A new history class called Behavioral Economics will be taught by Lisa Berrol, the current psychology teacher and Skeff Young, a current Economics teacher.

Behavioral economics is a social science seeking to understand why humans behave certain ways in the real world.

 “Over the past 3 decades, there has been a look at psychology on economics decision making specifically” Young explained. 

Young further described the effect this has had on economics. 

“Economists have been chipping away at this idea that human beings are rational computers in that decision making…so the field is now rethinking that due to behavioral economics.” 

In the summer of 2020, Behavioral Economics was taught as an online summer course. When their regular classes had similar or common free periods, Berrol and Young took the time to teach together. 

“When we were remote, we taught together and taught this course so out of this came the idea that there is a way to frame this so we can have it for a longer period of time,” Young said. 

The new frame for the class is unlike any at Masters. For half of the year, students will learn and focus on either economics with Young, or psychology with Berrol. As the year progresses, the two classes will combine forming Behavioral Economics.

The curriculum will encompass a more hands-on approach, as they recreate experiments and examine how behavioral economics relates to them. Both Young and Berrol have taught economics and psychology classes with the same mindset. 

Berrol said, “I think that this course is going to be seen as a really practical course. We are going to have a lot of real-world examples and they will be able to examine their own behavior.” 

Senior Jadah Ramdyal expressed her thankfulness to the course, as it led her to economics. She said, It was pretty informative and helped me get the idea to do Economics when school started again.” 

Junior Owen Edelson had the opportunity of virtually taking Behavioral Economics over the summer. He reflected, “It was really fun. It was some really interesting subject matter that I haven’t learned about in any class at Masters… it felt really worthwhile.”