How does one measure the change of selfishness?

      Ask twice.  Ask first at the start of a college course and ask at
second at the end of a college course.

      The paradigm of economics is look out for #1.  Students learn that.
Students resist learning that spillovers or externalities always exist and
that the magnitude of a single spillover or a group of related spillovers
could either justify or even require governmental response.  Student are
human.  Humans like simplicity.

      Piaget might say humans like simplicity especially as young college
students.
http://www.okstate.edu/ag/agedcm4h/academic/aged5123kk/power/1

      The paradigm offered by academe, including economics, teaches a world
of complexity, interconnectedness, and network effects.  Students are
human.  Generically, humans dislike that.  (Honesty compels me to grant
that by definition academics are not generic.)  But, unlike psychology
where the id does not get top billing, in economics the super ego has an
all new meaning.  Can you say "Trump"?

      Or, perhaps the experimental results reflect a genetic sex
difference.  Perhaps economics would do well to say the Rational Man rather
than the Rational Person.

      The experimental results (that I first recall reading over a decade
ago and since have been replicated but I only have read abstracts) involved
both a change in sign and a difference in magnitude. (e.g., +0.1 versus
-1.0).

      I would be most interested in seeing whether these experimental
results hold past the introductory course.  Every introductory course in
every subject is a tall stack of lies.  That tall stack of lies is
fashioned by the high priests because excessive simplicity is only means of
fitting the entire subject matter of a field into a three credit hour
course.  Subsequent courses in the same field peel back a select group of
lies from that tall stack and attempt to fashion less bold approximation of
the truth.  I do not recall seeing such a longitudinal survey based on
first semester freshman and graduating seniors by major.  Nor do I recall
seeing such a longitudinal survey based on first semester freshman and
tenured professors, although that now ought to be physically feasible.

      Perhaps it is because one sees what one expects to see, but I would
not be startled to learn that the initially tested results are durable over
a major and a career.

      Of course, there are a host of contributory variables that might
dominate such survey results (e.g., genetic disposition of those prone
towards economic analysis magnified by adverse selection among the general
education offerings) and strip the economics profession of any meaningful
contribution to the detected change in manifestation of selfishness.
However, as I noted in an earlier email, often the winner of a
philosophical debate is the one who applies the labels, and as I have noted
earlier in this email, one tends to see what one expects to see,
accordingly, I doubt the economics profession would be so dubious of such
survey results if the label was a tad different.  If economics students
were detected as becoming more "rational", rather than more "selfish", then
hosannas rather than academic raspberries would fill the chorus from the
economics department.

Michael

Professor Michael J. O'Hara, J.D., Ph.D.
Finance, Banking, & Law Department
College of Business Administration
Roskens Hall 502
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Omaha  NE  68182
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(402) 554 - 2823 voice  fax (402) 554 - 2680
http://cba.unomaha.edu/faculty/mohara/web/ohara.htm