Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Prompt #10: Recognizing Truth

A huge misconception about economists is that we are the kind of people who feel absolutely no remorse and that we are emotionally unaffected by situations. People claim that we can't feel pity, especially for people less fortunate than us. As long as it's for the good of the majority then we're completely content.

I found a New York Times article about how our stereotypes might be true. There have even been studies to test our personalities. For college students, they made a big point that there is a "loss of innocence." They say that people who take economics classes and become economics majors lose their innocence because of what they are taught. Also, if people majoring in economics haven't lost their innocence in college, it's because they lost it high school.

Economics in it's own nature is amoral. Emotions do not belong in the field and in order to be a good economist you have to be able to think rationally mores than emotionally. There are times when I agree with some stereotypes, but it's not always the case. I don't think that everyone loses their innocence completely. I know for a fact that I, myself, have sympathy and empathy for people in many different cases.

It's hard to completely label an entire group of diverse people with the same personal characteristics. I  think that before someone was going to judge the entire community, they would have to talk in detail to a majority of the people.

1 comment:

  1. It can definitely be frustrating how people always tend to stereotype professionals in specific fields, I also get a lot of that as an education major. As you said obviously sometimes these labels may be true, but not always. I think it is important for people to know the truths behind certain fields and the professionals in those fields.

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