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As I've said before, the data is the data, and conclusions from the data are conclusions from the data regardless of what the author may or may not believe.

I would say no to the part about the conclusions. The data is the data -- sure. The conclusions are from human beings, and therefore are subject to what they may or may not believe (among a multitude of other experiment design variables).

In fact, that's why the article author used this language to describe the conclusions:

Frank L. Samson, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Miami, thinks his new research findings suggest that...

Also, we know at some time in the past a majority of whites elected representatives that made it a law to reduce meritocracy with a goal of increasing minority participation in Universities. The policies were especially aimed at increasing african american participation. This interest in reducing meritocracy could have been spawned by a feeling that african americans were under-represented, or that whites were over-represented, or any number of other fairness factors. However, those reasons were not self serving for whites -- at least not in a get more whites into University kind of way.

I don't know why any of those same reasons might not also apply to a white population seeing an "over represented" asian american university profile.

I'm not arguing here that selfishness as a motive doesn't exist, or that it doesn't or can't affect virtually all things, or that it didn't probably affect things here. Of course it does. We don't need a scientific experiment to tell us that selfishness can be a motivation. I'm just saying that this experiment does little to flesh out the self serving motivation force from any other potential motivation force.

When presented with a situation where their chances of attaining admission increased as a result of meritocracy, they were for meritocracy.
When presented with a situation where their chances of attaining admission decreased as a result of meritocracy, there were against it.

What other motivations do you think are there? A potential bigotry toward asians?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

From the article:


Half were simply asked to assign the importance they thought various criteria should have in the admissions system of the University of California. The other half received a different prompt, one that noted that Asian Americans make up more than twice as many undergraduates proportionally in the UC system as they do in the population of the state.


So the half had it pointed out to them that asians were over represented vis-a-vis their population at large. Then just read what I wrote earlier.

Let me make it easier. Let's say I like meritocracy until I view racial balances getting too far out of alignment with the population as a whole. Can't that be a motivation here? It happens to be also self serving in this case, but my point was that it was not self serving in the case of affirmative action (or in every case). It is in fact a separate motivation than selfishness.

Fair point. The follow up study should be another question that points out that minorities are under represented and then see how they answer. I don't think its a stretch, however, to assume that most white people already know that under a meritocracy, minorities (except for Jews and asians) will be under represented.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485