All economists use scientific methods, and all economists view all social or other events in the economics context. But these characteristics don't really help us to distinguish thinking of economists from those of others. Scientific methods is used by people practicing hundreds different modern disciplines and profession like physician's, historians, astronomers, criminologists, psychologists, engineers, anthropologists and statisticians. Also, person in every profession or field tends to connect different things, which are apparently not a part of his or her discipline, to his subject. Remember the famous case of Newton thinking up of the idea of gravity base on observation of an apple falling from the tree, or of Archimedes jumping out of his bath tub shouting 'eureka' when the buoyancy felt by him in the tub water, led him to think up of a scientific method to determine the purity of gold in crow of King Hiero.
When we say thinking like of economist, it should point to ways of thinking exclusive to economist. No other profession should follow the same set of attributes, though some attributes may be common with other professions but not most or all. This exclusive component of thinking of economists is economics itself. Samuelson and Nordhaus define economics as:
The study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people.
In pursuing this type of study the economists ave developed many different methods and an theories of economics, which all economists learn. It is these common objective of study combined with grounding in the common economics methods and theories that give economists their typical way of thinking.
Source:
Samuelson P.A. and Nordhaus W.D. 2005, Economics, Eighteenth Edition., Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi.
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