Since its inception in the late 1970s, behavioural economics has gone from being an outlier to a widely recognized yet still contested subset of the economic sciences. One of the basic arguments in behavioural economics is that a more realistic psychology ought to inform economic theories. While the history of behavioural economics is often portrayed and articulated as spanning no more than a few decades, the practice of utilizing ideas from psychology to rethink theories of economics is over a century old. In the first three decades of the 20th century, several mostly American economists made efforts to refine fundamental economic assumptions by introducing ideas from psychology into economic thinking. In an echo of contemporary discussions in behavioural economics, the ambition of these psychology-keen economists was to strengthen the empirical accuracy of the fundamental assumptions of economic theory. In this article, we trace, examine, and discuss arguments for and against complementing economic theorizing with insights from psychology, as found in economic literature published between 1900 and 1930. The historical analysis sheds light on issues and challenges associated with the endeavour to improve one discipline’s theories by introducing ideas from another, and we argue that these are issues and challenges that behavioural economists continue to face today.

自1970年代末创立以来，行为经济学已从一个孤立的领域转变为一个广泛认可的，但仍备受争议的经济学领域。行为经济学的基本论点之一是，更现实的心理学应该为经济理论提供信息。尽管行为经济学的历史通常被描绘和阐述不超过几十年，但利用心理学思想重新思考经济学理论的实践已有一个多世纪的历史了。在20世纪的前三十年中，几位主要是美国经济学家通过将心理学的思想引入经济思维，努力完善基本的经济假设。与行为经济学的当代讨论相呼应，这些热衷于心理学的经济学家的野心是增强经济学理论基本假设的经验准确性。在本文中，我们追踪，研究和讨论了支持和反对以心理学的见解补充经济理论的论点，这些见解是在1900年至1930年间出版的经济文献中发现的。历史分析揭示了与改进经济学理论有关的问题和挑战。通过引入另一种观点来获得该学科的理论，我们认为这些是行为经济学家今天继续面临的问题和挑战。