66. Show and Yell

Is booing an act of verbal vandalism or the last true expression of democracy? And: when you drive a Prius, are you guilty of “conspicuous conservation”?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 0:44Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:29Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:56Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:36Speaker 01

  The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, when he was leader of the opposition, is trying to get elected. He wanted to convince people that he was a soft, caring guy, and he installed a little windmill on his house.

• 2:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Tim Harford. He's an economist and author who lives in Oxford, England.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Now, it turns out wind power can be pretty effective, but you need a really, really big windmill in a really windy location to be efficient. These little windmills, especially in an urban environment where you don't get a consistent flow of wind, they generate an incredibly small amount of energy, really, really ineffective. Indeed, there's a fantastic example from the British physicist David Mackay, who points to building top windmills in Japan that actually have little electric motors in them to keep them spinning around, because otherwise they would look really stupid on top of the building and not actually moving. So these windmills actually, actually cost energy.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  From APM, American Public Media and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio. Today, why owning a Prius could mean you care more about your image than the environment. And is booing verbal vandalism or the last true expression of democracy? Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 4:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  You will note that David Cameron did get elected Prime Minister of the UK. And whether his little windmill had anything to do with it? Tough to say. But while it may not always be easy being green, these days, it's certainly attractive. Rooftop windmills, those "I am not a plastic bag", reusable shopping bags, and a certain make of automobile.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Hey there, Richard. Oh, hey Gerald. New car? Yeah, it's a hybrid. I just, I just couldn't sit back and be a part of destroying the earth anymore. Well, good for you. Oh, thanks.

• 4:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's from the TV show "South Park", poking fun at how some people get a little bit sanctimonious when they start driving a hybrid car. In this episode, the car is called a pious, a little bit like a Prius, maybe? The message is clear. Helping the planet is nice, but being seen helping the planet is really nice. Now, this might not sound like something that economists study, but there's this idea that they call signaling theory. Here's Robin Hanson of George Mason University.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  Signaling theory is another way of talking about showing off or trying to present your best face. It's all about what we do to look good, or at least not to look bad. So just more generally, signaling is about managing your image. It's about keeping in mind that other people will be watching you and interpreting you. So it's not so much about showing off your ability to be smart, or to be well-dressed, or athletic. It could be about showing your concern, showing your loyalty, showing your attention.

• 5:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  No offense to you or your fellow economists, but why are you guys looking at this? This seems to-- don't you have other, more economics-themed problems to be solving? Why have you guys gotten involved in this and maybe even good at figuring out signaling?

• 6:09Speaker 04

  There's a big world of interesting things to look at, and managing our appearance is actually a lot of what we humans do. Trying to understand business, trying to understand jobs, school, even medicine. If you don't realize that people are trying to manage their image, you miss out on a lot of what's going on.

• 6:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so here's our question for today. For people who lean green, how much value do they place on being seen leaning green?

• 6:43Speaker 05

  My name is Steve Sexton. I am a PhD student at UC Berkeley studying agricultural and resource economics.

• 6:50Speaker 06

  I'm Allison Sexton. I'm a PhD student at the University of Minnesota studying health and information economics.

• 6:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so I'm a little suspicious. Share a last name you've related to each other, perhaps?

• 7:03Speaker 05

  We are. We also shared a womb.

• 7:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's right. Allison and Steve Sexton are twins, and they're both budding economists. And guess what their parents do?

• 7:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yep, economists.

• 7:20Speaker 05

  Oh, it was very exciting, as you might imagine. All of our friends couldn't wait to come over for dinner with us.

• 7:27Speaker 06

  We like to joke that we have a family plan to become a one-family consulting firm, kind of like the Partridge Family for economics.

• 7:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Allison Sexton worked briefly for the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. Steve Sexton has a somewhat less sedentary hobby.

• 7:43Speaker 05

  Yes, in addition to trying to finish up my PhD here at Berkeley, I'm also training for the London Olympics as a triathlete.

• 7:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  How good are you? Like, when you say "training for the Olympics," that means there's reasonable expectation that you might actually be there?

• 7:54Speaker 05

  Yes, I was-- I ended 2010 as the third American in the Olympic points rankings, and we get to take three people. So that's by no means-- by no means have I made it yet, but I certainly have a shot at it.

• 8:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  As economists, the Sextons know all about signaling theory, particularly the behavior known as conspicuous consumption. Thorsten Veblen coined that phrase more than 100 years ago. More and more Americans were growing rich, and it became important to show off that wealth. Today, there's still plenty of conspicuous consumption, but the Sextons noted a trend that updates the old model. That is, not showing off your flashy car or flashy jewelry, but showing off your environmental bona fides by, say, driving a car that's plainly a hybrid.

• 8:41Speaker 05

  Psychologists have defined competitive altruism as sort of a keeping up with the Joneses type concept, but applied to pro-social behavior or efforts to make society better. So I will be competing with my neighbors to donate to a charity, for instance, or to reduce energy conservation or environmental impacts.

• 9:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Or, as the Sextons call it, conspicuous conservation.

• 9:05Speaker 05

  Right, because conspicuous consumption, they're investing in products that provide the same functionality as cheaper alternatives, but they're flashier just because they cost more or what have you. And so that can be wasteful and leave nobody better off. But in this case, with conspicuous conservation, because the costly effort that individual undertaking is providing benefits to society, this rat race could actually be a good thing.

• 9:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Talk to me for just a minute about how the idea came about. Was it as you pulled into a Whole Foods parking lot and saw that, you know, half the cars were Priuses or Prii? How did it happen?

• 9:41Speaker 06

  Well, I think that part of it did come from Steve, who lives in Berkeley, and he did notice a lot of Priuses on the road and didn't notice a whole lot of other hybrid cars, such as Honda Civics, and wondered why. There's been surveys of Prius owners asking them why they buy the Prius. And far more common, they answer that it says something about them than mention the fuel efficiency of it. So Steve was actually back visiting me last year for Easter, and we were talking about this idea of signaling your environmental concerns by driving a Prius and how we could create an economic model to test for it and see if that signal exists.

• 10:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  So the Sexton Twins were looking to measure the signal sent out by people who drive hybrid cars. By their count, there were 24 different hybrids on the market. But the Prius was a market hog, the runaway winner with a whopping 48% of the hybrid market. Why?

• 10:44Speaker 05

  The Honda Civic Hybrid looks like a regular Honda Civic. The Ford Escape Hybrid looks like a Ford Escape, except that these cars have a small badge on them that indicates their type as a hybrid. But the styling of the car is identical, whether it's a hybrid version of the model or the conventional drive version of the model.

• 11:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  But Toyota's Prius doesn't look like any other Toyota, or any other car, period.

• 11:09Speaker 05

  And so our hypothesis is that if the Prius looked like a Toyota Camry or a Toyota Corolla, that it wouldn't be as popular as it is. And so what we set out to do in this paper is to test that empirically.

• 11:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay. So how do you do that? The paper the Sextons would end up writing is called "Conspicuous Conservation: The Prius Effect and Willingness to Pay for Environmental Bonafides." The first step: pick a different hybrid car to act as a control against the Prius.

• 11:40Speaker 05

  It's comparably priced to the Honda Civic Hybrid. And so throughout, sort of thinking about this project, we've kind of used the Honda Civic Hybrid as our control for the Prius. It doesn't have that unique signal, but it's otherwise very similar. Not a perfect control, but it's very similar to the Prius, except that it doesn't have a unique design.

• 12:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay. Similar price, similar fuel efficiency, but different design. So what's the Prius's unique design worth as a signal to the outside world that you are burning less fuel than everyone else?

• 12:15Speaker 05

  So if your neighbors care about the environment, then sending that signal can be very valuable. But if your neighbors don't care about the environment, then why do you care to send a signal to them that you care about the environment? And so you can think about whether you'd rather drive a Prius in Berkeley or in Crawford, Texas, for example.

• 12:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Keep in mind that before the Sextons came up with this idea, South Park was all over it.

• 12:41Speaker 07

  Dad, we feel that your new car is changing you.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Yes, it certainly is.

• 12:46Speaker 07

  We're thinking that a lot of people in town are starting to take offense at your actions. We feel like you're starting to become alienated from some of your friends.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Well, I totally agree, Kyle.

• 12:56Speaker 07

  You do?

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Yes. A lot of people in town just aren't ready to drive hybrid cars.

• 13:00Speaker 07

  Right. Okay, good.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  And that's why I've talked it over with your mother and we've decided to move.

• 13:08Speaker 07

  What?

• 13:09Speaker 03

  We need to be where everyone is motivated and progressive like us. Start getting your things packed, boys. The Broflowski family is moving to San Francisco.

• 13:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  In other words, if you're a green-leaning person, the signal of a Prius might be more valuable if you live in a green-leaning neighborhood than if you live in a place where environmentalism isn't such a big deal.

• 13:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  The Sextons wanted to know if, A, this were true, and B, if so, just how valuable is the Prius signal? So they set out to gather some data on hybrid car sales in different places. They chose Colorado and Washington, two states with a lot of political diversity, and they got hold of vehicle registration data and voting records. The vehicle data told them what cars were being bought where, and the voting records stood as a proxy for how green each part of the state was. The idea being that greener communities vote more Democrat than Republican. When the Sextons looked at the numbers, they found that hybrids indeed sold disproportionately well

• 14:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  in the greener zip codes, in Boulder and Seattle, for instance. But was that true for all hybrids? What about the Honda Civic hybrid, the Sextons' control car?

• 14:30Speaker 06

  We did tests to see if the market share for Honda Civics also increased in greener ZIP codes. And we found no statistical effect. And in fact, in a few of the regressions, we found a negative effect.

• 14:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  But the Prius? Those green ZIP codes were crawling with Prii.

• 14:47Speaker 05

  And through our econometric model, we're able to determine what share of the Prius's market share is due to its unique styling, the Prius signal, or the conspicuous conservation effect. And then, using other studies that have determined how responsive vehicle demand is to prices, we're able to basically trace out a demand curve and estimate the willingness to pay for that single attribute of the Prius. That is, how much people are willing to pay just to signal that they are green.

• 15:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. So how big is the effect? How big is the conspicuous conservation effect, then, in these places?

• 15:23Speaker 06

  So for Colorado, we measure that it accounts for about between 21% and 33% of the market share. And in Washington, we measure that it accounts for about 10% to 17% of the market share. So this translates into a willingness to pay in Colorado for between about $1,000 and $4,000. And in Washington, a willingness to pay between $500 and $1,300.

• 15:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. This needs a bit of clarification. The market share numbers the Sextons are talking about, that's not how much of the market the Prius has. It's how much additional market share the Prius has because of its unique hybrid look. And that willingness to pay figure they're talking about, that doesn't mean people actually pay that much more for the Prius. They don't. Willingness to pay is just economist speak for how much the Prius effect is worth to people in terms of feeling good about themselves, being seen by others in a positive light, things like that. What do you know about how intentional the Prius design was in terms of setting itself

• 16:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  apart as an obvious hybrid? In other words, did Toyota understand conspicuous conservation well before you guys even ever thought to look into it?

• 16:42Speaker 05

  I think there is evidence that Toyota understood conspicuous conservation before we did. They instructed their car designers to make the Prius unique and said that they didn't care what it looked like so long as it looked different. It suggests that they did expect that they could count on this conspicuous conservation effect to drive sales.

• 17:02Speaker 08

  Well, that's right. I mean, the design is everything about Prius, right? Everybody understands that the car is both efficient and it has a unique design that stands out. Nothing else looks like it on the road.

• 17:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Doug Coleman, a Toyota marketing manager.

• 17:18Speaker 08

  You see a Prius, you know what it is. You know it stands for hybrid, and there's really no other car that stands for hybrid. So having something that's unique is really important to our buyers.

• 17:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  The Sextons, convinced that the Toyota Prius represents the height of conspicuous conservation, went looking for other examples.

• 17:45Speaker 06

  One of the more common ones that we see here in California is people putting solar panels up on their house. And in fact, there's a number of cited cases where people will put solar paneling on a shadier side of their house because it's the street side, so people will be able to see it.

• 18:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, do you think the consultant or installer says to them, "This is not going to really do as much as if you'd put it on the sunny side of your house"? Do you think those conversations happen?

• 18:13Speaker 05

  We know that they do. You know, I haven't been at those conversations, but do understand that those conversations go on, that the experts advise, "Here's how to maximize the benefit from your solar panels", and homeowners say, "Well, no, I actually want it on that side of the house."

• 18:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  In other words, the side where my neighbors will see that I have solar panels.

• 18:30Speaker 05

  Where on the street side of the house, right.

• 18:34Speaker 05

  And again, we don't judge that. That's fine. We don't take a position on that. But if that kind of an effect is occurring, then it has implications for both firms that might want to market these types of products, as well as for governments that might want to maximize the benefit from investment in those types of products.

• 18:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Could it be that people are engaging in conspicuous conservation instead of doing less visible but more pragmatic things? Like, you know, instead of putting solar panels on the shady side of my house, I could better insulate my walls and doors, which would actually be very effective, but nobody's going to see it. So is that kind of the problem that you're trying to address?

• 19:11Speaker 05

  Sure. The conventional wisdom among energy economists is that the low-hanging fruit, the easiest way to achieve energy conservation, is through those inconspicuous investments that you talked about, in boosting the insulation in the home, window ceiling treatments, energy-efficient appliances and so forth. Those are the most cost-effective ways to reduce energy consumption. But of course, none of those can be seen by one's neighbors unless they're brought into the house, but they're certainly not visible from the street side. But if you consider that there's a high concentration of Greens in the Bay Area, where it's foggy most of the summer. The sun doesn't even really come out much here in Berkeley, and in fact, that's why I try and get out of Berkeley every summer that I can. But the sun does shine on the rooftops of all the Republicans, or for lack of a better term, Browns, that live in the Central Valley.

• 19:55Speaker 05

  They get a lot of sun during the summer, but they're going to be less inclined to install the rooftop solar panels on their homes. So we might like to imagine a creative program whereby your Berkeley Green, who doesn't get very much sun in the summer, could pay to install rooftop solar on the home of a Bakersfield Brown, and therefore, again, maximize the effectiveness of those conservation dollars, or get more energy conservation, or I guess, energy production in this case, out of the solar panels. The problem with this, of course, is that then that Berkeley Green isn't able to demonstrate to their neighbor that they're making this investment in conservation.

• 20:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, then you just have to be able to buy a big billboard in your yard that says, "My solar panels are on a Republican's house in Bakersfield." And then everybody would be happy?

• 20:47Speaker 05

  So the answer is no, and actually that's an important characteristic of the Prius, is that it has this unique design, but it's not flashy. And Toyota has successfully marketed the uniqueness of it as furthering its environmental benefits, as enhancing its environmental benefits. It looks the way it does to maximize aerodynamics. So it is different from having, you know, even a, you know, you could imagine a bumper sticker for Sierra Club or something like that on your car, that would be somewhat visible. But that's just kind of screaming, hey, look at me, look at how green I am. Whereas the Prius isn't a billboard. It's just a green car.

• 21:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  What are the implications of your research then for policy? Do you want to encourage or incentivize more inconspicuous conservation, since you know that the conspicuous stuff will take care of itself?

• 21:37Speaker 06

  So, right now, the government has subsidies for a number of different types of conservation acts, some conspicuous and some inconspicuous. But our results would suggest that perhaps government policy should focus on the inconspicuous, such as window ceilings and air fans, and that perhaps we can provide privately the conspicuous conservation efforts.

• 22:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  In other words, the conspicuous stuff, like the Prius, will take care of itself. Because in a way, it offers its own reward.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  You're trying to enhance your reputation, or attain some kind of status, by undertaking these personally costly actions that benefit others. And what's interesting about these conceptions of altruism, both competitive altruism and reputational motivations for altruism, is that they're fundamentally selfish. And so they are consistent with traditional neoclassical economics. They aren't fundamentally altruism in the purest sense.

• 22:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you guys drive?

• 22:39Speaker 06

  I have, for most of my graduate school career and before, I was without vehicle. I just, this Christmas, got a hand-me-down Toyota Camry from my mom.

• 22:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hmm, not a hybrid.

• 22:52Speaker 06

  Not a hybrid. It was before hybrids.

• 22:57Speaker 05

  I drive an Audi A4.

• 22:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. I'm sorry.

• 23:01Speaker 05

  I knew I got myself in trouble there.

• 23:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're a PhD student. Did, were you selling crack for a few years between, uh? Is triathloning very profitable?

• 23:13Speaker 05

  Um, in fact, no. Um, I, I was fortunate to get a number of scholarships, um, in my undergraduate studies and, uh, my parents essentially turned over what was left of my college fund to me and I blew it on a car in my first year of grad school.

• 23:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Awesome. Uh, it's not a hybrid, correct?

• 23:29Speaker 05

  No, it is not.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  I drive a Miata.

• 23:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  A Miata?

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, a sports car.

• 23:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Robin Hanson again, our signaling economist.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  I think it's, it's easy to pick on, say, the conspicuous consumption of, of a conservationist image and say, well, these people are driving a Prius because they're trying to seem one way. But of course, all the other cars are trying to seem some other way, too.

• 23:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. What are you trying to signal to the world when you drive your Miata?

• 23:59Speaker 04

  Well, I'm fun. I'm spontaneous. I don't mind whizzing around. Maybe I'm a little aggressive sometimes. I like to get places fast. I like the wind in my hair.

• 24:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is that all true?

• 24:12Speaker 04

  I think it's, yeah, roughly true. I'm, I'm happy to admit, a lot of what I do is to manage my image.

• 24:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  You mentioned your Miata, Robin. I, I wonder what are some other, if we, if we could climb deep inside the, uh, control cement center for Robin Hanson's brain and his signaling activity, what else do we see? What's some other signaling activity that you engage in?

• 24:34Speaker 04

  Economists like to point out, there's almost no chance that your vote is gonna determine an election. So, one of the things economists like to do to show off that they're a clever economist is to not vote and to say to everybody, hey, I'm smarter than all the rest of you. See, I understand that by voting, it's not gonna make any difference anyway. And, and we do a little of that too often, say, you might not tip at a restaurant because you say, you know, I'm never coming back to this restaurant again. And so economists often do things like that. They sort of think through the strategy and they go out of their way to maybe be a little rude or a little thoughtless in, in the usual language in order to show, hey, I understand the strategy of this. And I, I gotta admit, I do that sometimes. I tip at restaurants, I, I'll tell you that, but still.

• 25:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you vote?

• 25:16Speaker 04

  Sometimes.

• 25:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Are you more likely to vote in a local election than a national election or vice versa?

• 25:22Speaker 04

  Probably more likely to vote in a national election, but that's also a common bias in a sense. In a sense, local elections matter more for your lives. You know, the local--

• 25:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, also, your vote is much more likely to influence an outcome. So why do you go the opposite, then?

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Because, like most other people, voting in a national election helps you talk about it. So when you want to sit around and talk with your friends and colleagues, you tend to talk about national politics. And so the voting is a way to help you talk about it and to brag about your insight.

• 25:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do me a favor. Don't go hating on Robin Hanson just because he votes for his sake and not out of civic duty. And don't go hating on the Sextons just because they've pointed out that you might drive a Prius for reasons that aren't 100% altruistic. Who among us is immune to vanity? Even a venerable news organization like the BBC. You remember our economist author friend, Tim Harford? He also hosts a radio show that's recorded at Bush House, one of the BBC's main buildings in London.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  And in the lobby of this office, there was an LED display screen describing how much energy was being generated by solar cells on the roof of this building.

• 26:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  So tell us, how many solar panels are up there on the roof of Bush House?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I don't know, but it can't be that many because it's a central London building. There's just not much room. It just seemed to me like a really weird place to put renewable energy source in the middle of a city, on a building in a fairly cold climate, which wasn't getting a lot of light. You stick these photovoltaic cells on, they're very expensive. What's the gain? And of course, the gain is absolutely obvious. The gain is that you can put this big tote board in your lobby, and all the visiting politicians and dignitaries of all descriptions, they all come through the lobby, and they

• 27:24Speaker 01

  all see this tote board, and they all think to themselves, wow, the BBC cares about climate change. It's good to see.

• 27:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up, a little less show, a little more yell. We leave conspicuous conservation behind and deconstruct the boo. Is it verbal vandalism? Or perhaps the last true expression of democracy?

• 27:58Speaker 09

  He had keys missing on his little keyboard thing. And he was singing Stevie Wonder. That's just something you don't do. I said, boo, man.

• 28:40Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 29:23Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 29:45Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 30:26Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 30:52Speaker 10

  From WNYC and APM, American Public Media, this is Freakonomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 31:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  I want you to introduce yourself by saying your name and what you do first.

• 31:10Speaker 11

  Sure, I'm Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania, former mayor of Philadelphia, former a lot of things.

• 31:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you know what we're here to talk about today, right?

• 31:19Speaker 11

  Absolutely.

• 31:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, now, we've all heard, or some of us have heard at least, that Philadelphia is actually the capital of sports booing, at least.

• 31:26Speaker 11

  Philadelphia fans are incredibly passionate. They're the best and most supporter fans in the world, but they will boo lack of effort. They will boo opposing players. They will boo bad calls by the umpires. And yes, they'll boo Santa Claus.

• 31:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  The Santa Claus thing actually did happen on December 15, 1968, during a Philadelphia Eagles football game. It helped cement the belief that Philadelphia is the town that boos the most, the best.

• 31:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  The worst.

• 32:00Speaker 11

  It was the last game of the year. It was right before Christmas. It was in Franklin Field, our old stadium. The Eagles had won two games that year, so the fans were just pissed off in general. And then the regular Santa Claus that they were going to use for this halftime show got sick. So they went into the stands to find guys in Santa Claus suits and see if they'd volunteer. And the only guy they found was this scrawny-looking, dirty suit guy. He was the worst-looking Santa Claus I ever saw. And they put him up on the sled, I guess they must have paid him something, and carted him around, and everyone, myself included, threw snowballs at Santa.

• 32:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  The scrawny-looking Santa who got dragged down from the stands that night was named Frank Olivo. He was a native Philadelphian. You know how you could tell? Because here's what Olivo told the Philadelphia Daily News after he got booed and pelted by snowballs. He said, quote, "I'd have done exactly the same thing if I wasn't on the field." Now, keep in mind, Philadelphia is not just any city. Ed Rendell knows that.

• 33:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, if you wanted to get philosophical here for a minute, you could say, you know, Philadelphia was the cradle of the political part of the revolution, at least, and if we didn't have a bunch of dissenters, we wouldn't have a country right now to start with.

• 33:25Speaker 11

  Sure. I mean, Thomas Paine was the very first boo bird. He did it on his pamphlets, and they were remarkably effective in launching us on a new nation.

• 33:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Good morning.

• 33:43Speaker 12

  Good morning, sir.

• 33:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm Stephen Dubner from New York.

• 33:46Speaker 12

  Thomas Paine, sir. Very nice to meet you. I hope you're being wary of the loyalists up there in New York.

• 33:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  At this time of year, the loyalists aren't much of a threat.

• 33:56Speaker 12

  Well, that's very good.

• 33:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  In fact, I met up with a Thomas Paine impersonator in Philadelphia.

• 34:02Speaker 12

  I like to write in taverns, actually.

• 34:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  So just like people write in Starbucks today, you would sit down in a tavern?

• 34:08Speaker 12

  Starbucks, I'm not familiar with that.

• 34:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, it's a coffee chain in the future.

• 34:11Speaker 12

  It's a coffee house, I see.

• 34:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  In Thomas Paine's time, there was a tradition brought over from Europe called "audience sovereignty." Audiences were expected to react, to interact, huzzas, boos, hisses.

• 34:26Speaker 12

  Well, it's just a hiss like a snake. And you get a number of people doing it. And it can, it can carry quite a weight.

• 34:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  This was nothing new, of course. Here's Richard Butch. He's a sociologist at Rider University.

• 34:44Speaker 13

  From the ancient Greeks through the Elizabethan, Shakespearean era into the 19th century, the early 19th century in the US. What we find is that in all of those areas, as well as in non-Western areas, what you find is the audiences actually were typically fairly active.

• 35:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  But today? Booing lives on in sports, in some places at least. But overall, there's been a real decline in booing. I mean, come on, tell me the truth. Don't you sometimes have the urge at the theater, maybe? Or during a meeting with your thick-headed boss?

• 35:23Speaker 14

  I'm very conflicted about booing. On the one hand, I think it's a kind of verbal vandalism. And I'm always kind of annoyed when people boo around me. On the other hand, it's kind of one of the last true expressions of democracy.

• 35:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Robert Lipsyte. He's a writer, spent a lot of his career covering sports for The New York Times, especially the racial and social and political angles of sport. Unlike most of his peers, he didn't come to this as a fan. His memoir is called An Accidental Sportswriter. He's also an opera buff.

• 36:08Speaker 14

  I saw the last few performances of Pavrotti a couple of years ago before he died. The voice was gone. And with the voice gone, it was also really hard to now forgive the fact that he was, he was of the school that was known as Park and Bark.

• 36:32Speaker 14

  These kind of hefty opera singers, you know, who would just kind of stand there.

• 36:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Not a lot of acting.

• 36:39Speaker 14

  Sing. Not a lot of acting, not a lot of moving, Stephen. They would just park and bark. And he would do that, but in these final performances, it was even beyond, you know, the bark, the bark was gone. And the parking was almost ludicrous in the final scene where he was to die. I remember in Toscana, he was to die at a firing squad. You know, he was shot, you know, 20 times. And then he kind of lowered himself very slowly. He took a knee, as we say, in football.

• 37:18Speaker 14

  And I remember, you know, thinking, this is beyond feeling sorry for our hero or being pathetic. You know, this guy should not be doing this. You know, if, you know, if there was any justice, people would boo. If I had any courage, I would get up and boo. But of course, I didn't.

• 37:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  So wait a second. So you're describing a scenario where according to the, the rules and regulations and morals of public performance, that this guy should have been booed, right? And, and you're saying he wasn't?

• 37:46Speaker 14

  He wasn't.

• 37:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you didn't? You were there? You had the opportunity?

• 37:51Speaker 14

  I confess.

• 37:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Had you bought your ticket or was it a freebie?

• 37:54Speaker 14

  No, we're very expensive subscribers.

• 38:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let me say this. I've known Bob Lipsyte for quite a while and I like him a lot. I think he's a great writer. But the fact is, he's a grump, a grouch. If he won't boo something as bad as Pavarotti's Park and Bark, well, who is willing to cut loose?

• 38:21Speaker 14

  So they come out on stage and I go, boo!

• 38:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Terry Teachout is a theater critic for The Wall Street Journal.

• 38:31Speaker 15

  It was at New York City Ballet a number of years ago, not under the present regime, when the orchestra was in a terrible state of disrepair. And they performed a very difficult score by Igor Stravinsky to a ballet by George Balanchine, and they butchered it. And I was furious. And at the end, I booed. It's the only time I've ever done it in my life. I think I was the only person in the theater who was doing it, and I doubt if anybody knew why I was doing it, to be perfectly honest with you. But I felt a lot better for having done it.

• 39:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  It should be said that Teachout was at the ballet as a civilian that night, not as a critic.

• 39:12Speaker 15

  I've never heard a single boo on Broadway, as long as I've been reviewing, which is going on nine years now.

• 39:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  How on earth can that be?

• 39:20Speaker 15

  I often wonder myself. And the conclusion I've come to, other than some vague theory about how Americans are just basically nice people, which may or may not be true, is that tickets on Broadway cost an enormous amount. And so people feel, I think, obliged to vest themselves in the performance in a way that they might not if the ticket cost half as much. If you're putting out $125 for your seat, you want your show to be good. And I think that there may be some built-in bias there that inclines you to enjoy what you see.

• 39:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. There is a phenomenon that psychologists and economists talk about, the endowment effect. When something is yours, and when you've attached value to it, you inflate the value of it, because it is yours.

• 40:06Speaker 15

  Exactly right. And when you are endowing a performance with, assuming that you're bringing a date, $300 or more a pop, not including the incidental costs of travel, of having dinner, of all the things that go into a night at the theater, you're talking about a fairly substantial investment.

• 40:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, and that makes sense. But let's entertain an alternate scenario. Let's pretend that there was a lot of booing on Broadway. Then we might say, well, it's because the tickets are so expensive. And when you pay that much, you expect that the product will be satisfactory to you, and it's not. And yet, that doesn't happen. So, so maybe it's not about the money.

• 40:43Speaker 15

  Well, I can, I can see a case for arguing that demand characteristics of the situation are shaping the way people respond on Broadway, except that people boo in opera houses in New York. And I've heard it. I've heard people absolutely tearing their hair and screaming with dislike, usually over productions. I've never heard an individual performer booed at the Met. What they boo is a production of a standard opera that is extremely eccentric in some way that is not to their liking.

• 41:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you think at root, we should have more booing?

• 41:18Speaker 15

  I would be encouraged if I heard it once in a while. I would not want the kind of of full-scale incivility that is common in Italian opera houses. I don't want to see people throwing tomatoes. And I actually suggested as a kind of thought experiment, what I called the silent boo, which would be, you would install in your lobby, a pair of Plexiglas bins into which people dropped their programs as they left, one marked cheers and the other marked jeers, so that they could register their reaction to what they had seen in an immediate invisible way, without having to boo if, if, you know, they feel, as I think many Americans feel, that booing is a fundamentally rude and uncivil thing to

• 42:01Speaker 15

  do. But obviously, if they don't like a show, they'd like to express it in some way, and that would be a visible way, and a fairly cheap one, too.

• 42:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, now, I see the merit of that idea. But on the other hand, there's nothing remotely visceral about it. I mean, isn't that kind of the point of the boo? Is it reflects the audience's visceral reaction to and investment in the performer? And that's a different kind of thing than checking a box on a kind of, you know, customer satisfaction survey, right?

• 42:31Speaker 15

  Well, there, now, bear in mind that there's a big difference between checking a box on a customer survey and storming into the lobby and flinging your program into the jeers bin in full view of a hundred other people. I think it's conceivable. And if somebody were To do it, I think that people would in fact see that as an outlet for expressing their feelings about the performance and also one that would not just be cathartic, but might well supply useful information to the producers of the show. That said, I agree with you about booing. I think there's something really natural about booing. You know, sometimes when I see a really awful show, even though I didn't spend any money to see it, I'm furious.

• 43:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you're getting paid to see it. So the dynamic is exactly the opposite, and yet it's still frustrating.

• 43:16Speaker 15

  Well, I've paid with time. I've paid with part of my life that I can never get back. I take people to shows because they always give us two press seats. And sometimes on the way out, I'll say, another two hours closer to the grave.

• 43:37Speaker 16

  I've never been booed, but I think that's a bad thing. Because I think in order to get booed, people actually have to have high expectations about you.

• 43:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Steve Levitt, my Freakonomics friend and co-author. He's an economist at the University of Chicago.

• 43:54Speaker 16

  And I don't think anyone's ever had high enough expectations about me to bother to want to boo at me. Like, you think about baseball, it's never the number nine here, the shortstop who bats 220 who gets booed. I mean, everyone knows he's terrible. It's a guy like Reggie Jackson or David Ortiz, Barry Bonds, a guy who's supposed to be good and then disappoints you, who ends up getting booed.

• 44:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  I get what Levitt's saying. If you've made the big time, if you're a professional, well, boos kind of come with the territory. If you aren't getting booed, well, you probably haven't gotten where you want to go. Nobody boos a bad clown at a kid's birthday party, do they? They don't boo amateurs, do they? We visited the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem for amateur night. Brace yourself.

• 44:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, the Jackson 5, all played amateur night here. The place can be pretty unforgiving. Among the future stars who got booed, James Brown and Luther Vandross. On amateur night, the emcee encourages the audience members to vote with their throats.

• 45:16Speaker 09

  Now, this is the only place where you get to show that you don't appreciate what you thought. So, if you don't like them, what you gonna do? And that will bring out the executioner, C.P. Lacy.

• 45:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tonight, C.P. Lacy is wearing red. Red suit, red tie, red hat. He's worked here for nearly 25 years.

• 45:40Speaker 17

  I've been here for a minute.

• 45:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  He's the executioner, the guy that performers do not want to see.

• 45:46Speaker 17

  It is my job to rid the stage of any unwanted acts. In other words, well, okay, you're singing your song.

• 46:01Speaker 17

  The band starts playing a totally different song than the one you're singing. And I come out tapping.

• 46:08Speaker 17

  And I'm telling them to get off the stage. They don't even know what's happening because so much is going on. They're still singing their song. And then they kind of get the idea and say, "I'm getting booed."

• 46:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Backstage, dancers are running through their acts. Singers are warming up. Here's Ellis Gage.

• 46:29Speaker 18

  I am 12 years old. I'll be singing "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." Now, if you need me, call me. No matter where you are, no matter how far. Don't worry, baby, just call out my name. I'll be there in a hurry. You don't have to worry. Cause baby, there ain't no mountain high enough. Ain't no valley low enough. Ain't no river wide enough.

• 47:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ellis didn't get booed, mostly because he was really, really good. But even if he weren't, he would have been spared. At the Apollo, you're not supposed to boo a kid. But this next guy, he wasn't a kid.

• 47:17Speaker 09

  More energy for Mr. Joshon Winter.

• 47:32Speaker 09

  I feel like I'm familiar.

• 47:36Speaker 09

  I don't sing gospel. I sing gospel automatically. I can't move on trying to get shit.

• 47:48Speaker 09

  I had no sympathy for gospel. No, man, give him a chance, real quick. Give him like 30 more seconds.

• 48:04Speaker 09

  He's cheating. This is cheating. Singing gospel is cheating. Nobody wants to boo it.

• 48:25Speaker 09

  God was a cowbell. God was a sand. And I'm not scared to boo, in the name of Jesus. We don't hold back. Boo! Boo! Boo! Boo! Boo!

• 48:39Speaker 09

  Even my own friends.

• 48:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, we've heard from the people who do the booing. But what do you do when you get the boo?

• 48:53Speaker 19

  The fans loved it and the media loved it. It got the fans off my back and it got the media off my back.

• 49:10Speaker 20

  Freakonomics Radio explores the hidden side of everything. Sponsoring the Freakonomics podcast could help nearly a million listeners a week discover your business. Email us at [email protected].

• 49:43Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 50:28Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 50:46Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 51:17Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 51:54Speaker 10

  From WNYC and APM, American Public Media, this is Freakonomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 52:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so let's see. You shouldn't boo kids, but it is OK to boo in the name of Jesus. Those are some of the rules of booing at the Apollo. Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, he's done a lot of thinking about the do's and don'ts of booing as well. He once wrote a newspaper column with the headline, "Rendell's Rules for Booing." I wonder if we could walk through them quickly. You maybe give me an example of each one?

• 52:27Speaker 11

  Sure.

• 52:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  You write that "good-natured booing is always allowed." Explain.

• 52:31Speaker 11

  And I'd say good-natured booing, like, say, booing a popular politician. I remember once I got re-elected as mayor with 81% of the vote, and the next night I went to a 76ers game. They made the mistake of introducing me, and I got booed. But it was good-natured. I would say probably 90% of the people in the stands voted for me, but that was good-natured booing.

• 52:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so you write booing a politician is always acceptable.

• 53:00Speaker 11

  Oh, always acceptable. Any politician who ventures out on a field.

• 53:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Why is that? Is it because they're trying to grab somebody else's glory there? Why?

• 53:08Speaker 11

  Yeah, any politician who ventures out on a field deserves to be booed. Because politics and sports don't mix. In fact, sports is, in some ways, the antithesis of politics because winning and losing is decided on the field, not who you know, not how much money you raise, or things like that. And politicians should generally stay away. I wrote another column where I said the two things the politician fears the most are, Agent Jones from the FBI is here to see you. And secondly, we'd like you to throw out the first ball on opening day.

• 53:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  You've had that experience a few times, right? You've thrown out your share of first balls and it doesn't go well, does it?

• 53:46Speaker 11

  It never goes well. I threw out the first ball at the opening of Harrisburg's new stadium. And I gave the state through me, gave half of the money, and I still got booed. And the stadium was beautiful.

• 53:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  So now, how can you possibly account for the fact that you got booed? It was in Harrisburg, right? Where $9 million of state money came their way, helped by you. What's the excuse or what's the reason that the fans deserve in your mind to even boo you there?

• 54:14Speaker 11

  Because generally politicians don't belong on a sports field. And I only make an exception when the team absolutely begs me. I go to a lot of games. I mean, I'm probably the mayor and governor who's been the biggest sports fan, maybe in the history of the Commonwealth. I go to a lot of games, but I try, I sit in the stands, but I will not be introduced. I tell the teams, and I don't want to be on camera either.

• 54:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, that doesn't seem fair, does it? Rendell gets booed at a stadium that he helped fund. But if you're a politician, you've got to learn to live with the boo. You've got to know what to do with the boo.

• 54:53Speaker 21

  I'm Steve Kleiman, and I'm a professor of sociology at UCLA.

• 54:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Kleiman once wrote a paper about booing and applause in political speeches. He analyzed more than 40 hours of material, including some presidential debates.

• 55:08Speaker 22

  Is Iran talking to Iraq about peace? You judge on the record. Are the Soviets coming out of Afghanistan? How does it look in a program he called phony, or some one of these marvelous Boston adjectives up there about Angola? Now we have a chance? Now, several Bostonians don't like it, but the rest of the country will understand. Now we have a chance?

• 55:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  That was George Bush the Elder in a Michael Dukakis debate in 1988. We don't actually hear Dukakis there. Talk to me about this one now.

• 55:40Speaker 21

  Yes, I thought it was an excellent example of the way a speaker can respond to a booing response when it happens. Bush had a comeback for the booing that turned out to be quite effective. So he's talking about foreign policy and in the course of his remarks, in an embedded indirect way, he makes a derisive remark about Bostonians. And that gets people in the audience to begin to boo. He says, "Several Bostonians don't like it, but the rest of the country will understand." This is a way, a method, if you will, for dealing with booing when it occurs. And the method he's using is to marginalize the boos. That is, to characterize the people in the room who are doing the booing as not representing

• 56:25Speaker 21

  the majority, but rather a narrow, self-interested slice. So he managed to turn an episode of booing into a supportive episode of applause.

• 56:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. He turned the boos back on the boo. It was a boomerang, I guess is what that was.

• 56:39Speaker 21

  That's right.

• 56:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  In our attempt to understand the boo, we've got one more story to tell you. And if you ask me, this one is the story of the ultimate boomerang.

• 56:59Speaker 19

  My name is Johnny LaMaster. I am a sporting goods store owner at this time. Own my own business and coach a little bit of baseball. And that's basically what I do.

• 57:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Johnny LaMaster is being a little bit humble. He left out the part about playing Major League Baseball for 12 seasons, mostly for the San Francisco Giants. Now, he was hardly the best baseball player that ever lived. In fact, he was a shortstop with a career batting average of about 220, the very kind of player that Steve Levitt talked about, who usually isn't targeted for booing.

• 57:31Speaker 19

  I'm just an ordinary person, but I've lived an extraordinary life and that's all because of baseball.

• 57:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  During this long career years with the Giants, there comes a time, I believe in 1979, when the Giants fans there in San Francisco are in, I guess, a sour mood. The team is not doing as much winning as they'd like and they got particularly unhappy with you. And that led to a... Situation. Can you walk me through that?

• 58:03Speaker 19

  Sure. As you say, the team wasn't playing real well. I wasn't playing real well. And the booing started. I guess I became the whipping post per se, if you want to call it that. And it escalated and it started getting worse each game. Even when I just popped my head out of the dugout, it would be boo or something of that nature.

• 58:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what's it feel like from the athlete's perspective to be booed like that? I assume that you're trying hard, right? I think that everybody knows there's a difference between booing for when someone doesn't put out effort and when they make a mistake. There's a big difference in those two things. So...

• 58:40Speaker 19

  They could have never booed me for a lack of effort or a lack of hustle. But an athlete wants to please his home crowd more than anything in the world. And it's a crushing, it's a thing that hurts so bad when your own fans boo you. But I want my fans to be pleased with what I'm doing because they're the ones that pay my salary. They're the ones that come in and cheer us on. They're the ones that care about us the most. Because we have some diehard Giant fans. I'm still a Giant fan at heart and I always will be.

• 59:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, why was it you? Why were you the guy that they started to boo?

• 59:27Speaker 19

  People are, I don't know how to say, fickle. Once something like that gets started, it just kind of snowballs. And at that month, I guess I'd made a few errors at the wrong time and said a few things in the newspapers that I probably shouldn't have said at that time, being a young idiot kid.

• 59:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  What kind of things had you said in the newspaper, Johnny?

• 59:48Speaker 19

  Well, I'd rather probably just keep that to myself.

• 59:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Was it about baseball or was it kind of off topic?

• 59:55Speaker 19

  It was off topic. It was more about some political things that were going on in San Francisco.

• 1:00:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, that never works well, does it?

• 1:00:03Speaker 19

  No, it's a, I'm a very conservative person and that's more of the, more of the most liberal places that there is in the world and some of the things, I didn't say them to hurt anybody, but I said them to try to make people think.

• 1:00:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  This is San Francisco. This wasn't about homosexuality, maybe, was it?

• 1:00:23Speaker 19

  It was.

• 1:00:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so you're in San Francisco and you say something that could be interpreted as a conservative view on homosexuality. That's not going to go over very well.

• 1:00:32Speaker 19

  And believe me, it didn't.

• 1:00:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  The booze escalated. This went on for weeks. LaMaster was pretty unhappy about it. And finally, one night, lying in bed with his wife, she had an idea for how he ought to handle the booze.

• 1:00:50Speaker 19

  The next day, I went in and talked to our equipment manager. I said, "Make me a jersey up with my number on it and put, instead of my name, LaMaster, I said, "Put boo on the back of it." And it hung in my locker for a couple of weeks and then I finally got enough nerve to put it on and wear it in a game. But I only got to wear it for the top half of the first inning. After the game, there's a letter laying on my chair in front of my locker. My general manager fined me $500 for being out of uniform. But here's, here's the whole thing about it. The fans loved it and the media loved it. It got the fans off my back and it got the media off my back.

• 1:01:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  When you decided to wear the jersey, I guess when you decided to make the jersey,

• 1:01:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  what were you trying to say? Were you just trying to make fun of yourself? Were you trying to acknowledge that you heard the booze? Were you trying to boo the fans back? What was the kind of message, you think?

• 1:01:51Speaker 19

  I was trying to give the fans away instead of booing John LaMaster, that whenever they say they were going to boo, that they were actually cheering me because that was now my new name. But I had a good time with it, too, don't get me wrong. And, you know, here we are, still talking about it 30 years later.

• 1:02:13Speaker 19

  But here's, I guess, what brings it all back to reality. The last year I played, I was with the Okanaganese. And I'm sure you've heard of Reggie Jackson. Sure have. Reggie was on that team. It was the last year he played also. But we were up in Seattle, and I went down early for breakfast one morning, and I was there by myself. About the time I got ready to order, Reggie walked in. He says, "Anybody sitting with you?" I said, "No, Reggie. Come on, sit down, man. We'll eat breakfast together." And he came over and sat down. We chit-chatting a little bit, and he looked over at me. He said, "I hear you get booed every once in a while." I said, "Reggie, I did."

• 1:02:56Speaker 19

  And he looked at me across that table, just eyeball to eyeball. He said, "Let me tell you something." He said, "People don't boo nobodies." Now, why he told me that, I don't know, but he made me feel like a million bucks.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC, APM, American Public Media, and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Diana Nguyen and Sean Wen. Our staff includes Susie Lechtenberg, Catherine Wells, Borey Lam, Colin Campbell, and Chris Bannon. David Herman is our engineer. If you want more Freakonomics Radio, subscribe to our free podcast on iTunes and go to Freakonomics.com, where you'll find lots of radio, a blog, the books, and more.

• 1:04:19Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:04:50Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:05:23Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:06:00Speaker 23

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