Side Effects May Include Selfishness? Refuting the Hypothesis on the Moral Harm of Economic Education

Abstract This paper revisits the widely debated claim that exposure to economic education undermines students’ moral standards, a view most prominently articulated by Frank, Gilovich, and Regan (1993). Drawing on their hypothesis, we surveyed second-year undergraduate students (N = 530) enrolled in seven programmes across academic disciplines. Participants were asked to assess the likelihood of honest behaviour, both their own and others’, in response to six scenarios involving a trade-o between ethical conduct and material self-interest, two of which were based on Frank et al.’s study. We hypothesised that economics students would estimate lower probabilities of honest behaviour than students from other disciplines, and that the perceived likelihood of honesty would decrease as exposure to economics increased. Neither hypothesis was supported. Despite having completed an intensive and mainstream-oriented introductory course on economics, economics students did not perceive dishonest behaviour as more likely than their peers. In one scenario, they even expressed greater trust in others’ honesty than other students. The expected negative association between the intensity of economics instruction and more cynical and selfish ethical judgment did not emerge. Moreover, statistically significant but weak positive correlations were observed between these factors in three of the twelve cases analysed. These findings challenge the assumption that economic education promotes self-interest at the expense of ethical standards, suggesting the need to reassess the empirical foundations of this claim.