« In which I am now working for the Brits | Main | Economics of the World Cup »
The Apprentice and Group Identity
The final two candidates in Donald Trump's The Apprentice lead two teams through a task. Every year Donald asks the respective team members who should win. If the members answered objectively then each team should split in about the same proportion. Yet almost invariably the members of each team tell Donald that the candidate that led them in the last task is the best.
This is an interesting example of how easily our own identity can become tied to that of a group. We are the Red team, and the Red Team leader is the best. The Robber's Cave may be more difficult to exit than Plato's cave.
The failure of the teams to split in equal proportions also means that information fails to aggregate. The Donald learns nothing from the people who know the candidate the best, the employees.
Comments are open especially if you have other examples of the malleability of group identity and how it can distort information aggregation.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on June 6, 2006 at 07:04 AM in Science, Television | Permalink
Comments
(To what extent) would the failure persist if the contestants had a larger stake in getting the right answer?
Posted by: Dave Gottlieb at Jun 6, 2006 9:15:47 AM
And what about the self-interest of the participants? I don't think it's a secret ballot. It can't be good for your career prospects to knife your boss on national TV.
If Trump wanted actual info, he'd make it a secret ballot. Instead, Trump wants everybody to just say their boss did great, as part of some weird morality play about loyalty.
Posted by: Keith at Jun 6, 2006 9:52:44 AM
This happens all the time in recreational sports. Even in a co-ed soccer league consisting of old, slow, out-of-shape schlubs like me, agressive play and near-fights are common. "They" don't play fair, "we're" obviously much nicer/cooler/better. Sometimes the other team is short-handed and we'll give them a player (and vice versa). The same dynamic still happens.
Posted by: Derek Scruggs at Jun 6, 2006 10:19:12 AM
Not sure about the aggregation part, but for "examples of the malleability of group identity " take a look at Greg Mankiw.
Posted by: theCoach at Jun 6, 2006 10:28:44 AM
The solution, Alex, is to hire some chefs! The judges on Top Chef asked the same question in the same situation in the final episode. The ex-contestant, now sous-chefs from both teams unanimously favored the winner, Harold.
I think Keith above is right. People who want to work for Donald Trump are more likely to be yes-men and to value organizational loyalty than the average person.
Posted by: DK at Jun 6, 2006 10:37:25 AM
What information do each of the groups have about the other team's leader? If both candidates exceed the expectations of the members of both teams, but the team members have more reliable information about their own team's leader than about the other team's leader, then each team might rank their own leader higher even without any in-group biases, loyalties, or self-presentation effects. It would just be an application of regression to the mean: someone who scores above expectations on a more reliable test of some attribute ought to be ranked higher than someone who scores above expectations on a less reliable test of the same attribute. Asymmetric information doesn't prevent aggregation in a market, but on The Apprentice the binary question of which candidate should win may have been too blunt of an instrument to aggregate the information from both sides.
(This is not to deny the reality of in-group biases.)
Posted by: Blar at Jun 6, 2006 12:04:12 PM
Interestingly this appears to occur even when the final round employees had previously worked with the opposing team leader during previous tasks.
The real lesson for people who watch the show is that most of the competitors are idiots. I hold to the Misesian definition of "rational" and so I am very hesitant to call even foolish, counter-productive behavior "irrational" but these morons tempt me.
Posted by: Noah Yetter at Jun 6, 2006 12:16:33 PM
Others have beat me to the point, which is LOYALTY (which is not entirely selfless because no one wants a reputation for disloyalty).
Posted by: Half Sigma at Jun 6, 2006 12:52:58 PM
Since most everyone else has already nailed it, I thought I would bring up the question of why, on the last task, don't team leaders ever fire some of the clods in the group. I watched the first one more than the others and I think that because Kwame did not fire Omarosa, it cost him the game. I know that those tasks just require bodies to get things done, but she was at least a negative 1.5 persons. Trump values the ability to work with all kinds of people, but he rails contestants when the can't control them.
Posted by: Patinator at Jun 6, 2006 2:42:07 PM
"The malleability of group identities" makes possible modern corporate economies, which are based on people being able to take on, then later shed, emotional committments to their current employers. Americans and Japanese are particularly good at becoming devoted to arbitrary economic entities. Thus, they tend to treat well their fellow employees and not try to rip them off.
In contrast, in much of the world, the radius of trust doesn't extend much beyond the extended family or clan. (Francis Fukuyama's book "Trust" is good on these cultural differences.)
This is particularly flagrant in parts of the world where there is a high degree of cousin marriage, such as in Iraq where about half the marriages are between first or secound cousins. This practice reduces sibling rivalries and other family conflicts over inheritances (if you marry your daughter to your brother's son, then you will have grandchildren in common as your mutual heirs). Cousin marriage leads to higher degrees of nepotism -- e.g., your nephew is also your son-in-law, so you are doubly motivated to give him a sinecure even if he is incompetent -- which means that trans-family organizations like large corporations and governments are less meritocratic and thus less effective.
For more on the important implications of cousin marriage, see my article:
http://www.isteve.com/cousin_marriage_conundrum.htm
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 6, 2006 5:05:48 PM
This is all about maximizing their own benifits.
I think the contestants are just signaling to potential employers and venture finaciers that they are loyal to those above them and good team players.
They are signaling to potential sex partners that they are not bad people and are worthy of some loving.
It would be different if this was a secret ballot.
Perhaps the larger body of fired contestant should be polled in a simple secret ballot. That would be inetesting. They could ask 1) Wwho do you like better, 2) who do you want to win, 3) who do you think will win.
Posted by: purpleslog at Jun 6, 2006 7:24:05 PM
The opinions of members of the final teams ought be ignored as outliers. For one, they were selected by the project manager, and thus are precisely those team members most likely to have personal loyalties that manager. More importantly, the final decision is based largely on the performance in the final task. The final team members were participants in the final task. Thus, they are likely to view Trump's selection as a reflection on their own performance. The PM is serving as their proxy.
If you want more unbiased assessments of the two final candidates, you ought naturally turn to the other 8 candidates who lived and worked with them, but were not selected for the final team, and thus have no axe to grind.
Of course, I don't think Trump is actually all that interested in data aggregation. After making a very big push in the build-up to this most recent finale about how it would be the first to solicit polling input from the viewing audience, they concluded the show without ever disclosing what the final tallies were.
Posted by: R.J. Lehmann at Jun 6, 2006 9:23:50 PM
smeris strippen in bed ^^^ mooi leerling ^^^ cowgirl azione sulle scale ^^^ pauroso cowgirl ^^^ milieu grosse bite ^^^ photo ebene ^^^ filles enorme ^^^ le plus froid filles image ^^^ risibile giovane prostituta ^^^ pallido amatoriali orale fotti ^^^ overnaturlig sjukskoterska dubbel fitta samlag ^^^ asiatisk varandra pa kontoret ^^^ sentimento asiatiche ubriache ^^^ bellezza ragazze inculate ^^^ erotisme culotte salie ^^^ bukkake arsexr ^^^ kalu pornofilmi ideepth ^^^ imu pilluja siitin ^^^ hetere kjekk kysk ^^^ varmere fremragende mams ^^^ vidunderlig mye ^^^ nylon himmel ^^^ haritomeni astinomikos praxi ^^^ drosero koritsi avnanismos ^^^ chaude fils roue ^^^ salope trente quatre ^^^ tolmiros tetraplo ^^^ tolmiros praxi ^^^
Posted by: levan at Sep 8, 2006 5:37:07 AM
Bvlgari Jewelry
Replica Bvlgari Jewelry
Bvlgari Replica Jewelry
Gucci Jewelry
Posted by: aion kina at Mar 20, 2009 4:58:23 AM
