by Robin Hanson
We also show surprisingly little interest in the accuracy of our news sources. While prices in financial and betting markets can plausibly give very timely, accurate, and unbiased information, we continue to let legal obstacles hinder such information on most topics outside of business.36 One of us (Robin) was told by a reliable source a few years ago that a major media firm based in Washington, D.C., had several people working for several months on a project to score prominent pundits on the accuracy of their predictions. The project was canceled, however, soon after results came back showing how depressingly inaccurate most pundits actually are. If consumers truly cared about pundit accuracy, there might well be more “exposés” like this—the better for us to find and pay attention to those rare pundits whose predictions tend to come true. Instead, we seem content with just the veneer of confidence and expertise, as long as our pundits are engaging, articulate, connected to us, and have respected pedigrees.
These patterns in behavior may be puzzling when we think of news as a source of useful information. But they make sense if we treat news as a larger “conversation” that extends our small-scale conversation habits. Just as one must talk on the current topic in face-to-face conversation, our larger news conversation also maintains a few “hot” topics—a focus so strong and so narrow that policy wonks say that there’s little point in releasing policy reports on topics not in the news in the last two weeks. (This is the criterion of relevance we saw earlier.) And for our part, as consumers of news, we compete to learn information on these hot topics before others, so we aren’t confused in conversation and so our talk can seem more impressive. We also prefer news written by and about prestigious people, as it helps us to affiliate with them.
Meanwhile, the slow decline of professional journalism has been more than offset by the army of amateurs rising to the occasion (in quantity, if not in quality). Think of all the time people spend writing blogs and sharing links on Twitter and Facebook. Few are getting paid financially for their efforts, but they’re getting compensated all the same.
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
“It still seems remarkable to me how often people bypass what are more important subjects to work on less important ones.”—Robert Trivers37
Researchers at universities, think tanks, and corporate labs are not shy about explaining why their work deserves funding: Research increases the world’s insight and understanding on important topics, leading to more innovation and economic growth. And it’s true that research does often help the world in these ways. But such benefits are probably overstated,38 and we have reasons to doubt whether these are in fact the main motivations that drive academia.
Like news and personal conversations, academic “conversations” are full of people showing off to impress others.39 Even if they sometimes claim otherwise, researchers seem overwhelmingly motivated to win academic prestige. They do this by working with prestigious mentors, getting degrees from prestigious institutions, publishing articles in prestigious journals, getting proposals funded by prestigious sponsors, and then using all of these to get and keep jobs with prestigious institutions. As Miller points out, “Scientists compete for the chance to give talks at conferences, not for the chance to listen.”40
But that’s all on the supply side, to explain why academics are motivated to produce research. What of the demand for research? Here we also see a preference for prestige, rather than a strict focus on the underlying value of the research. To most sponsors and consumers of research, the “text” of the research (what it says about reality and how important and useful that information is) seems to matter less than the “subtext” (what the research says about the prestige of the researcher, and how some of that glory might reflect back on the sponsor or consumer).
College students, for example, are willing to pay more to attend schools where the professors are famous for their research (and as alumni they donate more money to such schools), even though few students actually read or engage with their professors’ work. (Even fewer students study the quality of research at colleges when deciding where to go.) And of course the prestige of a professor has little to do with teaching ability.
Meanwhile, other academics consume research by reading it and citing it in their own work. And, like news and ordinary conversation, these research “conversations” tend to cluster around a few currently hot (relevant) topics. Perversely, however, the reliability of research decreases with the popularity of a field.41 Not only can these topic fashions last for decades, but research that’s done outside these clusters is often neglected (though there’s little to suggest it’s less valuable). In fact, there’s likely more insight to be gleaned where others aren’t looking—it just won’t seem as relevant to the current conversation.42 And thus, on average, researchers who are “out in the weeds” can expect fewer citations (even if a small number of them will make big, juicy discoveries).
Consider also how research sponsors might better achieve research insight at a lower cost by offering prizes for pre-specified accomplishments, like the X Prize or the DARPA Grand Challenge,43 instead of the usual up-front grants.44 One problem with prizes, from a sponsor’s point of view, is that sponsoring prizes leaves the sponsor less room for discretion; they must give money to the winners, no matter who they are. So there’s less opportunity for sponsors and researchers to develop a relationship with one another (like art patrons and artists do), so that donors can earn prestige by association.
Finally, consider the academic referees who evaluate research for publication and funding. Referees are perhaps the most important gatekeepers to academic prestige, so we might hope they’re rewarding only the most deserving papers and proposals, those whose “text” is most valuable. Unfortunately, here too we see the biases characteristic of a political species. Referees seem to care more about prestige indicators of the work they accept, and how it will reflect on them and their organization, than about the work’s substance and social value.
To start with, referees largely can’t agree on which research is good enough to accept; their judgments are highly idiosyncratic.45 But to the extent that they do agree on what’s “good,” much of it comes from a tendency to recognize and favor already prestigious insiders. (These insiders can be recognized by name or, in the case of a blind peer review process, by sleuthing and educated guesswork.) For example, when articles previously published in a journal were resubmitted soon afterward with new obscure names and institutions, only 10 percent of them were noticed as having been published before, and of the remaining 90 percent, only 10 percent were accepted under the new names.46
Of course, the peer review process does sometimes reward the work of new and/or outside researchers. But in the long experience of one of us (Robin), the judgments of referees in these cases typically focus on whether a submission makes the author seem impressive. That is, referees pay great attention to spit and polish—whether a paper covers every possible ambiguity and detail. They show a distinct preference for papers that demonstrate a command for difficult methods. And referees almost never discuss a work’s long-term potential for substantial social benefit.
Many possible reforms, such as a review process that’s blind to a paper’s conclusions, could help journals to increase the accuracy of their publications.47 But such reforms would limit journals’ ability to select papers more likely to bring prestige, so we see surprisingly little interest in them.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE BOOK
In case it’s not clear by now, this chapter helps explain Kevin and Robin’s “hidden” motives for writing and publishing this book. To put it baldly, we want to impress you; we’re seeking prestige. We hope the many things we’ve said so far testify to the size and quality of our “backpacks.”
As an academic, Robin will be judged by the number and influence of his publications, and we hope this book will serve as a nice line item on his resume. Meanwhile, as an academic outsider, Kevin has undertaken this book largely as a vanity project. It’s unlikel
y to help him much in his engineering career, and he could probably have more impact by building software—but he’s always wanted his name on the cover of a book. Of course, this project has also been fun, an excuse to read and discuss many fascinating topics. And we hope readers will enjoy and perhaps profit from the fruits of our labor. But there’s no way we would have done all this work without the hope of garnishing our reputations.48
No doubt we’ve made many trade-offs in service of this motive and at the expense of more prosocial motives like delivering maximum value to our readers. Perhaps the book is too long, for example; speakers do like to speak, after all. Certainly we could have used simpler language in many places, making the book easier to digest, though at the risk of appearing less scholarly. And of course, we could have released this as a free (or cheap) self-published e-book, but we wanted the prestige of a printed book from a respected publisher. We hope you’ll forgive us these trespasses, as we have tried hard not to moralize (too much) about the selfish motives of others.
10
Consumption
In 1930, in an essay titled, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” the economist John Maynard Keynes made a famous prediction. Observing the breakneck pace of innovation and economic growth during the 19th and early 20th centuries, Keynes reasoned that within the next hundred years, the economy would produce so much stuff, so cheaply and easily, that all our material needs would be satisfied. Workers in the 21st century, then, would be clocking in at less than 15 hours per week, free to dedicate the rest of their time to art, play, friends, and family—in other words, the good life.1
The year 2030 is fast approaching, but clearly we are not on track to meet Keynes’s prediction of a leisure society. In fact, many of us today work nearly as many hours as our great-great-grandparents did a hundred years ago.2 And yet, as many observers have pointed out, even some of the poorest among us live better than kings and queens of yore.
So why do we continue working so hard?
One of the big answers, as most people realize, is that we’re stuck in a rat race. Or to put it in the terms we’ve been using throughout the book, we’re locked in a game of competitive signaling. No matter how fast the economy grows, there remains a limited supply of sex and social status—and earning and spending money is still a good way to compete for it.3
The idea that we use purchases to flaunt our wealth is known as conspicuous consumption. It’s an accusation that we buy things not so much for purely personal enjoyment as for showing off or “keeping up with the Joneses.” This dynamic has been understood since at least 1899, when Thorstein Veblen published his landmark book The Theory of the Leisure Class.4 It remains, however, an underappreciated idea, and explains a lot more of our consumer behavior than most people realize.
When you think about people two or three rungs above you on the social ladder, especially the nouveau riche, it’s easy to question the utility of their ostentatious purchases. Does anyone really need a 10,000-square-foot house, a $30,000 Patek Philippe watch, or a $500,000 Porsche Carrera GT? Of course not, but the same logic applies to much of your own “luxurious” lifestyle—it’s just harder for you to see.5
Consider taking the perspective of a mother of six from the slums of Kolkata. To her, your spending habits are just as flashy and grotesque as those of a Saudi prince are to you. Do you really need to spend $20(!!) at Olive Garden to have a team of chefs, servers, bussers, and dishwashers cater to your every whim? Twenty dollars may be more than the family in Kolkata spends on food in an entire week. Of course, it doesn’t feel, to you, like conspicuous consumption. But when a friend invites you out to dinner, it’s nice being able to say yes. (If you had to decline because you couldn’t afford to eat out, you might feel a twinge of shame.) And at the end of the meal, when you leave two uneaten breadsticks on the table, it doesn’t feel at all like conspicuous waste. You’re just thinking, “Why bother?” In fact, you might feel silly asking the waiter to pack them up for you, those two measly pieces of bread.
One way or another, we’re all conspicuous consumers. But it’s a lot more than wealth and class that we’re trying to show off with our purchases.
BEYOND WEALTH
Consider why people buy environmentally friendly “green” products. Electric cars typically cost more than gas-powered ones. Disposable forks made from potatoes cost more than those made from plastic, and often bend and break more easily.
Conventional wisdom holds that consumers buy green goods—rather than non-green substitutes that are cheaper, more functional, or more luxurious—in order to “help the environment.” But of course we should be skeptical that such purely altruistic motives are the whole story.
In 2010, a team of psychologists led by Vladas Griskevicius undertook some experiments to tease out some of these ulterior motives.6 The researchers gave subjects a choice between two equivalently priced goods, one of them luxurious but non-green, the other green but less luxurious. For example, they gave subjects a choice between two car models, both $30,000 versions of the Honda Accord. The non-green model was a top-of-the-line car with a sporty V-six engine replete with leather seats, GPS navigation system, and all the luxury trimmings. The green model had none of the nice extras, but featured a more eco-friendly hybrid engine. Subjects were also given a choice between two household cleaners (high-powered vs. biodegradable) and two dishwashers (high-end vs. water-saving).
Subjects in the control group, who were simply asked which product they’d rather buy, expressed a distinct preference for the luxurious (non-green) product. But subjects in the experimental group were asked for their choice only after being primed with a status-seeking motive.7 As a result, experimental subjects expressed significantly more interest in the green version of each product.
In another experiment, Griskevicius and his team asked subjects to consider buying green or non-green products in two different shopping scenarios. One group was asked to imagine making the purchase online, in the privacy of their homes, while another group was asked to imagine making the purchase in public, out at a store. What they found is that, when subjects are primed with a status motive, they show a stronger preference for green products when shopping in public, and a weaker preference for green products when shopping online. Clearly their motive isn’t just to help the environment, but also to be seen as being helpful.8
Savvy marketers at Toyota, maker of the popular Prius brand of hybrid cars, no doubt had this in mind when they designed the Prius’s distinctive body. For the U.S. market, they chose to produce a hatchback instead of a sedan, even though sedans are vastly more popular.9 Why change two things at once, both the engine and the body? A likely reason is that a distinctive body makes the car more conspicuous.10 Whether out on the road or parked in a driveway, a Prius is unmistakable. If the Prius looked just like a Camry, fewer people would notice it.
Discussions of conspicuous consumption often focus on how we use products to signal wealth and social status. But the expressive range is actually much wider. Hybrid owners, for example, probably aren’t trying to advertise their wealth per se. A Prius doesn’t cost much more than a standard combustion car, and doesn’t have the high-end cachet of a BMW or Lexus. Instead, what Prius owners are signaling is their prosocial attitude, that is, their good-neighborliness and responsible citizenship. They’re saying, “I’m willing to forego luxury in order to help the planet.” It’s an act of conspicuous altruism, which we’ll see much more of in Chapter 11, on charitable behavior.
Other desirable traits that consumers are keen to signal include the following:
•Loyalty to particular subcultures. A Boston Bruins cap says, “I support my local hockey team, and by extension, the entire community of other fans and supporters.” An AC/DC T-shirt says, “I’m aligned with fans of hard rock (and the countercultural values it stands for).” These products function as badges of social membership.
•Being cool, trendy, or otherwise “in the know.” Sporting th
e latest fashions or owning the hottest new tech gadgets shows that you’re plugged into the zeitgeist—that you know what’s going to be popular before everyone else does.
•Intelligence. A Rubik’s Cube isn’t just a cheap plastic toy; it’s often an advertisement that its owner knows how to solve it, a skill that requires an analytical mind, not to mention a lot of practice.
These, again, are just a few of the many traits our purchases can signal.11 Others include athleticism, ambition, health-consciousness, conformity (or authenticity), youth (or maturity), sexual openness (or modesty), and even political attitudes. Blue jeans, for example, are a symbol of egalitarian values, in part because denim is a cheap, durable, low-maintenance fabric that make wealth and class distinctions harder to detect.12
And it’s not just the products themselves that signal our good traits, but also the stories we tell about how or why we acquired them. Depending on what kind of story we tell, the same product can send different messages about its owner. Consider three people buying the same pair of running shoes. Alice might explain that she bought them because they got excellent reviews from Runner’s World magazine, signaling her conscientiousness as well as her concern for athletic performance. Bob might explain that they were manufactured without child labor, showing his concern for the welfare of others. Carol, meanwhile, might brag about how she got them at a discount, demonstrating her thrift and nose for finding a good deal.
