in a matter of hours and kill you” (118). Apart from the constant threat of war, Barbara was also struck by how differently Israeli university students treated their professors. At Hebrew University, where Barbara taught a psychology class, students yelled things like “Not true!” if they disagreed with what the lecturer was saying. Eventually, however, when Amos accepted a chaired professorship at Stanford, Barbara expressed her frustration, saying, “I had done so much work to become Israeli… I didn’t want to stay in the States. I said to Amos, ‘How can I start over?’ He said, ‘You’ll manage’” (290). This last comment can perhaps be considered an analogy of their marriage, with Amos the driving force of their decisions. In many ways, Barbara also competed with Amos’s other “spouse,” Danny. As Amos and Danny worked inseparably for over a decade, their partnership felt and looked to many like a marriage itself.

Amnon Rapoport, described as strikingly handsome and courageous on the battlefield, was one of Amos’s closest friends in Israel, who eventually also became an intellectual in the field of psychology. Amos’s relationship with Amnon was in many ways a precursor for his later collaboration with Danny. Lewis writes:

“From the moment they met, Amnon and Amos were inseparable. They sat side by side in the same classes; they lived in the same apartments; they spent summers hiking the country together. They were famously a pair. ‘I think some people thought we were homosexual or something,’ said Amnon” (99).

Despite the similarities between their friendship and the friendship Amos had with Danny, Amnon was determined to make his own way. He clearly admired Amos, was captivated by Amos’s charisma and intellect, but he also had a clear sense that he might be pulled into Amos’s gravitational pull, only to be sucked into it permanently. After introducing Amos to a paper on decision making, apparently w Amos was inspired by the subject for the first time, Amnon eventually lost his initial enthusiasm about working in close collaboration with Amos: “He was so dominating, intellectually…I realized that I didn’t want to stay in the shadow of Amos all my life” (123). Soon after, Amnon moved to the University of North Carolina to become a psychology professor, leaving “Amos without anyone to talk to” (123).

Redelmeier, a native of Toronto, became aware of Kahneman and Tversky’s work at age 17, and eventually became a medical doctor, realizing how hasty and flawed the decision making often was in the medical community. Doctors often jump to conclusions, which can lead to misdiagnosed ailments. But at 17, Redelmeier was merely trying to understand the world around him, a world where people made mistakes, himself included. After reading Amos and Danny’s “Judgment Under Certainty—Heuristics and Biases,” Redelmeier was “offered what felt like a private glimpse of the act of thinking. Reading their article was like getting a peek behind the magician’s curtain” (219). Later, Redelmeier collaborated with Amos in trying to discover how doctors made decisions, particularly when designing treatments for groups of patients after their experience treating an individual patient. This collaboration with Amos was most fruitful when the two were at Stanford and Danny was working at the University of British Columbia. Redelmeier’s life and career were forever altered by his work with Amos, his thinking permanently influenced by the Kahneman-Tversky collaboration. After working with Amos and, for a shorter period, Danny, Redelmeier was fueled with purpose, “to explore, as both researcher and doctor, the mental mistakes that doctors and their patients made” (237). Redelmeier’s example emphasizes the importance of Danny and Amos’s collaborations, to demonstrate how far-reaching the impact of their work on decision making could actually be.