How Economists View Human Behavior

This study examines human economic behavior and views on environmental perceptions using social identity theory to determine how human behavior could impact the outcomes of alternative courses in the future in relation to the environmental crisis. Alternative economic scenarios for the future include growth, unsustainable growth, transformation, and downfall scenarios. The future will be shaped by high uncertainty and the influence of megatrends. Analyzing data which originate form field research conducted from 2019 to 2020 in Greece, we locate through principal components analysis, the variables that influence environmental preferences and, thus, the alternative future scenarios. We find that environmental behavior depends on “life variables” with long-term characteristics and effects. We conclude that environmental preferences comprise a broader and more sophisticated post-materialistic portfolio of attitudes within a wider social identity framework. Policymaking suggestions are designed to promote environmental sustainability for a preferable future.

Industry security is a component of economic and national security of a country or region. It is an important channel through which the government obtains reliable and valuable data to formulate policies and is the basic parameter essential for national and regional development. It is also an important part of macroeconomics. Research on economic industry security in various countries and regions is long-standing, but most studies have established a theoretical system by relying on policy regulations and economic behavior as a presupposition along with logical reasoning, a lack of economic activity, psychology empirical induction, and empirical analysis research. At the same time, economics began to reflect on postexperience single logical reasoning limitations. It was found that there are important reasons of human economic behavior that affects people’s economic behavior: It is a form of psychological motivation. It has been found through long-term study that human economic behavior has its own psychological motivation. To understand the motivation behind the behavior can help us grasp the nature of the behavior more clearly and accurately. The architecture method of psychology’s samples method of testing has the advantage of theory confirmation and construction, which the logical deductive method in economics does not have. It is in this context that psychology has a dialogue and fusion with economics resulting in the independent cross-discipline of economic psychology. Economic psychology not only broke the constraints of using purely logical reasoning in economics, it has also produced rich empirical technology; therefore, both early and future theory of economics can use these methods to perform empirical analysis research so that the research results and parameters are more scientific and realistic. Industry security in the economic field is naturally influenced by the development of economics: It introduces the theory and empirical technology of economic psychology to different degrees and in different ways to make studies more scientific and empirical. This is also the topic of this chapter. Currently evolutionary psychology and neural economic psychology have become hot topics [1]. The effect of psychology on economics has been widely recognized and applied. This chapter uses qualitative, comparative analysis, empirical method, etc.; discusses personal insights on the introduction of the theory and technology of economic psychology; clarifies respective performance effects, advantages, and practical significance of economic psychology and economic security; and discusses the orientation and focus of economic psychology in the industry security system. The innovation of this chapter is as follows: Question the limit of industry security fully established in subjective logic thinking; discuss the importance of introducing psychology to theoretical empirical analysis and technical guidance at every stage of industry security establishment and operation; put forward the author’s view of economics from the perspective of psychology; intentionally arouse more voice and special thinking on this subject from different fields; and jointly promote the development of China’s industry security research center and international industry security research system. The term “economic psychology” in this chapter refers to the common-concept category of narrow economic psychology with general economic psychology.

The economic approach to the study of human behavior has been presented by its foremost representative as the most effective method of studying social phenomena. Gary Becker’s view supposes that, on the one hand, all social phenomena can be explained as a consequence of individual actions and, on the other, there is a stable pattern of individual behavior economics has been able to understand thoroughly. Hence, economics, according to this view, is no longer limited to the study of a certain domain of human actions or to the understanding of material wealth or the necessary conditions for the material reproduction of society. Economics is a method that gives the social scientist the necessary tools to understand and even transform the world that surrounds him/her. Becker clearly acknowledges the direct link between his approach and Jeremy Bentham’s theory. Beyond the apparent connections regarding their conception of human nature there is one central point that links the two authors: their view of economics as an attitude of the human mind, an inherent capacity to calculate that explains all human actions. This paper argues that Bentham provides the philosophical groundings for Becker’s theory. The application of the principle of utility to every aspect of human behavior justifies economic imperialism by transforming economics into a method of general analysis of human behavior. Indeed, economics is no longer defined according to its subject matter but according to its method, which means an increasing scope explaining Becker’s claim that the economic approach provides a rigorous framework for the analysis of all social phenomena.

Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social-scientific theories are auxiliary constructs re-describing people's behavioural dispositions. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, no less existent than the unobservable entities and properties in the natural sciences, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has long gone out of fashion in psychology and linguistics, it remains the dominant orthodoxy in economics, especially in the form of 'revealed preference' theory. We aim to (i) clear up some common conceptual confusions about the two views in economics, (ii) situate the debate in a broader historical and philosophical context, and (iii) defend a mentalist approach to economics. Setting aside normative concerns about behaviourism, we show that mentalism is in line with best scientific practice even if economics is treated as a purely positive science of human social behaviour. We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that social behaviour should be explained in terms of people's brain processes, as distinct from their mental states.

Social-psychological and sociocultural approaches are necessary for understanding the individual and serve as the moral and ethical foundation of spiritual values. This necessitates a fundamental review of approaches to training management personnel. The development of the personal potential of future specialists is becoming particularly relevant. The success of a modern manager depends, on the one hand, on mastering the basics of business, and on the other, on a solid worldview, strategic thinking, and awareness of contemporary social realities. Therefore, professional training should aim to shape specialists’ socio-cultural and economic views and deepen their understanding of patterns of human psychological behavior. In professional activity, the psychological factor often becomes dominant. The advantages of managerial activity are the manager's ability to systematically analyze and think creatively in the decision-making process in non-standard situations, finding effective ways to solve practical problems, readiness for business communication to ensure partnership relationships, etc. The analysis of the content of professional training of managerial personnel allowed us to draw conclusions that a significant influential factor in the formation of readiness for managerial activity are the educational components of the EPP "Management of Foreign Economic Activity" of a socio-humanitarian orientation, which form the basis of the cognitive component. The article substantiates the relevance of humanitarian knowledge for developing integral competence (IC), namely the ability to solve complex practical tasks and problems characterized by complexity and uncertainty in management through the application of theories and methods from the social and behavioral sciences, as well as through the development of personal qualities. The main approaches to studying professional orientation and moral and ethical values of future specialists are identified. Based on an experimental study, a criteria-based analysis was conducted, levels of social and humanitarian training as a component of professional readiness were determined, and diagnostic tools and methods of mathematical statistics were applied to analyze the obtained data

Some scientific research in rational choice theory and behavioral economics - call it choice-theoretic research - seems to point to the conclusion that addicts are fully responsible for what they do. I argue in this paper, however, that the choice-theoretic approach to human behavior presupposes a theory of action that is inconsistent with the assumptions about moral responsibility that are imbedded in the notion of criminal liability. While the economic view of behavior may be perfectly adequate to certain other policy concerns of the law, a theory of action adequate to the understanding of criminal responsibility must take into account factors that are not countenanced in the economic view. I examine three different philosophical approaches that are consistent with the economic view, and show that they are inadequate to distinctions made in the criminal law. I then argue what is missing is a factor that is once more being taken seriously in the philosophy of action, the notion of will. Whether the required sense of will can be made consistent with a naturalistic view of human beings is a separate question.

The paper analyzes the current discussions on the state of economics with special focus on the interrelationships between key ideas of economic theories and real actions of economic policy in the course of the global economic crisis. The global economic crisis showed the limited ability of mainstream in economics to service the economic practice, and, therefore, the attention of researchers and economic policy-makers was drawn again to some alternative views in economics.

“The theorist can never foresee what the experimenter will find when his range is extended to include fields at present inaccessible.”Man behaved economically, politically, and otherwise long before social scientists theorized about his behavior. In fact, present day social science is of comparatively recent origin, being the product of that progressive specialization which began in the eighteenth century.This specialization has produced diverse problems, with one of which the present paper is concerned. The problem in question is suggested by the central thesis of this paper: that although an economist (or political scientist) must delimit what he studies qua economist (or political scientist), his understanding of economic (or political) behavior is governed by his understanding of human behavior as a whole. While this paper was written primarily from the point of view of an economist to illustrate how psychology and noneconomic social science may contribute to our understanding of economic behavior, it also suggests how political science may draw upon the disciplines treated and indicates how economists envisage a number of questions of fundamental significance to students of government.

In the nineteenth century there arose claims to scientific standing that were highly contested, and provoked a new kind of metascientific enquiry. The accreditation and ranking of disciplines were rationalized in terms of the internal structure of science, but they were predominantly extra-scientific in origin, and were more than anything else an elaborate exercise in legitimation. The issues centred on accounts of human behaviour that had traditionally been the preserve of religious and metaphysical teaching. These included ethics, where efforts were now afoot to put it on a scientific standing, as well as areas that had the character of a loose combination of moral, political, and economic views which could now be claimed to have been put on a scientific footing. The dispute between Whewell and Mill on the scientific standing of the new disciplines became transformed into a philosophical project of understanding the nature of science.

The first chapter of this book summarized how we undertake economics, and our explanation for that approach in the modern Western world. The second chapter introduced the idea that this contemporary view of understanding economics is just one of many ways that humans have understood how the economy operates. The last century has seen the ascendancy, indeed intellectual dominance, of neoclassical economics (NCE, also known as Walrasian economics). The basic NCE model represents the economy as a self-maintaining circular flow among firms and households, driven by the psychological assumptions that humans act principally in a materialistic, self-regarding, and predictable way. Unfortunately, the NCE model violates a number of physical laws and is inconsistent actual human behavior, rendering it to be an unrealistic and a poor predictor of people’s actions. Recently, an array of experimental and physical evidence and theoretical breakthroughs demonstrate the disconnect between evidence and neoclassical theory. Despite the abundance and validity of these critiques, few economists seriously question the neoclassical paradigm that forms the foundation of their applied work. This is a problem because policy makers, scientists, and others turn to economists for answers to important questions. The supposed virtues of «privatization,» «free markets,» «consumer choice,» and «cost-benefit analysis» are considered to be self-evident by most practicing economists, as well as many in business and government. In fact, the evidence that these concepts are correct is rather slim and contradictory. Thus, this chapter is a strong critique of economic theory, in this case NCE.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the way economists interested in social and economic evolution cite, mention or refer to Darwin. We focus on the attitude of economists towards Darwin's theory of social evolution - an issue he considered as central to his theory. We show that economists refer to and mention Darwin as a biologist and neglect or ignore his theory of social and cultural evolution. Three types of reference are identified: first, economists refer to Darwin from the social Darwinist perspective of the use of biological concepts in social sciences. Darwin's biological theories are then equated with those of Spencer. Second, economists view Darwin as having borrowed concepts from classical political economists, Malthus and Smith. Darwin is then mentioned to emphasize the existence of economic theories of social evolution. From these two perspectives, Darwin's theory of social evolution remains hidden behind analyses developed by Spencer, Malthus or Smith. Third, economists acknowledge the existence of Darwin's general (biological and social) theory of evolution. Darwin eventually stands for himself.

Competition is a fundamental phenomenon in human behavior and a key topic of interest for psychologists and economists alike. Both psychology and economics strive to better understand behavior in competitive environments, but they differ in their research objectives, theoretical perspectives, and empirical methods. Economics typically adopts a normative approach, assuming that agents make rational decisions that balance the tradeoff between the costs of competing and the benefits associated with winning. Economists view competition as a class of incentive structures and investigate the effects of comparative reward schemes on behavior and performance. Psychology adopts a more descriptive approach. Psychologists are interested in the cognitive, affective, and motivational processes that affect decision making. They examine the interpersonal effects of competition and compare them with other social situations. In this chapter, the authors review selected literature on competition in experimental economics and psychology, exploring two common research areas. One is rank-order, effort-based tournaments, by which experimental economists study the effects of various incentive structures on effort and performance, whereas social psychologists examine processes of social comparison. The second is common value auctions and the winner’s curse. The authors discuss how research in economics and psychology examine the winner’s curse, explanations for the phenomenon, and recommendations to overcome it. Finally, the authors outline possible directions for mutual enrichment for scholars interested in competition. Psychologists can benefit from the precise definitions present in economic experiments, whereas economists can use the insights on the underlying processes of competitive attitudes and behavior offered by research in psychology.

This review essay discusses the attempts of four books to surpass traditional disciplinary borders and address a basic question across the social sciences: What motivational forces guide human behaviour, and how do these forces affect and how are they affected by, the dynamics of social cooperation and collective action? Even though the books adopt different theoretical and methodological perspectives for examining this question, they all challenge the univalent and decontextualized economic (self-interested) view of human motivation, supporting interdisciplinarity and a multidimensional and contextualized view of human motivation.

The risk of a sixth mass extinction of life and the role of medicine

Inspirado nas recentes pesquisas do comportamento econômico humano e nas conceituações de pobreza e desenvolvimento humano, este estudo objetiva analisar como a economia comportamental se insere no complexo estudo desses fenômenos. Através de pesquisas bibliográficas, busca-se fornecer uma interpretação da trajetória do pensamento científico da pobreza e do desenvolvimento humano, desde suas primeiras conceituações e formas de mensurações, sob perspectivas unidimensionais, medidas principalmente através dos níveis de renda; até a visão contemporânea econômica comportamental, sob a perspectiva multidimensional agregadora de múltiplos fatores sociais, econômicos e subjetivos. À luz da abordagem econômica comportamental, emergem estudos que se preocupam em interpretar esses fenômenos por meio da análise dos obstáculos internos à mente dos indivíduos, defendendo a aplicação de pequenas intervenções, os nudges, na tomada de decisão dos agentes, buscando o aumento do bem-estar geral através de escolhas acertadas de políticas de combate à pobreza e de expansão do desenvolvimento humano.