<http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/eesp/cbe/index.shtml>
Organisation: College of Business and Economics, Western Washington University, USA

See also on SSRN the working paper The Economist as Therapist: Methodological Ramifications of ‘Light’ Paternalism by  George Loewenstein and Emily Celia Haisley February 28, 2007.

“Pre-ASSA Roundtable Discussion/Workshop
Adapting Pedagogical Innovations Across Disciplines

At this year’s ASSA meeting in San Francisco (Januray 3-5,2009) we will be hosting a pre-meeting Roundtable Discussion/Workshop exploring pedagogical innovations developed in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines and their adaptability in economics.

In particular, we will focus on pedagogical innovations developed from physics education research such as context-rich problems, just-in-time teaching, interactive lecture demonstrations, and concept tests/peer instruction.

Our objectives for this Roundtable Discussion/Workshop are to:

(1) introduce economists to pedagogical and assessment-related innovations from other disciplines and to encourage more economists to experiment with these techniques in their own classes;

(2) encourage more economists to initiate research exploring the adaptability of these innovations in economics (we believe that there is significant potential in this area, especially with respect to the NSF); and (

3) develop a network of economists interested in interdisciplinary pedagogical connections.

Scott Simkins
Mark Maier
Bill Goffe
Steve Greenlaw”

Here is the abstract:

“Money plays a significant role in people’s lives, and yet little experimental attention has been given to the psychological underpinnings of money. We systematically varied whether and to what extent the concept of money was activated in participants’ minds using methods that minimized participants’ conscious awareness of the money cues. On the one hand, participants reminded of money were less helpful than were participants not reminded of money, and they also preferred solitary activities and less physical intimacy. On the other hand, reminders of money prompted participants to work harder on challenging tasks and led to desires to take on more work as compared to participants not reminded of money. In short, even subtle reminders of money elicit big changes in human behavior.”

The concept of money was activated in the participants via four different manipulations. The first had participants play monopoly and being given at the end of the game different amounts of money “for later” before moving to another task. The second manipulation asked participants to imagine life with either abundant or limited finances. In the third manipulation participants had to organize phrases that were or were not related to money. The fourth and last manipulation made participants sit near images of cash or neutral images. The authors found that all of these manipulations had similar effects.

The authors underline that the emotional states reported by participants did not seem to be affected by whether they were reminded of money or not. This suggests that the results are unlikely to depend on emotional impacts of money on making participants less trustful, more anxious, or prideful. The authors believe that the explanation does not lie in money making people more selfish or greedy. In fact, exposure to money clues did not make participants more likely to ask for help when given a tough assignment nor more likely to reject more work than was necessary.

The authors conclude:

“We are eager to explore the idea that money leads to a perspective on the world that emphasizes inputs and outputs with an expectation of equity (cf. Fiske, 1991)—a perspective that would emphasize performance and, consequently, may harm interpersonal sensitivity.” (p. 211).

See also the earlier article “The Psychological Consequences of Money,” Kathleen D. Vohs, Nicole Mead, and Miranda Goode, Science (2006). Nov. 17, 2006.

Pointer by Greg Mankiw and comment by Peter Singer.

]]> http://endogenouspreferences.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/deos-thinking-of-money-makes-us-less-helpful-and-more-hard-working/feed/ 0 lombardini http://endogenouspreferences.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/my-harvard-colleague-ben-ben-friedman-reviews-nudge/ http://endogenouspreferences.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/my-harvard-colleague-ben-ben-friedman-reviews-nudge/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:35:17 +0000 lombardini http://endogenouspreferences.wordpress.com/?p=311 ]]> Ben Friedman reviews Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein on the New York Times. Pointer by Greg Mankiw

Useful links - this list is compiled having in mind parsimony assuming that TAs will have little time and find a short list more useful.

• The Higher Education Academy Economics Network : this UK-based site provides offers a great variety of materials to support university teachers of economics. Of special interest is The Handbook for Economics Lecturers which includes a chapter for teaching assistants.

I am not aware of any other handbooks for teaching economics, that are freely available on the internet. There are however several handbooks for teaching assistants.

• Handbook for teaching assistants at Cornell (2007, pp. 5-22) this handbook is just one of many materials that are available from the Cornell Centre for Learning and Teaching. These include, for instance, a Syllabus Template, which reflects the best practices for syllabus construction (MS Word version and PDF version) as well as Test Construction Manual “to help you write discriminating test questions, avoid common mistakes in multiple-choice and true-false questions, construct and grade essay questions and plan an exam“.

Also excellent is the site

• UC Berkeley Teaching Materials

and the

• Handbook for teaching assistance by UC San Diego (2005, pp.42-66)

Discussion lists

• Tch-econ discussion list From the description of the discussion list: “This is a place to discuss ideas related to the teaching of economics. We particularly concentrate on undergraduate university-level teaching, but do occasionally foray into graduate or secondary-school teaching. This is also a place to make contacts and form collaborative teams to work on projects related to the scholarship of teaching and to multi-campus collaborative efforts. “

Peer-reviewed journals on economic education

• International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education (IJPEE)
• International Review of Economics Education
• Journal of Economic Education
• Journal for Economic Educators