Background
George Katona was born on November 6, 1901 in Budapest, Hungary. He was a son of Sigmund and Olga (Wittman) Katona. In 1933 he came to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1939.
economist educator psychologist
George Katona was born on November 6, 1901 in Budapest, Hungary. He was a son of Sigmund and Olga (Wittman) Katona. In 1933 he came to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1939.
He graduated with a doctorate in Experimental Psychology from the University of Göttingen in 1921, and worked in Germany until 1933, both as a journalist and as a psychological researcher
Originally trained as a Gestalt psychologist working on problems of learning and memory, during the Second World War he became involved in American government attempts to use psychology to combat war-induced inflation. This led him to consider the application of psychological principles to macroeconomics, devising measures of consumer expectations that eventually became the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. Use of this index enabled him to predict the post-war boom in the United States at a time when conventional econometric indicators were predicting a recession, a success which helped his fledgling index establish itself.
Katona wrote numerous books and journal articles advocating the development of economic psychology.
These general ideas were taken up more fully in Europe than in the United States until the development, after his death, of modern behavioral economics. Katona contrasted "genuine decision" and "habitual behavior".
This remark is important. In fact, neoclassical economics deemed human decision making as genuine decision (with complete rationality), whereas evolutionary economics emphasized that economic behavior take a form of habits and customs.
Recent theory of artificial intelligence distinguishes GOFAI (Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence) and computational intelligence.
In spite of the impression the term "computational intelligence" may indicate, researchers of computational intelligence doubt that high-level symbol manipulation alone could account for all intelligent behaviors. One can deem Katona"s explanation of "habitual behavior" as one of the precursors of situated learning and knowledge.
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Member American Psychological Association (Distinguished Professional Contribution award 1977), American Economics Association, American Statistical Association.
On November 2, 1929 he married Marian Beck.