Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131.

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Tversky and Kahneman argue that people rely on a common set of heuristic principles when internally estimating probabilities to support judgment. Although these heuristics often lead to directionally correct and useful answers, certain predictable and severe systematic errors sometimes occur as a result of these heuristics.

This classic paper was among the first to expose predictable fallacies in human judgment processes while also providing strong empirical evidence for the existence and nature of the rules which lead to these fallacies, thus heavily influencing subsequent research in decision making theory.