Underdog Fever Is Far
We inherited from our forager ancestors a strong social norm of coordinating to resist dominance. But we follow this norm more in far mode than in near. Other folks far away, they should indignantly rebel and overthrow their oppressors, but we here must be careful and not oversimplify things. For example, voters in other districts should throw out their corrupt politicians, but thankfully we can trust our politicians.
Also, when have little personally at stake, we support underdogs in sports, politics, and business. We overestimate their chances, and think them relatively hard-working, likable, virtuous, and beautiful. A sports team who is likely to win but gets paid less, however, is the underdog – dominance is more about overall gains than wins. But if we think a contest is close or important, such as if a business is close to home or if lives are on the line, we prefer overdogs. Details:
Two teams, A and B, were meeting in a best-of-seven playoff series for some unidentified sport, and Team A was “highly favored” to win. Which team would the students root for? Eighty-one percent chose the underdog. Then the students were asked to imagine that Team B had somehow managed to win the first three games of the series. … Half of those who first picked the underdog now said they’d support Team A. …
[Researchers] invited students to read a fake newspaper article about an upcoming rugby match. According to the article, odds makers had given one of the teams just a 30 percent chance of victory. When asked to make their own predictions, the students were more optimistic. Instead of pegging the underdog’s odds at 30 percent, they guessed it was more like 41 percent. If the article specifically referred to the disadvantaged team as an “underdog,” the effect was even stronger, with the students pegging the chance of victory at 44 percent. .. Replacing the rugby teams with mayoral candidates and then a pair of businesses competing for a contract, … the results were the same. …
Our love for the little guy is as much a judgment of character as an emotional investment. … Two-thirds of all voters in the 2004 presidential election described their preferred candidate as the “underdog.” … Presidential candidates were deemed more likable after being characterized as an “underdog”. … Being cast as the underdog can make your actions seem more virtuous and your face appear more beautiful. …
One side was described as the 9-to-1 favorite, having won each of 15 previous playoff matches. After viewing footage … the underdogs were characterized as having less “talent” and “intelligence” than the favorites but more “hustle” and “heart.” That was true even when subjects viewed the same video clip with the labels reversed. … In fact, recent data suggest that the underdogs might be dogging it. …
Two teams, A and B, are about to play an important match, for which Team A was the odds-on (7-to-3) favorite. … The students were to imagine that the players on Team A had lower salaries than the ones on Team B—their payrolls were $35 million and $100 million, respectively. … Two-thirds supported the favorite, Team A. … This was evidence that inequity aversion drives the underdog effect, “above and beyond” emotional self interest. …
A pair of companies were vying for a contract to test the drinking water in far-off Boise, Idaho. One was a large, well-established firm founded 30 years ago; the other was an eager startup. … People were inclined toward the underdog. But … if the subjects were told that the water in question might contain “cancer-causing mercury,” the underdog effect disappeared. And if the site of the water testing was changed from “Boise, Idaho” to somewhere in their own community, … subjects started rooting against the underdog.
Our affinity for the lesser team “is a mile wide and an inch deep. … We may feel morally good about rooting for the underdog, but our positive reaction is quite malleable.” … Perhaps that’s why the underdog seems most at home in the trivial world of team sports. With nothing much at stake, we’re free to indulge an idle preference for an upset. “At an unconscious level, we know we don’t take underdogs all that seriously.”
Funny, you sound like you’d enjoy the taste of another guy firing off his big red personal signal flare.
Nothing like a good old gay joke to show me the right of your intellectual might. When you come out of the closet we'll all be here for you.
No more white interest in black culture after 1991 or so, unlike with all-black sitcoms and movies before then.
Except of course that it was the nineties that saw the rise of the greatest era of white interest in black culture including the wholesale adoption of black cultural memes like the mainstreaming of rap music, black family sitcoms (blaxploitation and Sanford and son are hardly bulwarks of racial harmony) like Cosby and Family Matters, far greater racial representation in mainstream media, etc.
Sure the early nineties had some bad GenX wangst but I'm hardly holding the nineties up as any kind of enlightenment but it was better than the 80s. The 60s and 70s were better than the 80s and 90s and I stopped watching television and keeping up with music in the 00s so I can't say.
However 80s music was crap (hair band anyone and cloying pop anyone?), John Hughes was the worst purveyor of cutesy cloying gag-me-with-a-spoon pop cinema that ever disgraced celluloid and the mindless action movies were a disease that still haunts the screen.
Straights were not into gay culture at all in the 80s. 70s, on the coasts, I'll give you. But the 90s and 00s have seen a great deal more acceptance of gays. Freddy Mercury is a bad example because his on stage persona was not a gay one (remember that infamous line "bring on the girls!" ?) and his homosexuality was not a subject of wide discussion until the end of his life. I'll give you that there is a great deal of gay minstrel going on in pop culture today from what i can see but, again, I'm not saying we are better off now than the 80s, just that the 80s themselves sucked and reading your blog posts one would think that the 80s were the golden age of human culture where gods walked with men.
I don't know. What you say sounds plausible, yes, probably the stupid put their money on first, and the smart put their money on closer to the event, so the smart ruthlessly prey on the stupid, ain't that always the way of things ;)