T he weight of evidence clearly suggests that, based on what economics students say and how they play games, those who study economics appear to be less cooperative than those who do not. In a recent issue of this journal, Frank, Gilovich and Regan (1993) compile the evidence for this view. Using the results of others and new studies of their own, they show that economics students are more likely to free ride or defect from coalitions. In addition, they present survey results that indicate lowered cooperation by students after exposure to the principles of economics course and other surveys that find that professional economists report less charitable giving.This evidence is consistent with the proposition that studying economics alters how students play structured games and answer surveys about cooperativeness. However, we disagree with the additional conclusion that, as Frank, Gilovich and Regan (1993, p. 159) put it in their article, "exposure to the self-interest model commonly used in economics alters the extent to which people behave in self-interested ways." In fact, the evidence in this paper implies that even if undergraduate students of economics display uncooperative behavior in specialized games or surveys, their "real-world" behavior is actually substantially more cooperative than that of their counterparts studying other subjects. Analytical IssuesDrawing a connection between the study of economics and changes in cooperative behavior isn't easy. Here, we raise four difficulties in any such analysis.

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