Does economic education spoil students’ morality? Economists and the Trolley problem

Abstract

Economic education is frequently blamed for negatively impacting students’ morality, leading to the so-called indoctrination hypothesis. This view is supported by abundant empirical research. Nevertheless, certain studies do not confirm and even gainsay the existence of such a destructive relationship. This article aims to contribute to the discussion by analysing ethical decisions made by the less and more advanced students of Economics when confronted with moral dilemmas based on the Trolley Problem. Additionally, to address the self-selection hypothesis, we compare the choices made by the first-year students of Economics with those of their Sociology counterparts. Assuming that economics teaching affects students’ moral choices and considering the fundamental role of utility maximization in both orthodox economics and standard economic education, one might expect a proportion of “utilitarian” ethical judgments to increase with the advancement of economic studies. Surprisingly, our research does not confirm such an association. Working with a sample of Polish undergraduate students of Economics (N=408) and Sociology (N=123) during the initial three weeks of the academic years 2020/2021 and 2022/2023, we observed that the choices of more advanced economists-to-be are more “deontological” (grounded in norms) than “utilitarian” (grounded in benefits). Therefore, we argue that economic education does not have the power to shake students' ethical choices considerably and transform them into unscrupulous calculating machines. However, certain support was found for the self-selection hypothesis, as the first-year students enrolled in the Economics programme were slightly more prone to “utilitarian” choices than the first-year sociologists.