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Personal economic awareness
If you are playing this game just for fun, you may not be interested in this aspect of the game. But, if you are interested, this could be one of the game's most fascinating attributes.
Research shows that we begin to recognize ourselves at about two years of age. Since then, as we all know, it becomes a natural lifelong challenge to keep improving ourselves, whatever we consider improvement to be.
It is our speculation economic self awareness also comes at a certain age. To some, for whatever reason, it could be as early as four or five. (Six year-olds have successfully played this game.). While to others, economic self awareness takes some time, sometimes well into the twenties, thirties, even forties and fifties where people just can't seem to get themselves together economically. The reasons for late economic self recognition is the subject of many studies and way beyond our focus. And we don't also need to point out what results from this late recognition.
In their recent article in July-August ('09) issue of The Journal of Educational Research, Volume 102 (No. 6), entitled "The Relations Between Student Motivational Beliefs and Cognitive Eengagement in High School," Christopher O. Walker and Barbara A. Greene, the authors in reporting their findings, (pg. 465), state that "Self-efficacy is the extent to which an individual perceives that he or she possesses the ability necessary to manage a given set of circumstances (Bandura, 1977, 1994)."
If by self efficacy, it means that you believe that you are capable of performing in a way which enables you to achieve certain objectives, then economic self efficacy must mean that you believe that you are capable of performing in a way which enables you to achieve certain economic objectives. This economic self efficacy is what we call ones personal economic awareness– the awareness and confidence of an individual that he or she can accomplish a chosen economic objective.
We believe that it is possible for most people to reach their personal economic awareness by age twelve.