DOES ECONOMIC EDUCATION SPOIL STUDENTS’ MORALITY? ECONOMISTS AND THE TROLLEY PROBLEM
DOES ECONOMIC EDUCATION SPOIL STUDENTS’ MORALITY? ECONOMISTS AND THE TROLLEY PROBLEM

Summary/Abstract: Economic education is frequently blamed fornegatively impacting students’ morality, leading to the so-called indoctrination hypothesis. This view is supported byabundant empirical research. Nevertheless, certain studiesdo not confirm and even gainsay the existence of such adestructive relationship. This article aims to contribute tothe discussion by analysing ethical decisions made by theless and more advanced students of Economics whenconfronted with moral dilemmas based on the TrolleyProblem. Additionally, to address the self-selectionhypothesis, we compare the choices made by the first-yearstudents of Economics with those of their Sociologycounterparts. Assuming that economics teaching affectsstudents’ moral choices and considering the fundamentalrole of utility maximization in both orthodox economicsand standard economic education, one might expect aproportion of “utilitarian” ethical judgments to increasewith the advancement of economic studies. Surprisingly,our research does not confirm such an association.Working with a sample of Polish undergraduate studentsof Economics (N=408) and Sociology (N=123) during theinitial three weeks of the academic years 2020/2021 and2022/2023, we observed that the choices of moreadvanced economists-to-be are more “deontological”(grounded in norms) than “utilitarian” (grounded inbenefits). Therefore, we argue that economic educationdoes not have the power to shake students' ethical choicesconsiderably and transform them into unscrupulouscalculating machines. However, certain support was foundfor the self-selection hypothesis, as the first-year studentsenrolled in the Economics programme were slightly moreprone to “utilitarian” choices than the first-yearsociologists.

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