Friday, September 14, 2018

The problem is that psychologists think economists are immoral and economists think psychologists are stupid.

From The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis.
Among its other consequences, the work that Amos and Danny did together awakened economists and policy makers to the importance of psychology. “I became a believer,” said Nobel Prize–winning economist Peter Diamond of Danny and Amos’s work. “It’s all true. This stuff is not just lab stuff. It’s capturing reality, and it’s important to economists. And I spent years thinking of how to use it — and failing.” By the early 1990s a lot of people thought it was a good idea to bring together psychologists and economists, to allow them to get to know each other better. But as it turned out, they didn’t particularly want to know each other better. Economists were brash and self-assured. Psychologists were nuanced and doubtful. “Psychologists as a rule will only interrupt a presentation for clarification,” says psychologist Dan Gilbert. “Economists will interrupt to show how smart they are.” “In economics it is completely normal to be rude,” says economist George Loewenstein. “We tried to create a psychology and economics seminar at Yale. We had our first meeting. The psychologists came out completely bruised. We never had a second meeting.” In the early 1990s, Amos’s former student Steven Sloman invited an equal number of economists and psychologists to a conference in France. “And I swear to God I spent three-quarters of my time telling the economists to shut up,” said Sloman. “The problem,” says Harvard social psychologist Amy Cuddy, “is that psychologists think economists are immoral and economists think psychologists are stupid.”
As an economist with a strong interest in psychology and sociology, I am not sure that they aren't to some extent both right.

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