Die Universiteit Stellenbosch (US) het vandag (17 Maart 2016) 'n eredoktorsgraad aan die bekroonde sielkundige en Nobel-pryswenner, Prof Daniel Kahneman, toegeken. Prof Kahneman het die graad in absentia ontvang.

Dr Koot Kotze, ontvanger van die Universiteit se Kanseliersmedalje vir 2015, is ook vandag vereer toe hy die medalje van prof Wim de Villiers, Rektor en  Visekanselier, ontvang het. Die aankondiging (meer inligting hier) is by die gradeplegtigheid van Die Fakulteit Geneeskunde en Gesondheidswtenskappe gedoen, maar dr Kotze kon nie die geleentheid bywoon nie.

(Volledige Afrikaans volg binnekort.)

In the commendatio read at the 7^th and last graduation ceremony March 2016 Graduation Ceremonies at the University today, Prof Kahneman is described as a role model for the type of future-focused thought leader Stellenbosch University seeks to deliver. Particularly his research on the human response to uncertainty – a concept South Africans know all too well – has enriched and enhanced international understanding of human behaviour at an economic, public and personal level.

Prof Kahneman, an Israeli American, currently serves as professor emeritus of Psychology at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He was previously a faculty member at the universities of British Columbia and California, Berkeley.

His outstanding achievements throughout his illustrious career centre on the research areas of decision-making and behavioural economy. Along with his long-standing collaborator Amos Tversky, he developed the behavioural economic prospect theory. This theory postulates that, amidst uncertainty, participants in the economy do not always make rational and optimal decisions in their own best interest, but often short-change themselves by focusing on risk and loss. The economic sciences, for example, have long assumed that investors would pursue optimal personal gain. However, Kahneman proved that the prospect of loss weighed more heavily in human decision-making than the prospect of reward, often causing people to choose an outcome that would avoid loss rather than pursue a greater profit. The "economic man", Kahneman has shown, is therefore less rational than initially thought, which upsets many an economic theory. The research paper on this theory has become the most cited in the social sciences. For this work, Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. 

Since the economic crisis of 2008, Kahneman's work has had an even more significant impact on the economic sciences, and his influence can be detected across the entire spectrum of the behavioural sciences, industry and politics today. Also in Stellenbosch University's own pursuit for transformation and a changed institutional culture, Kahneman's work is regarded as directional and decisive. In fact, no institution that envisages transformation and wishes to create new behavioural patterns can ignore his insights.

Kahneman's vast list of achievements also includes publishing the top-seller Thinking, fast and slow in 2011, aimed at the lay public, as well as being awarded a USA Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

The degree Doctor of Philosophy, honoris causa, was bestowed upon Prof Daniel Kahneman in acknowledgment of his thought-provoking work, which has been and remains integral to Stellenbosch University's own institutional journey towards transformation and the training of thought leaders for the future.

Photo 1: Dr Koot Kotze receives his Chancellor's Medal from Prof Wim de Villiers, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of Stellenbosch University. (Photographer: Stefan Els)

Photo 2: Prof Daniel Kahneman. (Photographer: Larry Levanti)