The un-dismal science...................

     It is difficult to change people's minds about what they eat for breakfast, let alone problems that they have worked on all their lives.  For years, many economists strongly resisted the call to base their models on more accurate characterizations of human behavior.  But thanks to an influx of creative young economists who have been willing to take some risks and break with the traditional ways of doing economics, the dream of an enriched version of economic theory is being realized.  The field has become known as "behavioral economics."  It is not a different discipline:  it is still economics, but it is economics done with strong injections of good psychology and other social sciences.
      The primary reason for adding Humans to economic theories is to improve the accuracy of the predictions made with those theories.  But there is another benefit that comes with including real people in the mix.  Behavioral economics is more interesting and more fun than regular economics.  It is the un-dismal science.
     ...Not surprisingly, there have been numerous squabbles with traditionalists who defended the usual way of doing economics.  Those squabbles were not always fun at the time, but like a bad travel experience, they make for good stories after the fact, and the necessity of fighting those battles has made the field stronger.

-Richard H. Thaler,  Misbehaving:  The Making of Behavioral Economics