Economics students : selfish by nature, altruistic by nurture

Economics and its teaching have gone through considerable introspection in recent years including on the question of whether the widely used assumption of self-interest suppresses altruism in students. In this paper we examine whether students of economics exhibit differences in altruistic preferences and whether this is due to indoctrination or selection effects. We employ a survey with embedded Dictator Game and Ultimatum Game experiments, randomizing the use of a prime with the aim of activating prior knowledge in the memory of our respondents and constructing an index of previous exposure to economics. Through difference in means and formal regression analysis, we find that while students choosing to major in economics are likely to give lower donations than others (particularly in stylized DG and UG games), stronger exposure to economics yields higher donations. These findings suggest that while students of economics may well be less altruistic by nature, stronger exposure to economics is associated with stronger levels of altruism.

近年来，经济学及其教学经历了深入的反思，其中包括关于广泛使用的自我利益假设是否抑制学生利他主义的探讨。在本研究中，我们考察了经济学专业学生在利他主义偏好方面是否存在差异，以及这种差异是否源于灌输或选择效应。我们采用了一项包含委托人博弈和最后通牒博弈实验的调查，通过对受访者使用潜在启动词的随机化，旨在激活他们对经济学的先验知识，并构建了一个反映先前接触经济学的指数。通过均值差异和正式的回归分析，我们发现，选择主修经济学的学生可能捐赠的金额低于其他学生（尤其是在标准化的委托人博弈和最后通牒博弈中），而更强的经济学接触则与更高的捐赠水平相关。这些发现表明，尽管经济学专业的学生可能在本质上可能较为缺乏利他主义，但更强的经济学接触与更高水平的利他主义相关联。