Students of economics are often presented as less cooperative than students of other disciplines. A method commonly used to establish this difference is based on laboratory experiments where students participate in trust games. However, these games are analysed as part of microeconomics courses. Hence, drawing conclusions about how students of economics behave while playing these games may not indicate their actual behaviour. This paper contributes to the discussion on economics students' attitudes towards cooperation by presenting the results of a survey conducted among undergraduate students of economics at the University of Lodz in central Poland (N=129). Besides the indoctrination and preselection hypotheses, a culture hypothesis was also examined.To analyse the significance of culture on students' cooperativeness, we recruited respondents from two countries, China and Poland, representing two different cultures of collectivism vs. individualism. Our findings lend support to the culture hypothesis, while we failed to find evidence for the indoctrination hypothesis. Moreover, the values of the Cooperation Index, an indicator coined to express respondents' attitude towards cooperation, confirm that females are more ready to cooperate than males. Since an ability to work in a team is regarded as the most valuable skill by employers (NACE Job Outlook 2016), our findings suggest treating training in teamwork as an integral part of economics curricula.Artykuł nadesłany 12 czerwca 2017 r., zaakceptowany 22 listopada 2017 r.

ABSTRACT. The impact of university education on the learners' attitudes remains uncertain. Nevertheless, the Economics students' unwillingness to cooperate is frequently attributed to the content of economic courses, and the theories of profit maximization. This article contributes to the discussion on students' attitudes towards cooperation based on the survey of 341 Polish and Romanian students. Since these countries differ in terms of collectivism/individualism dimension, we focus on tracing the influence of cultures on cooperativeness. Specifically, we investigate three variables. First, the impact of culture on the willingness to cooperate, secondly, the influence of gender on collaboration, and finally, the differences in attitudes among the students of Sociology and Economics. We find significant differences between Polish and Romanian students' attitudes towards cooperation, we also observe higher level cooperation among females than males. We detect a drop in cooperation from the first year to the subsequent years of undergraduate studies in Economics.

Recent studies by cognitive scientists demonstrate that people’s choices are more complex than the image provided by rational choice theory, and consistency of choice is not a characteristic to be expected in real-life situations. This exploratory paper attempts to isolate three variables in relation to decision making. Working with a sample (N=70) of university students in the U.S, and using the three variants of the Trolley Problem, the subjects’ responses are used to identify the similarities and differences based on the three dimensions. The participants were asked to respond to three hypothetical situations regarding a runaway trolley. Their decision in the first scenario could save a person’s life or let him be run over by the trolley. In the second scenario, their decision could either let one person die and save five lives or save one life and let five people be killed. These two scenarios require pulling a lever to switch the trolley from one track to another. The third scenario requires pushing an obese person in front of the runaway trolley to stop it from killing five persons. The paper presents the findings on the three variables: gender, age, and relational status.

Autorzy pragną podziękować za uwagi do pierwotnej wersji artykułu przekazane przez dwóch anonimowych recenzentów. Treści przedstawiane w niniejszym artykule były przedmiotem dyskusji podczas sesji poświęconej ekonomii rozwoju organizowanej przez The Association for Institutional Economics w ramach 58. konferencji The Western Social Science Association w Reno, NV, w kwietniu 2016 r.

Economic education is commonly blamed for negatively affecting students’ values and attitudes. Students of economics are repeatedly reported to differ from other majors. The differences are commonly explained by the learning effect (the indoctrination hypothesis) and the self-selection of specific persons to economics. We aim to contribute to the nurture vs nature debate on economics students by testing the indoctrination (nurture) and the self-selection (nature) hypotheses. Working with undergraduate economics and non-economic majors (N=286), we ran a Public Good Game (PGG) quasi-experiment. To test the self-selection hypothesis, we compared levels of donation in the PGG by both subsamples. To test the indoctrination hypothesis, we (1) analysed the results of economics students at different stages of their education and (2) juxtaposed their donations in the PGG with their academic performance. If economic education affects student attitudes, those who master economic theory better should be more “indoctrinated” and, as such, less eager to donate their endowments to the common fund in the PGG. However, no difference between the results of the first-year and second-year students has been found. Also, no correlation between exam scores and students’ donations in the PGG has been revealed. Nonetheless, we have detected a statistically significant difference between the economics and non-economics majors, which allows us to conclude that economics students’ atypicality comes from their self-selection of economic studies and is not attributable to economic teaching.