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Edited on Fri Jan-11-08 09:49 AM by AP
In the chapter about racism, the authors analyzed data from The Weakest Link which showed that contestants do not act rationally and strategically against black, latino and old contestants. With the black contestants, other contestants over-compensate for racism by not voting off black contestants when it would be wise to do so (you have to explain your vote to the audience) -- ie, in the later stages when you want to keep poor performers strong black contestants were not voted off, and in the early stage you want to get rid of people performing poorly weak black contestants were not voted off. However, for old people and latino contestants, other contestants had no problem displaying a bias, even if it wasn't based on reality (people voted off strong performing old people/latinos in early stages, and kept them around in the end, even when they were getting a lot of questions right -- no matter what the facts were, they were perceived as being weak).
The theory is that the civil rights campaign has been successful to the degree that at least people realize that it's not socially acceptable to be racist (and, to a degree, people think that if they're trying to say that they're open minded, even if they don't really understand race, they'll chose a public display of not being a racist as a way to tell the world something about themselves).
This study was meant to explain why black candidates tend to poll higher than eventual vote tallies. Freakonomics argues that you'll tell another human being (the person who calls you from the polling firm) one thing because that's an observed event, but, in the privacy of the polling booth, you'll do another -- and that may be, for some, that you are free to show your racism, but also, for many people, they don't get the social "credit" for the vote if nobody really knows how they're voting, and they weigh other factors.
You can see how this plays out in the caucus situation too. In a caucus all your neighbors see how you vote, so that "observed event" element remains, which wasn't the case in NH.
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