SuperFreakonomics
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CHAPTER 3: UNBELIEVABLE STORIES ABOUT APATHY AND ALTRUISM
KITTY GENOVESE AND THE “38 WITNESSES”: This section, as well as the section at the end of the chapter about Kitty Genovese, benefited greatly from the time and input of Joseph De May Jr., who has created a repository of documentary evidence about the murder at www.kewgardenshistory.com. We are also indebted to many others who contributed their knowledge of the case in interviews or correspondence, including Andrew Blauner, Mike Hoffman, Jim Rasenberger, Charles Skoller, Jim Solomon, and Harold Takooshian. And we drew extensively from some of the many books and articles written about the murder, including: Martin Gansberg, “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police: Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks Inspector,” The New York Times, March 27, 1964; A.M. Rosenthal, Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case (Melville House, 2008; originally published 1964 by McGraw-Hill); Elliot Aronson, The Social Animal, 5th ed. (W.H. Freeman and Co., 1988); Joe Sexton, “Reviving Kitty Genovese Case, and Its Passions,” The New York Times, July 25, 1995; Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point (Little, Brown, 2000); Jim Rasenberger, “Nightmare on Austin Street,” American Heritage, October 2006; Charles Skoller, Twisted Confessions (Bridgeway Books, 2008); Rachel Manning, Mark Levine, and Alan Collins, “The Kitty Genovese Murder and the Social Psychology of Helping: The Parable of the 38 Witnesses,” American Psychologist 62, no. 6 (2007). / 97 Weather conditions in Queens were provided by the National Weather Service. / 99 Genovese and the Holocaust: see Maureen Dowd, “20 Years After the Murder of Kitty Genovese, the Question Remains: Why?” The New York Times, March 12, 1984. Dowd cites R. Lance Shotland, a professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University, who noted that “probably no single incident has caused social psychologists to pay as much attention to an aspect of social behavior as Kitty Genovese’s murder.” / 99 Bill Clinton’s statement about the Genovese murder comes from his remarks at the AmeriCorps Public Safety Forum in New York City, March 10,1994.
CRIME AND TELEVISION IN AMERICA: This section is primarily drawn from Steven D. Levitt and Matthew Gentzkow, “Measuring the Impact of TV’s Introduction on Crime,” working paper. See also: Matthew Gentzkow, “Television and Voter Turnout,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 121, no. 3 (August 2006); and Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, “Preschool Television Viewing and Adolescent Test Scores: Historical Evidence from the Coleman Study,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, no. 1 (February 2008). / 101 Prison overcrowding and the ACLU “experiment”: see Steven D. Levitt, “The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 11, no. 2 (May 1996).
FAMILY ALTRUISM?: See Gary Becker, “Altruism in the Family and Selfishness in the Marketplace,” Economica 48, no. 189, New Series (February 1981); and B. Douglas Bernheim, Andrei Shleifer, and Lawrence H. Summers, “The Strategic Bequest Motive,” Journal of Political Economy 93, no. 6 (December 1985).
AMERICANS ARE FAMOUSLY ALTRUISTIC: These figures are drawn from an Indiana University Center on Philanthropy study. From 1996 to 2006, overall American giving increased from $139 billion to $295 billion (inflation-adjusted), which represents an increase from 1.7% of GDP to 2.6% of GDP. See also David Leonhardt, “What Makes People Give,” The New York Times, March 9, 2008. / 107 For more on disaster donations and TV coverage, see Philip H. Brown and Jessica H. Minty, “Media Coverage and Charitable Giving After the 2004 Tsunami,” Southern Economic Journal 75, no. 1 (2008).
THE VALUE OF LAB EXPERIMENTS: Galileo’s acceleration experiment is related in Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences, trans. Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio, 1914. Richard Feynman’s point about the primacy of experimentation comes from his Lectures on Physics, ed. Matthew Linzee Sands (Addison-Wesley, 1963).
ULTIMATUM AND DICTATOR: The first paper on Ultimatum as it is commonly known is Werner Guth, Rolf Schmittberger, and Bernd Schwarze, “An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 3, no. 4 (1982). For a good background on the evolution of such games, see Steven D. Levitt and John A. List, “What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Tell Us About the Real World,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, no. 2 (2007). See also: Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, and Richard Thaler, “Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market,” American Economic Review 76, no. 4 (September 1986); Robert Forsythe, Joel L. Horowitz, N. E. Savin, and Martin Sef-ton, “Fairness in Simple Bargaining Experiments,” Games and Economic Behavior 6, no. 3 (May 1994); Colin F. Camerer, Behavioral Game Theory (Princeton University Press, 2003); and John A. List, “Dictator Game Giving Is an Experimental Artifact,” working paper, 2005.
ORGAN TRANSPLANTS: The first successful long-term kidney transplant was performed at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston by Joseph Murray in December 1954, as related in Nicholas Tilney, Transplant: From Myth to Reality (Yale University Press, 2003). / 111 “Donorcyclists”: see Stacy Dickert-Conlin, Todd Elder, and Brian Moore, “Donorcycles: Do Motorcycle Helmet Laws Reduce Organ Donations?” Michigan State University working paper, 2009. / 111 “Presumed consent” laws in Europe: see Alberto Abadie and Sebastien Gay, “The Impact of Presumed Consent Legislation on Cadaveric Organ Donation: A Cross Country Study,” Journal of Health Economics 25, no. 4 (July 2006). / 112 The Iranian kidney program is described in Ahad J. Ghods and Shekoufeh Savaj, “Iranian Model of Paid and Regulated Living-Unrelated Kidney Donation,” Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology 1 (October 2006); and Benjamin E. Hippen, “Organ Sales and Moral Travails: Lessons from the Living Kidney Vendor Program in Iran,” Cato Institute, Policy Analysis, no. 614, March 20, 2008. / 112 The exchange between Dr. Barry Jacobs and Rep. AI Gore took place in the Hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment to consider H.R. 4080, October 17, 1983.
JOHN LIST, GAME-CHANGER: This section is drawn primarily from author interviews with John A. List as well as a number of his many, many papers, several written in collaboration with Steven D. Levitt. These papers include: List, “Does Market Experience
Eliminate Market Anomalies?” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 1 (2003); Glenn Harrison and List, “Field Experiments,” Journal of Economic Literature 42 (December 2004); List, “Dictator Game Giving Is an Experimental Artifact,” working paper, 2005; List, “The Behavioralist Meets the Market: Measuring Social Preferences and Reputation Effects in Actual Transactions,” Journal of Political Economy 14, no. 1 (2006); Levitt and List, “Viewpoint: On the Generalizability of Lab Behaviour to the Field,” Canadian Journal of Economics 40, no. 2 (May 2007); Levitt and List, “What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Tell Us About the Real World,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, no. 2 (2007); List, “On the Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games,” Journal of Political Economy 115, no. 3 (2007); List and Todd L. Cherry, “Examining the Role of Fairness in High Stakes Allocation Decisions,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 65, no. 1 (2008); Levitt and List, “Homo Economicus Evolves,” Science, February 15, 2008; Levitt, List, and David Reiley, “What Happens in the Field Stays in the Field: Professionals Do Not Play Minimax in Laboratory Experiments,” Econometrica (forthcoming, 2009); Levitt and List, “Field Experiments in Economics: The Past, the Present, and the Future,” European Economic Review (forthcoming, 2009). Note that other researchers have begun questioning whether altruism seen in the lab is an artifact of the experiment itself; notably, see Nicholas Bardsley, “Experimental Economics and the Artificiality of Alteration,” Journal of Economic Methodology 12, no. 2 (2005). / 121 “Just those sophomores” and “scientific do-gooders”: see R. L. Rosenthal, Artifact in Behavioral Research (Academic Press, 1969). / 121 “Higher need for approval”: see Richard L. Doty and Colin Silverthorne, “Influence of Menstrual Cycle on Volunteering Behavior,” Nature, 1975. / 121 The boss washing her hands: see Kristen Munger and Shelby J. Harris, “Effects of an Observer
on Hand Washing in a Public Restroom,” Perceptual and Motor Skills 69 (1989). / 122 The “honesty box” experiment: see Melissa Bateson, Daniel Nettle, and Gilbert Roberts, “Cues of Being Watched Enhance Cooperation in a Real-World Setting,” Biology Letters, 2006. Along these same lines, consider another clever field experiment, this one conducted in thirty Dutch churches by a young economist named Adriaan R. Soetevent. In these churches, the collection was taken up in a closed bag that was passed along from person to person, row to row. Soetevent got the churches to let him switch things up, randomly substituting an open collection basket for the closed bags over a period of several months. He wanted to know if the added scrutiny changed the donation patterns. (An open basket lets you see how much money has already been collected as well as how much your neighbor puts in.) Indeed it did: with open baskets, the churchgoers gave more money, including fewer small-denomination coins, than with closed bags—although, interestingly, the effect petered out once the open baskets had been around for a while. See Soetevent, “Anonymity in Giving in a Natural Context—a Field Experiment in 30 Churches,” Journal of Public Economics 89 (2005). / 123 A “stupid automaton”: see A.H. Pierce, “The Subconscious Again,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, & Scientific Methods 5 (1908). / 123 “Forced cooperation”: see Martin T. Orne, “On the Social Psychological Experiment: With Particular Reference to Demand Characteristics and Their Implications,” American Psychologist 17, no. 10 (1962). / 123 “Why Nazi officers obeyed”: see Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67, no. 4 (1963). / 123 The Stanford prison experiments: see Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo, “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison,” International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1 (1973).
“IMPURE ALTRUISM”: Americans as top givers: see “International Comparisons of Charitable Giving,” Charities Aid Foundation briefing paper, November 2006. And for the correspondingly strong tax incentives, see David Roodman and Scott Standley, “Tax Policies to Promote Private Charitable Giving in DAC Countries,” Center for Global Development, working paper, January 2006. / 124 “Impure” and “warm-glow” altruism: see James Andreoni, “Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence,” Journal of Political Economy 97 (December 1989); and Andreoni, “Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving,” Economic Journal 100 (June 1990). / 124 The economics of panhandling: see Gary S. Becker, “Spouses and Beggars: Love and Sympathy,” in Accounting for Tastes (Harvard University Press, 1998). / 124 Organ transplant waiting lists: this information was gleaned from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Organ Procurement and Transplant Network website, at www.optn.org. Further material was generated by the economist Julio Jorge Elias of State University of New York, Buffalo. See also Becker and Elias, “Introducing Incentives in the Market for Live and Cadaveric Organ Donations,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, no. 3 (Summer 2007); and Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, “Flesh Trade,” The New York Times Magazine, July 9, 2006. / 124–125 No waiting list in Iran: see Benjamin E. Hippen, “Organ Sales and Moral Travails: Lessons from the Living Kidney Vendor Program in Iran,” Cato Institute, Policy Analysis, no. 614, March 20, 2008; and Stephen J. Dubner, “Human Organs for Sale, Legally, in…Which Country?” Freakonomics blog, The New York Times, April 29, 2008.
KITTY GENOVESE REVISITED: See the notes at the top of this chapter section for a list of the sources we relied upon for the reappraisal of the case. This second section drew substantially on interviews with Joseph De May Jr. and Mike Hoffman, as well as A.M. Rosenthal’s book Thirty-Eight Witnesses…. One of us (Dubner) had the opportunity to work with Rosenthal as the latter’s days at the Times expired. Even toward the end of his life (he died in 2006), Rosenthal remained a forceful journalist and an exceedingly sharp-opinioned man who didn’t suffer fools or, as some have argued, dissenting opinions. In 2004, Rosenthal participated in a symposium at Fordham University in New York to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Genovese murder. He offered a singular explanation for his obsession with the case: “Why did the Genovese incident move me so deeply? I tell you this. I had five sisters, and I was the youngest. What loving and magnificent sisters I had. But one of my sisters was murdered. Young Bess was returning home two nights before New Year’s through a path in Van Cortlandt Park, when a sexual pervert jumped out of the bushes and exposed himself to her. In shock, she escaped, and ran home one mile, sweaty in the chill weather. Within two days, Bess fell ill and died. I still miss our darling Bess, and feel Bess was murdered by this criminal who took her life away, no less than the monster who killed Kitty Genovese.”…The Genovese murder caused many pundits to dust off a famous remark uttered by Edmund Burke two centuries earlier: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” It seemed to perfectly sum up what happened that night. But Fred Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, could never find anything like this line in Burke’s writings. Which means that this famous quotation—along with, seemingly, half the quotes attributed to Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde—appears to be as apocryphal as the story of the thirty-eight witnesses.
CHAPTER 4: THE FIX IS IN—AND IT’S CHEAP AND SIMPLE
MATERNAL DEATH RATES: For recent figures, see “Maternal Mortality in 2005: Estimates Developed by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, and the World Bank,” World Health Organization, 2007. For historical rates, see Irvine Loudon, “Maternal Mortality in the Past and Its Relevance to Developing Countries Today,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 72, no. 1 (July 2000).
IGNATZ SEMMELWEIS COMES TO THE RESCUE: The story of Ignatz Semmelweis has been told variously over the years, but perhaps the most impressive telling is Sherwin B. Nuland, The Doctor’s Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignatz Semmelweis (Atlas Books, 2003). This may be because Nuland is a physician himself. We have drawn substantially from his book, and we are greatly indebted. See also: Ignatz Semmelweis, “The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever,” trans. K. Codell Carter (University of Wisconsin Press, 1983; originally published 1861). Note: Puerpera is Latin for a woman who has given birth.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: For an overview, see Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, “Unintended Consequence,” The New York Times Magazine, January 20, 2008. / 139 For the Americans with Disabilities Act, see Daron Acemoglu and Joshua D. Angrist, “Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Journal of Political Economy 109, no. 5 (2001). / 139 For the Endangered Species Act, see Dean Lueck and Jeffrey A. Michael, “Preemptive Habitat Destruction Under the Endangered Species Act,” Journal of Law and Economics 46 (April 2003); and John A. List, Michael Margolis, and Daniel E. Osgood, “Is the Endangered Species Act Endangering Species?” National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, December 2006. / 139 Avoiding the trash tax: for the “Seattle Stomp,” the Charlottesville woods-dumping, and other tactics, see Don Fullerton and Thomas C. Kinnaman, “Household Responses to Pricing Garbage by the Bag,” American Economic Review 86, no. 4 (September 1996); for German food-flushing, see Roger Boyes, “Children Beware: The Rats Are Back and Hamelin Needs a New Piper,” The Times (London), December 17, 2008; for backyard burning in Dublin, see S.M. Murphy, C. Davidson, A.M. Kennedy, P.A. Eadie, and C. Lawlor, “Backyard Burning,” Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery 61, no. 1 (February 2008). / 140 The sabbatical backlash: see Solomon Zeitlin, “Prosbol: A Study in Tannaitic Jurisprudence,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 37, no. 4 (April 1947). (Thanks to Leon Morris for the tip.)
FORCEPS HOARDING: See James Hobson Aveling, The Chamberlens and the Midwifery Forceps (J. & A. Churchill, 1882); Atul Gawande, “The Score: How Childbirth Went Industrial,” The New Yorker, October 2, 2006; and Stephen J. Dubner, “Medical Failures, and Successes Too: A Q&A with Atul Gawande,” Freakonomics blog, The New York Times, June 25, 2007.
MORE FOOD, MORE PEOPLE
: See “The World at Six Billion,” United Nations, 1999; Mark Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy, 1500–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (Harvest, 1990; originally published 1979). Information from Will Masters, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue, came from an author interview. For a stunning exhibition of Masters’s mastery at setting theories of agricultural economics to verse, see Stephen J. Dubner, “Why Are Kiwis So Cheap?” Freakonomics blog, The New York Times, June 4, 2009.
CONSIDER THE WHALE: The rise and fall of whale hunting is beautifully told in Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007). See also: Charles Melville Scammon, The Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America: Together with an Account of the American Whale-Fishery, 1874; Alexander Starbuck, History of the American Whale Fishery From Its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876, published by the author, 1878; and Paul Gilmour, “Saving the Whales, Circa 1852,” Letter to the Editor, The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2008.