心理学对经济学的主要贡献曾经集中在认知心理学中有关人类决策误差和非理性判断的研究上,实际上,社会心理学与经济学的关系更为密切。社会心理学中有关人类的动机、信息加工、态度的形成和变化、印象、承诺、认知不协调、后悔、社会关系、价值观和文化等,都与人的经济行为密不可分;而经济学中有关价值、效用、选择、产权、沉没成本、机会成本、贸易、生活质量、博弈理论等概念,在本质上都是心理现象。过去很多有关人类非理性判断和决策的表现,或多或少都能寻找到社会和文化因素的影响。因此,经济学理论可以受益于社会心理学与经济学的交流,经济学的理论也不应该脱离社会心理学有关人性、人心、人情和人欲的限定。

Psychological contributions to behavioral economics in the past mainly come from the area of cognitive psychology that focusing on studying of human judgment errors and heuristics.In fact,social psychology is even more relevant to economics.The social psychological concepts of motivation,information processing,formation and change of attitude,impression,promise,cognitive dissonance,regret,social relation,value,and culture are intrinsic parts of economic behaviors,while economic concepts of value,utility,choice,propriety right,sunk cost,opportunity cost,trade,life quality,and game theory are all psychological in nature.Although,in many cases,people often make irrational decision and judgments,and consistently departure from the rules and principles of science and rational principles,but they are results of social and cultural influence.Hence,the economic theories could benefit from the new connections between social psychology and economics as well as the mounting evidence that economic man assumptions may be subject to social cultural constraints.