History and Current State and Methodology of Economic Psychology.

Economic psychology, as an important branch of psychology and a multi-disciplinary subject between economics and psychology, aims to explore the psychological mechanisms of economic behaviors and the mental consequences of economic events. This subject was established at the beginning of the 20th century and developed slowly in the following decades; however, at the middle of the last century, research on economic psychology revived and then fully developed. Now the psychology of decision-making and game is the basic research fields of the subject; the psychological research on finance, consumption and happiness serves the the applied parts; and neuro-economic psychology and evolutionary economic psychology adopts new research techniques and ideas to study previous issues. In general, contrast to economics, economic psychology has stronger realistic concerns, and mainly uses experimental approaches to examine actual economic behaviors. The present paper reviews the history and current trends of economic psychology in western countries, which is helpful for domestic research and construction of this discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]