This document discusses whether arts or economics is more useful for studying human behavior. It argues that while arts provide insights into human life and personality through works like literature and paintings, they can be open to wide interpretation. Economics, on the other hand, provides theories and tools that can be directly applied to understand incentives, demand and supply, and predict behavior. However, economics requires connecting theory to real life carefully and having sufficient data. Overall, both fields can provide insights into human behavior, but arts may reveal more about life and personality.
This document discusses whether arts or economics is more useful for studying human behavior. It argues that while arts provide insights into human life and personality through works like literature and paintings, they can be open to wide interpretation. Economics, on the other hand, provides theories and tools that can be directly applied to understand incentives, demand and supply, and predict behavior. However, economics requires connecting theory to real life carefully and having sufficient data. Overall, both fields can provide insights into human behavior, but arts may reveal more about life and personality.
This document discusses whether arts or economics is more useful for studying human behavior. It argues that while arts provide insights into human life and personality through works like literature and paintings, they can be open to wide interpretation. Economics, on the other hand, provides theories and tools that can be directly applied to understand incentives, demand and supply, and predict behavior. However, economics requires connecting theory to real life carefully and having sufficient data. Overall, both fields can provide insights into human behavior, but arts may reveal more about life and personality.
This document discusses whether arts or economics is more useful for studying human behavior. It argues that while arts provide insights into human life and personality through works like literature and paintings, they can be open to wide interpretation. Economics, on the other hand, provides theories and tools that can be directly applied to understand incentives, demand and supply, and predict behavior. However, economics requires connecting theory to real life carefully and having sufficient data. Overall, both fields can provide insights into human behavior, but arts may reveal more about life and personality.
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KQ1 We will always learn more about human life and
human personality from the Arts than from social
sciences.
KQ2 To what extent are Arts more useful
than Economics when studying human behaviour? Human behaviour is a factor which people were always interested to investigate. Individuals have always been trying to discover, predict and explain human behaviour. Therefore, they apply knowledge from different areas in order to fully explore and handle questions such as: What do people think about something?, How will people react to this?, Why did someone act in that way?. This many times happens because people are extremely curious, as well as they are interested to derive benefit and made their best decisions. These two reasons combined explain the apparition of many study areas, such as social sciences, humanities and arts. I will use the examples of Arts and Social sciences, in particular Economics, to discuss the statement We will always learn more about human life and human personality from the Arts than from social sciences.. Even though it might appear that there are some overlaps arising from the study of human behaviour in these two fields, I will try to prove that there are considerable factors that show that Arts are not necessarily more useful than Economics when studying human behaviour. Art is extremely valuable because it comprises such a great variety of works - novels, music, paintings. But in practice it might be less useful than social sciences because it leaves a big gap for interpretation. Nevertheless, social sciences, Economics, are very useful because they represent a set of tools which can be directly applied to many various life situations. Their drawback is that they require humans to thoroughly connect the theory with reality, therefore they are subject to an inappropriate use.
As mentioned above, Arts define a very broad area. This is
one of the main reasons which makes it so useful for the study of human behaviour. A work of art usually contains a theme and a message. Sometimes it might seem hard to see what the author wanted to say, but even though the majority of art pieces have something to communicate to us, at least the authors view. As an example, we can take the Francisco Goyas painting The Third of May 1808. The painting reveals the fear and suffering of the Spanish people, who are being shot by Napoleons army after they have taken the Spanish city Medina del Rio Seco. It is a unique work of art, as it has no distinct precedent. It is special because it shows such a cruel massacre and gives the reader an insight about the historic impact of Napoleon's occupation of Spain, which is always being associated with a triumph, indeed there were thousands of men killed. We can derive different ideas from this painting, some of which might help us to answer questions regarding of what actually has happened. But the main point is that, on this example, we can learn about the peoples culture, position in the society, actions and thinking, or simply their lives. This gives us enough information to make a conclusion on But it bad because of different understanding it is less about human behaviour, than it is about human life and human personality
Economics, on the other hand, is a less broad subject. But due
to its theory that can be applied to almost everything in the world, it becomes very useful when it comes to analyzing the behaviour of the society as a whole, or even the behaviour of individuals. Furthermore, economics is a subject in which we study that for any possible outcome, there is a determinant, or a cause, which is a very important concept in real life. So, this area of knowledge is useful for studying human behaviour due to its large application and flexible theory.
One of the main concepts in economics is the idea of
incentives, which comes from the above mentioned cause-effect relationship. A good understanding of how incentives and the rationing system work, means a good understanding of Why individuals act in this/that way?. This is one of the questions derived from the main KQ, and explains how Economics is connected with the study human behaviour. Another example is the combination of the demand & supply laws. Many people believe that these 2 concepts are extraordinary useful for the society and can be applied to any real-life situation. The law of demand states that:The higher the price, the lower the quantity demanded. If we change this law but keep the same concept, we could say that the harder it is to get something, less people will be achieving it. This is a perfect example of an economic idea that can be in real life, even though it might seem a too simple concept, if we increase the number of the variables and the factors affecting the decision-making progress, we would still be able to predict and explain human behaviour. But its main drawback, if we dont have enough data we dont get right result. Relates to human behaviour, but not human personality and human life at all
Conclusion, economist do make forecasts and this is predicting.
Economics is a science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.
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