Whenever I read or hear that a “praxeology is a way to deduce behavior” vs how psychology is “an induction of behavior through the scientific method” the explanations make sense but I still don’t have a solid grasp of what’s exactly different about either from a practical sense. For example what is an issue or question that would be answered by only praxeology vs a question that can only be answered by psychology? I can see how economics deals with praxeological assumptions about scarcity but that’s about as much I can muster mentally towards understanding this dilemma. I haven’t found a way to wrap my head around it the nuanced differences and I need help.
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Psychology is a very broad academic discipline that encompasses various kinds of efforts to understand how people think and behave.
Praxeology is a very specific (and extremely controversial) approach to economics that says you can derive facts about how economies behave by starting with some basic assumptions about individual human behaviour and logically deducing consequences. It’s mostly associated with the “Austrian school”. Note that there are other, completely different, approaches to economics that focus on individual behaviour, such as behavioural economics and experimental economics.
> For example what is an issue or question that would be answered by only praxeology vs a question that can only be answered by psychology?
Psychology: Why do people like ice cream? What causes mental illness? How can we treat mental illness? Why do people commit acts of violence? How do people reason about things? How do we process visual stimuli?
Praxeology: How can we “prove” that we should cut taxes for the rich using only some vague and poorly evidenced statements about how all humans always behave?
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