Friday, December 25, 2015

All That Experiments Is Not Science...

All that glitters is not gold.  Not all who wander are lost.  And some people who do experiments are not scientists, but just hacks pursuing an overtly ideological agenda.


Invisibility Cloaks and Knapsacks: How the Advantaged Work to Conceal Privilege 

Taylor Phillips & Brian Lowery 
Stanford Working Paper, January 2016 

Abstract: We suggest the experience of unfair advantage pits two critical motives: the merit motive and the maintenance motive. Together, these motives lead people to mobilize their advantage in order to secure desired outcomes, but to conceal these advantages under the cloak of merit as they do so. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we find that when their advantages are exposed, the wealthy (but not the non-wealthy) claim increased effort at work. In Experiment 2, we show that the social elite claim their social advantages (family connections) were the result of effort, but suggest others’ social advantages were not. In Experiment 3, we find that the wealthy not only claim, but commit greater effort when their class advantages are exposed. Finally, in Experiment 4, we show that the educational elite claim that advantage resources are not useful, but then continue to take these resources and use them to their benefit anyway. 

Lest you think this is an isolated incident, there's more.  A remarkable piece of work.

2 comments:

Tom said...

Nobody but Government would pay for such a "study". "The Thing itself"!

gcallah said...

I am so behind the times: I thought it was December 2015!