Economic Choices Among Different Groups According to the Cognitive Economics and Social Judgement Theory

Decision making, social judgement and human reasoning process is an important research area for experimental micro-economics. Social judgement happens with previous learning, reasoning and decision making processes and by the synchronized appearance of these cognitive functions, so the brain relates decision utility to anticipated and experienced utility. In the brain system, this neural synchronization is realized by the executive functions which seem to be located in the limbic system and frontal lobes. These neuroscientific researchs are also effective on social sciences and ethical discussions. This study generally provides examples from the relevant literature about the instruments used by the neurological applications to investigate the behaviours of individuals, how they are used to study interactions between individuals and how they can be used in modelling social dynamics as well as evaluating the effects of these studies on individuals and society. In this study, some behavioral perspectives on trust and reciprocity, fairness and altruism, justice and social norms were searched with the help of behavioral experiments presented in the game theory literature. The research part of the study includes the design, statistical results and findings of the experiment that we applied to the undergraduate students and public staff in Istanbul. The data was evaluated by ANOVA difference tests were conducted. The results of the analyses show that individuals don’t only try to behave rationally when they make economic judgements but also take decisions by involving their educations and social roles into the judgement processes. There are also significant differences between university students and public employees. The last part discusses the practical results of these studies and their possible effects on social sciences. One of the basic criticisms on the experimental studies of economic decision making is that the experiments in a laboratory environment may systematically vary from the behaviours in real life.