The Monkey Cage

Why is attributing blame to Jews for the current financial crisis necessarily anti-Semitic? I would say that old white guys had at least a moderate amount of blame for the current financial crisis, but does that really make me an ageist racist sexist (or, as the article implies, a dangerous ageist racist sexist)? The research appeared to use “individuals who took out loans and mortgages they could not afford” as a comparison group, but those percentages were not reported, which is unfortunate because comparison with those percentages would have been helpful in determining just how troubling the results are.

Moreover, the experimental manipulations were to replace a reference to Bernard Madoff as an “American investor” who contributed to “educational charities” with reference to a “Jewish-American investor” in one treatment and reference to a contributor to “Jewish educational charities” in another condition. Subsequent decreases in treatment conditions regarding a willingness to provide government tax breaks to big business may have derived from the “Jewish” trigger phrases, but they may also have been to some extent a function of the treatments implying that Madoff has a more parochial interest. The researchers should have replaced the general “American” with a more parallel adjective, like “Christian-American” or “Italian-American” or use something like “Catholic educational charities” in the other condition to eliminate this potential confound as an alternate explanation.

(And why use Bernie Madoff at all, since some respondents were likely aware of his Jewish identity? Sure, it makes the test more conservative, but there is no need to bias results in any direction.)

The researchers also interpret their findings dynamically, implying that their experimental and survey results provide evidence that the current financial crisis is another instance of an “economic downturn sparking anti-Semitic sentiments,” but they cite nothing but cross-sectional data, which is generally not useful for making inferences about temporal change.

Also, it would have been nice to see citations to the number of observations someplace, instead of an oblique reference that the study was “part of a larger survey of 2,768 American adults.” Sample size is especially necessary to interpret the experimental non-finding with regard to Jewish respondents.

Lawrence - “THE Jews”, not merely “Jews” (which could be interpreted as individuals who happen to also be Jewish) but Jews as a group. Frankly, a person who hears a question on assigning blame to a group starting with the definite article and doesn’t automatically say “none at all” is depressing to me.

Somewhere in their education—around the time they learn to avoid ungrammatical sentences—people should learn to avoid reporting nonsensically precise numbers such as “38.4 percent.”

If I think that the question is irrelevant because this kind if quantification does not make sense, which category do I fall in? None.

A more robust questionnaire would ask respondents “Who do you blame for this crisis?” and would take into account the first three/five answers.

Hi Dubi,

You have a point about the difference between “Jews” and “the Jews”, but the difference between those is an empirical question. It would be interesting to see if there would be any difference if the survey were re-run with simply a reference to “Jews” (or to hear about similar research), to see how much the inclusion of the definite article changes results.

Hi John:

Good question!

It’s robust to the inclusion of race, education, gender, and age.

Moreover, even when you condition on any of these variables, the effect still shows up, which I think is a stronger test.

Neil

Hi John:

Good question!

It’s robust to the inclusion of race, education, gender, and age.

Moreover, even when you condition on any of these variables, the effect still shows up, which I think is a stronger test.

Neil