Economics education can shift people in a selfish direction?

If the results are true, it's not surprising when we see economics as politics, and economic statements as ultimately moral ones. (Why organize production/consumption/allocation one way, rather than zillions of alternative ways? Does the economic system not affect society's power structures? Don't we spend over half our weekdays as producers, under boss rule?)

Econ-as-morality becomes clear when we discuss challengers/improvements to capitalism, and flamewars erupt. (And not just unimaginative alternatives like Soviet socialism, as if the only alternative to Coke is Pepsi...)

What do we know about capitalism's properties? Its supporters constantly talk about the moral benefits of sociopathic behavior. They say it harnesses humanity's greed... as if that's the only emotion to consider. (Rather than saying it rewards greed and punishes empathy.) So what else do we expect from courses in captalist doctrine?

And this is obvious when we imagine (largely uncritical) training in any other economic system; training in morality.

I've seen a few papers directed at this exact question, but they've all come to the opposite conclusion. To be fair, these are Economics papers so some level of bias may be in effect, but I believe that at least one of the linked papers goes on to conclude that this is not the case based on experimental trials which showed that while Economics freshmen kept more than people in the Dictator game, seniors in Economics were in line with seniors of other majors and that both gave away more than their freshmen counterparts. I'll see if I can access more of the linked papers later, but it seems like he cites a lot of papers but only actually mentions their conclusions when they agree with his point.

Choosing an economics major means not choosing any of the other subjects. Since modern economics is focussed on greed and selfishness, it seems perfectly reasonable that not spending time on other parts of the human experience would lead to a paucity of spirit.

I think that economics leads to a different view on greed and selfishness, that the author should try to understand rather than talk down to us and force us out of our bad thinking patterns with re-education.

According to economics, all people are selfish (or self-interested if you prefer an less loaded term). How then can we make the world better when we are only interested in ourselves?

First, economics shows that in many cases, all individuals working for their own interests works as well as if everyone cared only about the common good. This is the first and second welfare theorems of economics.

Second, to the extend that we are altruistic, we should focus that altruism in an efficient way. For example, giving to someone slightly less wealthy than yourself is less efficient than giving to someone a lot less wealthy than yourself. And altruism exists not just in giving money, but also donating time and effort to maintaining the social institutions that benefit all of us. Given my experience with economists, they may actually be more altruistic when measured this way. And a rational person might choose to engage in the latter kind of altruism, while giving zero dollars to charity, since they already "give" money through the tax system.

Finally, given all of the above, economists tend to allow themselves the freedom not to feel altruistic. From a utilitarian perspective, what is needed is not so much more altruism, but more efficient use of people's existing altruistic feelings.

Isn't this a bit like "Students who take too many science classes are likely to be ungodly?"

The article starts off from the presumption that greed is bad, and then whines that people who understand economics better are more greedy. Perhaps it could instead come to the conclusion that people who understand economics are more intimately familiar with the way that best-possible outcomes do tend to arise from everybody acting in their own self interest and thus that "greed" (in at least certain senses) is not a vice at all?

Incidentally, as for the Dictator Game, I imagine that you get very different results with economics students and others who are intimiately familiar with the "Dictator Game" and similar psychological experiments than you would with someone who has never heard of this situation before. That might be an interesting experiment.

It's called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And here on HN, it's the dominant ideology. It will be hard to achieve fair open-minded discourse on this.

[thanks lutusp for the spelling correction.]

> In 1776, Adam Smith famously wrote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

> Economists have run with this insight for hundreds of years, and some experts think they’ve run a bit too far. Robert Frank, an economist at Cornell, believes that his profession is squashing cooperation and generosity.

It's embarrassing that the author directly quoted Smith while completely failing to understand the quote. The point is that self-interest causes cooperation.

Economics students learn about mathematical games and how to use resources; they also learn stats which it appears the author is completely ignorant of... Saying that being more aware makes us greedier is idiotic. We understand the rules better.

Correlation != Causation

I mean that. There is seriously no information here which can be formulated into any reasonable hypothesis. The links to most of the data are pay walled.

"Adam Grant" seems to have his doctorate in Psychology-- which doesn't surprise me given the complete lack of proof. Looking at his Wiki page it appears he doesn't have anything even related to statistical analysis. So I guess we'll be "feeling" this one out. Anecdotal evidence like this is why Economists, Math, and the hard sciences make fun of Psychology.

Economics is such a massive subject well beyond money and greed that I think this sort of hyperbolic headline only helps keeps the masses ignorance. Go to any modern school of Economics and you'll be quite surprised when you get to the "institutional section," for starters.

Enrollment is psychology is probably down, or he lost some funding. This is an article from an idiot/marketer/businessman.

Not quite.

Economics teaches you that there is no logic or system to this chaos, and after a threshold, it's no man's land.

Then, natural instinct takes over.

Welcome to the jungle.

Unfortunately for the title of the piece, there's a distinction between "economics" and "teachers of economics".

I would also like to see a breakdown of the study's economic professors based on the different "schools" of economics, roughly (and presumably self-identified): Chartalist, Keynesian, Monetarist, Austrian.