Freakonomics

Written by Taikun Kawashima

 “The Hidden Side of Everything”… To describe the main theme of “Freakonomics”, this is the most appropriate sentence. Last week in Media Literacy class, we watched it, and Steven Levitt who is an economist in University of Chicago and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner told us several types of hidden stories in the world through the sections such as “Naming”, “Cheating”, “Pure Corruption”, “Incentives”, and so forth. Let me share some interesting tales and my opinions.

~Naming~

At the beginning, two story tellers claimed the relationship between person’s name and society in United States(U.S.). As everybody knows, U.S. is multi-ethnic country. In this time, they focused on name of African-American and white American through the interview to scholars who research effect of name. Since the black power movement occurs in 1960, the gap of name in those races are generated; for instance, “Jake” is the most popular name in white American, and “Deshorn” is the famous name in African-American. Through the investigation, researchers mentioned the name of children became an important role in business. If there is a person who has ethical name and attempts job hunting, the employee tends to select the one who has white name. Thus, even the black power movement occurred, there is a bias by white towards African-American. At final part, the investigator who is a professor in Harvard university concluded there is no name which creates person to be successful or commit a crime. In my point of view, it is true that name is a big part of our life. However, I could not comprehend why the some of people prejudge the person by listening his/her name. That is quite foolish way of understanding people. We should not look at something with the bias.

~Incentives~

At the part where they mention about “Incentives” of people, we viewed the experiment which is held by Chicago university to encourage the students motivation towards study. For generating incentives, the scholars decided to provide financial reward when the students gain their grade; in addition, researchers also afford them the opportunity to obtain $50 and riding super-stretch limousine. This experiment is based on the purpose which is to improve the efficiency of student learning with a small budget. As a conclusion, they have seen the 30% students has improved their grade and for next experiment, they will continue it to lower grade students. In my opinion, personally, If I could acquire the financial reward by raising my score, this experiment is quite effective for me. However, through this investigation, there was a gap in result for each students. To make students incentives higher, I consider that student must get the habits for study. Hence, it is good idea that researcher will begin next experiment in lower grades in school. In this time, probably, the financial reward is not much effective to raise the incentives for them; therefore, investigators must think alternative idea.