Bias is obvious when it comes to something like sports. The referees normally seem to be giving your team a bad shake. Gather a group of friends together and let the referees have it. Just to illustrate a point, I bet you can't easily remember the last time your favorite team got a huge break from a referee, but I wager that you can rattle off a book or two about the times your team got shafted.
Why is this? Clearly, we have a tough time thinking clearly when we enter a situation with a bias. As a budding economist, it's my duty to try and ignore such bias.
It seems obvious to me that a bias for your favorite sports team is similar to patriotism and even racism.
There is no obvious reason why you like your favorite team, I'm guessing. Mine, the Atlanta Hawks, has been terrible for years, and generally a disappointment to me. What makes them MY team however, is not success, but familiarity.
For this same reason, we love our country, even if it has been unsuccesful or implemented policies that are against our beliefs. I've been friends with countless internationals, and it seems that each person feels that their home country is the best country in the world. American's are quick to blaim terrorism on jealousy, which is incredible naievety, considering that other developed countries are targeted much less frequently.
Racism is a similar problem. Millions laughed at the black man who had become a white supremacist on the Chapelle Show, becuase of how rare an event this would be. We tend to dislike people that are different (unfamiliar).
In many, if not all, countries of the world, you are chastised for not "loving your country." In some countries, speaking poorly of the government is enough to get you executed. I am often lambasted for choosing not to vote in elections. I've asked many why I should feel the need to vote. Typical responses are: "Millions have died for your right to vote." "If you love your country, you will vote." etc. Responses such as "I don't feel like it" or "I'm busy" seem to infuriate most Americans. However, if I choose to evade taxes, others chuckle. People like to rally around something in order to gain emotional satisfaction. This is the same for a country, a sports team, or a race.
Patriotism leads to war and a general quagmire of misunderstanding and hate. I would love to say that these problems should be adressed, but feel that evolutionarily, it is a pack behavior phenomenon. Maybe we will always be (on average), racist, patriotic, and homers.
You might enjoy a book called Orientalism by Edward Said (Pronounced Sigh-yeed). It's a book on the idea of nationalism and it's effects on culture and specifically american nationalism and it's view towards the east. He presents an idea that nationalism and the nation state derived in order to create the concept of the "other". That people outside our boundries are somehow fundamentally different just because they lie outside our boundries. It's not a scientific book or a book on economics but you still might enjoy it. Not to say that it has to be for you to enjoy it...
ReplyDeleteyou know... that book you haven't read.
ReplyDelete1) I have a copy of Said's book you can borrow, and
ReplyDelete2) Hear, hear! on the choice to abstain from voting. I'm right there with you, man, but not for reasons of inclusion. :)