Episode 79: “Survivor” Bias with Erin O’Mara Kunz

Erin O’Mara Kunz is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Dayton. We spend the whole episode on her new paper analyzing racial and gender biases in the voting decisions on the reality TV show, Survivor. We dig into how Survivor is a useful test case for understanding discrimination, what the data tell us, and what conclusions we can take away.

Things that come up in this episode:

  • In the intro, I mention that social scientists are no strangers to analyzing decisions in televised game shows. These include analyses of  bets placed on the show Jeopardy! (Metrick, 1995)choices on Deal or No Deal (Post et al., 2008), and bids on The Price is Right (e.g., Berk et al., 1996)
  • Erin’s new paper analyses trends over 40 seasons of Survivor (Kunz et al,. in press)

Transcript

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