15 years the North had all 5 or Fairmount Avenue down the hill in the Mission Valley also south 163 crash this is near Washington clear to the right and a crash Apollo along the 76 ahead on and have delays getting by it at your vehicle donation will help us continue to provide the high quality programming you expect an easy call 1877. Yes. Yes. This is Freakonomics radio show that explores the side of everything your house. This week on Freakonomics Radio we continue our conversation from last week about gender disparity in Hollywood it begins early being highly engaged in the Disney princess culture at a young age tends to be related to more girly girl behavior and this princess isn't seems to trickle into the economics of the broader movie business you know Hollywood is losing money on the table the Academy Award winner Gina Davis tells us what she's doing about it. Hundreds of times to talk to every possible division they have. Is it working you'll find out right after this hour's news. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Janine hurts the u.s. And Iran have carried out a prisoner swap Iran has released a Princeton University graduate student one of several Americans held in Iran as N.P.R.'s Michele Kelemen reports the wife of Shia way Long says quote Our family is complete again she and her son have waited in her words 3 long years for this day to be reunited wish you a an academic who went to Iran for research Iran's foreign minister tweeted a picture of himself on a plane going home with Professor must suit silly money who is facing charges of violating trade sanctions for trying to have biological material brought to Iran u.s. Officials confirm his release and thanks with diplomats for arranging the prisoner swap there are still other Americans and other nationals being held in Iran in what some are now calling a hostage crisis Michele Kelemen n.p.r. News Washington the investigation into a motive in the deadly shooting at the naval air base in Pensacola yesterday continues the gunman was a Saudi military pilot at the base for training for people including the gunman died he was one of about 200 foreign students part of allied forces who regularly trained there and he had a handgun which is prohibited at that base and here's Debbie Elliott has more some are calling this an act of terrorism including Florida senator Rick Scott and Congressman Matt Gates of Pensacola they along with Florida's other senator Marco Rubio are calling for a reexamination of how military personnel are vetted for training at military bases when they come from you know foreign countries Gates says somehow safety protocols broke down here N.P.R.'s Debbie Elliott but defense secretary Mark esper said today he's not ready to call this a terror related attack the intelligence group site says there are reports the Saudi gunman had anti-American views. Congressional negotiators say they are close to working out a deal on authorizing funding for the military N.P.R.'s Tamara Keith reports of could include a somewhat non-germane provision that provides paid family leave for federal employees the massive must pass bill often becomes a vehicle for initiatives not entirely related to national defense in this case Democrats and presidential adviser and daughter of Aga Tromp are both hailing a provision that would provide 12 weeks of paid family leave to all federal employees currently They receive no paid time off for the birth or adoption of a child as the country's largest employer the United States government must lead by example of vodka Trump said the idea being that this could open the floodgates to more private employers offering a full 3 months of paid family leave a Democratic aide told n.p.r. Negotiators had a tentative agreement to add the provision the negotiations were not yet complete on the entirety of the National Defense Authorization Act Tamara Keith n.p.r. News and you're listening to n.p.r. . News biggest utility has reached a 13 and a half $1000000000.00 settlement resolving all major claims against it from the deadly wildfires blamed on its outdated equipment p.g. And e. Says the settlement which still requires court approval will resolve all claims for the $27000.00 wildfires in northern California and it also includes last year's camp fire which was the deadliest and most destructive in state history and it was the one that prompted p.g. And e. To enter into bankruptcy protection in the 1st place and this is the 3rd proposed settlement p.g. And e. Has worked out a previously reached a $1000000000.00 settlement with cities counties and other public utilities and an 11 $1000000000.00 green meant with insurance companies this year's flu season has gone up to a slightly earlier start than usual with a start in the south is beginning to spread more broadly That's according to the c.d.c. N.P.R.'s Rob Stein has more. The c.d.c. Says that the flu season has started a week or 2 earlier than usual this year in fact the flu season hasn't started this early in more than 15 years this isn't great news because it could mean the flu would have more time to make more people sick but the c.d.c. Says there's always a chance this could mean the flu season could end up peaking in ending earlier than usual to there's just no way to know the flu is notoriously unpredictable but this he she says is still a really good idea to get a flu shot no matter what happens Rob Stein n.p.r. News and New York state has declared the flu prevalent in that area I'm joining her and you're listening to n.p.r. News from Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the n.p.r. Wine club where every bottle tells a story and n.p.r. Shows become wines like Wait Wait Don't Tell me you know new are available to adults 21 Years or Older learn more at n.p.r. Wine Club dot org. Let's just play we're in association for a minute when I say the word princess you say. Beauty. When I say there were Disney princess you say were. Strict guidelines. So how do we go over to strict guidelines disbanding Disney because of. The easy access that we have to this media as 5 year old girl. That's my daughter Anya I'm a rising senior in high school actually we recorded this over the summer so by now she's fully risen she was little Anya was heavily into the Disney princesses Snow White bell. What little girl wouldn't want to be a Disney princess wouldn't want a long flowing hair and you know wouldn't want to make a wish you know well and have the perfect life do you remember going to Disney World I do it felt so magical. You read all the princesses right you were just like Saw drop. It felt like I was meeting a celebrity and felt like oh my God this is who I want to be this is so exciting was there one princess in particular I was always Belle Now which one is real beauty in the beast and even though I had a mind that made everything and anything possible she was most achievable to me because I looked like her so I would wear that yellow dress and I instantly felt like her everywhere do you remember. Yeah everywhere. This is actually one of the very few princesses I admire because in the beginning of the movie she was always reading books walking around town and she turned down the. Handsome town man who everyone loved she had no interest in him and then suddenly she meets the beast and she falls in love with someone for something other than his looks and I think that's an important message yes but at the same time there's still this weird sense of the man being obsessed with her and it still revolves all around her being beautiful. And you've been thinking a lot about Disney Princess Lee because of a writing project she had in school for ethics class the assignment was to explore any scenario that showed a market imbalance of gender or power now love to take my word for this but Anya is not an injustice collector she doesn't try to turn molehills into she's not punitive I mean take it with a grain of salt obviously biased but I think she's kind and thoughtful person I want to study psychology I think it's kind of like a superpower you can know what's going on in someone's mind and says such an exciting thing and yet when she looked back at the Disney princess and she loved as a kid she wasn't crazy about the messages and there are such strict gender roles in guidelines that represent how women should act and how women should perform in a household and you know look and what they should want in life I don't blame them because it all of these movies are reflections of the time what I'm curious about is why people continue to watch the of and why parents continue to show their kids because hopefully the societal norms have you know improved in some ways and they're not like they were in the 1930 s. When Now I came out I think Disney makes possible this idea that you could make a wish and it will come true in that you don't have to work hard for what you want and what you want is probably. Because of Disney this fantasy life that everything is so easy and everything is perfect in that you you know find a prince and having your ideal life be so easy to achieve is a really bad message to send to anybody but in my opinion especially to girls because. For me as a girl I think I always have to work really hard to prove myself because I feel that subconsciously people expect men to be smarter or just be more successful and because of that I think women need to have an extra layer of armor it makes me proud of you to hear you think this through like that but it also makes me feel bad yeah as a father of a daughter you know that you feel that you've got that additional burden I kind of like it if you think of it in a certain way it adds a certain type of determination. You know there's kind of a debate right now where a lot of critics say media has no impact on us at all but Sarah Coyne she is a psychology professor at Brigham Young University she studies of children and families are affected by the media they consume but you have been researching this for over 2 decades and I mean lots of things have an impact on behavior lots of things influence body image or pro-social behavior aggression or you know pick whatever you want gender. That media is a significant and an important one just how significant and in what directions coin and some other researchers set up a study to find out the major aim of the study was to find the longer term impact of princess culture on a variety of different outcomes such as pro-social behavior body image and gender stereotypes the study included roughly $200.00 young children girls and boys the researchers factored in each kid's viewing habits their play habits and a lot of other factors they also interviewed the kids parents and teachers what they learn so we found that girls in particular who were really into princess culture at age 4 tended to be more gender stereotyped the next year after controlling for how gender stereotype they were that previous year so it. Other words being highly engaged in the Disney princess culture at a young age tended to be related to kind of more girly girl behavior the next year girly girl behavior meaning what exactly characteristics would be kind of submissive of and past really friendly and sweet whereas boys are more assertive and aggressive queen and her colleagues published their findings in a paper called pretty as a princess wanted to know effects of engagement with Disney princesses on gender stereotypes body esteem and pro-social behavior in children the reaction was not so great I even got physical hate mail to my office that was the only time it ever happened I think when we tell parents be honest be thoughtful about this or there could be kind of a darker side to princesses but they can't really defensive about their own choices as parents I think that a lot of people thought Well you're saying Girls can be feminine which is not the case at all and there's a difference between being feminine and being stereotyped right what we find is that girls you know who are highly gender stereotype tend to limit themselves in a number of key ways so they don't think that they can do well in math or science they're less likely to want to go on to college when they get older so it's really about kind of limiting yourself and what you could be. Curing sirrah coin talk about the lasting effect of princesses and of course made me think about my own daughter Anya So looking back on your let's say 5 year old self now as a 17 year old what effect do you think all that Princess ism had on you as a person. Yeah that's something I was wondering I mean I like the way it turned out and I think my values and here to you know the belief that I admire but the values presented in these movies may have been instilled in me in ways that I have not particularly noticed. My 17 year old daughter is exactly the same as yours Prince's mania and now so self-possessed and stubborn that is the Hollywood actor Gina Davis and she sees a connection between Princess ism and what she thinks of as the biggest problem in the world gender inequality a real awakening came when she started having kids so when my daughter was a toddler I decided to start showing her you know preschool shows and and g. Rated videos and things like that and the very 1st thing I set down to watch with her was it was a kid's t.v. Show and within 5 minutes I was saying wait a minute how many female characters are in the show was this this mystery. I never bust anybody publicly so do you want to cough if I'll tell you what I'll blink Yeah Ok and I started counting on my hands and then I looked online to see what it said about the show and it had 19 male characters before they added one female character. Davis started to notice this pattern everywhere if the show didn't happen to have a princess and there probably weren't many females like in the hugely popular animated movie titled Davis again say but I'm pretty sure rhymes with. That had only one female character in the entire movie and put an important character but on the last and I was horrified and absolutely done to learn this and I asked my friends my best friends mothers of daughters had they noticed and none of them had noticed so literally not notice the disparity you're saying yes they had no clue about the disparity. She seemed to have stumbled across an invisible problem so because I have meetings all the time in my industry with producers or directors whoever I started bringing it up in every meeting I took I would say I've noticed how few female characters there are in movies made for kids and every single person I'm talking about dozens and dozens of people said oh that's not true anymore that's been fixed in 2004 Davis started the Gina Davis Institute on gender in media 1st that collect data to see if her observation about the onscreen gender imbalance was true so that's what I get raised funds and help sponsor the largest study ever done on kids t.v. And movies made for kids this study released. In 2008 looked at hundreds of top grossing movies released between 199-2005 along with a sample of t.v. Shows it found that in g. Rated films only 28 percent of the speaking characters were female and an even smaller percent when you looked across all ratings this gave credence to what's known as the Bechtel test which was inspired by a comic strip drawn by the graphic novelist Alison Bechdel it is a gauge of whether a movie includes at least 2 women talking to each other about something other than a man. The study Davis commissioned also found a disproportionately high share of weight characters in movies and t.v. Shows so an overwhelming representation of white male MOUs which perhaps not coincidentally could also describe the personnel in many Hollywood studios at the time and my plan was I'll go back to them you know private way not bust anybody publicly and see if that has any impact so that's what I get and what happened what happened was all these people who couldn't see the problem whatsoever and literally that things were 5050 were horrified and I think because people who make kids entertainment do it because they love kids they were completely nonplussed that they hadn't realized this but maybe just maybe there was good reason why so many characters in films and t.v. Were male maybe it had to do with economic theory or at least what passed for an economic theory it went like this the way to make money in Hollywood was to make movies geared toward a male audience that's something that Hollywood has sort of lived by and made every decision about that you know men just don't want to watch women's We must they make everything about men and will stick one man or something who's pretty. Or hot in the ninety's I think the belief was that you know teen males and 20 something males are the ones that will show up and knocked on your doors on a Friday night at a movie theater that is Sean Bailey he is president of production at Walt Disney Studios and that was the way you could get a huge opening weekend and that's what a lot of places played primarily to. And by the way it's not altogether untrue either but just how true is it or was it at least back in 90 s. And even if very true back then how much is it changed and if it hasn't changed much why not one reason of course could be discrimination. Let's 1st talk about what economists mean when they talk about discrimination discrimination is typically defined as differences in observable outcomes such as wages or such as performance evaluations that cannot be attributed directly to underlying differences in performance that's Boren She's an economist at the University of Pennsylvania So for example if we're looking at gender discrimination economists would define discrimination as occurring at a male and a female generated similar performance but they were treated differently in terms of how they were paid or and how they were evaluated based on differences that are not attribute all to any performance differences there are however different flavors or sources of discrimination the 1st would be a preference or a taste based source which would say that the discrimination occurred because the value it or who is determining the wage or the performance evaluation has some sort of preference or dislike for the group that they're discriminating against Gina Davis does not think that's what causes gender disparity in Hollywood Her belief is based on how the studios responded to the gender data she showed them this is a few years ago but we did a survey of top executives to see what they thought about what they learned and something like 90 percent said it was definitely have an impact on them and they thought it was very important to show gender parity Ok so let's accept these for the sake of argument the Hollywood doesn't exercise taste based discrimination against female characters a 2nd source would be a belief based source and this is the when there is no preference or dislike for a particular group but because the underlying quality is not perfectly observable the evaluator is going to form a belief about performance that's based not only on any signal of performance from that individual but also from some underlying belief about whether different groups have different ads. Performance differences believe this is also known as the testicle discrimination and historically what economists use the word the to sickle discrimination there are fairing to belief based differences that are actually based on correct believes this gets to what Gina Davis said earlier regarding Hollywood's belief about male moviegoers that you know men just don't want to watch women and was this belief based difference based on a correct belief it is true that a decade ago films led by men made a lot more money on average than films led by women that's Caroline Hellman a political scientist at Occidental College and the research director at the Gina Davis Institute So in terms of box office revenues what we found is that in the past decade the gap in terms of films led by men and films led by women has closed and in fact we studied 20151617 found that in all those years movies starring a female character made more at the box office indeed the 3 top grossing domestic films of 2017 were Star Wars the last jet eye which had male and female leads a live action remake of Beauty And The Beast interestingly with Emma Watson playing Belle and Wonder Woman starring the Israeli actress Gal Gadot. And yet males continue to be cast much more often in leading roles they're also paid a lot more one analysis found that even after controlling for an actor's past performance including awards female stars were paid 56 percent less than male stars or about $2200000.00 less per film Caroline Hellman again you know Hollywood is leaving money on the table if they continue to cast men at twice the rate that they cast women to lead major films. So you're saying the Hollywood idea is that boys and men need to star in films because audiences prefer them but if the data show that films with female leads generate more money in and since it's an industry why on earth is that gap still existing. You ask a very good question and I will say that the evidence has been clear for a while now that if a company has more women on the board it will make more money and yet the percentage of women on boards the progress is absolutely the lay Szell nobody seems to be saying oh my God this is a great idea let's let's just do this and there's other examples of that where people know that including women is going to make them more money and they don't do it so as far as the film industry it's the same they know that and yet they can't seem to overcome their own. You know conscious or unconscious bias so there's a 3rd source of discrimination and that is inaccurate statistical discrimination The Economist Islam born again the employer the evaluator believe that their performance differences at the group level between 2 different groups for example men and women but now their beliefs may be inaccurate or incorrect you can imagine why it's important to identify the difference between accurate and inaccurate statistical discrimination from a policy perspective it's important because the policies to try and reduce discrimination are going to be different if you're trying to correct for employers or people who have a preference against a certain group versus people who have correct or accurate beliefs about performance differences across groups versus people who have inaccurate beliefs about these performance differences Boren did an experiment to look into this with fellow economists Karim how Gog Alex emas and Devon pope to run their experiment they recruited people from Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. Some would act as employers and some employees 1st came a group of roughly 600 employees 2 thirds of these research subjects were American the rest were from India in the 1st phase of the experiment the researchers had all these employees answer 50 math questions and they were paid according to how well they did we found that workers in the us perform slightly better it's about 37 questions on average correctly for a workers from the u.s. And about 36.3 for workers from India and then the researchers turn to the employer group they would have a chance to hire potential employees from this pool of 600 people but they were only given basic demographic information including country of origin they were not given the results of the math test the employers were then asked how much they'd be willing to pay each employee the wages offered to workers from India were about $2.00 higher on average than the wages offered to the workers from the the United States so the offers weren't consistent with performance but they did seem consistent with the employer's beliefs about performance which was that Indians would score better than Americans on math we find that the employers believe that Indian workers outperformed American workers by about 2.8 or so questions on average so when we look at this we find that the wages offered by the employers are consistent with their belief that suggestive of belief based discrimination rather than any sort of preference favoring Indian workers Ok So that sounds like inaccurate statistical discrimination in action. What would happen if the employers were given accurate information that's exactly what Boren and her team now did they divulge the actual math scores for each group and asked the employers to do a 2nd round of hiring So what happened now we found that once we provided information on the performance differences the gap in the wage paid to these 2 groups struck so this is suggestive that one potential intervention to try and correct for an accurate releases just provide employers or provide evaluators with the actual performance of different groups. And that it turns out is exactly what Gina Davis has been trying to do in Hollywood tell all the studio executives and producers and directors that women are the target of inaccurate statistical discrimination coming up after the break at least one studio has taken the message to heart and you may be surprised to hear which one. 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This is Freakonomics Radio here's your host Stephen Dubner. We've been talking today about Disney princesses I'm the main female characters in a lot of traditional kids' movies were prized mostly for their beauty but they weren't really protectiveness things happened to them but they didn't have much agency we've also been talking about how in the earlier days of kids' t.v. There weren't many female characters at all here's what the actor Gina Davis by the way she prefers to actress Here's what she told us about the beloved educational series with a cast of public characters it had 19 male characters before they added one female character for the past 15 years the Gina Davis Institute on gender in media has been updating its numbers on gender representation in kids' entertainment it's kind of like Super Bowl Sunday when I get the date and I open it up because then I get to see whether or not we've. Made significant strides that again is Caroline Hellman the institute's director of research and I'll tell you the last couple of years the story has been so positive it's small but it's been in the right direction and we have a brand new research study that we're profoundly psyched about because we just really looked at t.v. Shows made for little kids so we were talking 11 and under and for the 1st time female characters accounted for 55.3 percent of screen time and 50 percent of speaking time and the percentage of female lead characters has gone up to 46.8 percent which is pretty much parity and we're like over the moon about that what was that number maybe 10 or 20 years ago. The ratio was 2 or 3 to one male to female lead characters and so I'm pretty sure that this is the only sector of gross gender inequality in the entire business in front of and behind the camera that has changed dramatically a lot of folks don't know that Hollywood actually in its very early years the silent years was more gender equitable than it is today but as soon as it became big business it became a male dominated sector about 20 percent of the key decision making roles in films are held by women and in television that number hovers around 30 percent key decision making roles meaning executive jobs as well as producers directors cinematographers and so on it's especially the case for women of color and while there have been small gains in recent years we have seen very little traction for the last couple of decades that we've studied this and what's your evidence necessarily but what's your reckoning as to how much that is the supply issue and how much it's a demand issue right so I definitely think that the interest and in many cases the supply is there for example only 4 percent of films are directed by women and people have said exactly what you said that well they're not as interested over but 50 percent of film schools are now women they want to be directors they graduate with the same abilities. But there is one major studio that has substantially changed the status quo Yes Yes They just announced that 40 percent of their directors coming up are women and we know that's like 10 times better than anybody else is their writing so that's that's really incredibly also make more movies starring a female character than not which studio might that be I'll give you a hint we heard from someone there earlier talking about why so many films have male leads you know teen males and 20 something males are the ones that will show up and knock down your doors on a Friday night and who is that my name is Sean Bailey and my title is President of Production at Walt Disney Studios the Walt Disney Company is so massive it's split into a few different Studios Disney animation and Pixar Animation oversee the animated features there's also marvel and 20th Century Fox which Disney bought earlier this year as head of Walt Disney Studios Sean Bailey oversees the live action divisions in recent years this has included live action remakes of Disney's own classics when Bailey joined Disney in 2010 he inherited a live action remake of Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton directed it starred Anne Hathaway Mia Vashti coves Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter it was a huge hit grossing a $1000000000.00 worldwide and we really spent some time thinking about it and there was a quote from Walt that I won't get precisely right but I'll paraphrase it here which is someone once said to him you make these animated movies for children and he responded fairly forcefully and he said no I don't I make movies for all of us whether we're 6 or 60 it's just that many of us have forgotten what it feels like to be a kid and so I think what the breakthrough was was sort of this audience we thought was under-served tied to this idea that we aren't making movies for just families and just for. Kids we're trying to make movies for everybody and once we do that the female audience in particular is huge and these can become you know really really significant films from a global box office perspective and I think there's By the way not just the commercial returns but there are great stories to tell that we don't think any of our competitors are really focused on currently stories like for instance based on the evil godmother from sleeping beauty and as we noted earlier live action remakes of old princess movies including beauty in the be asked that's the one with Belle and if you forgotten here's the plot summary as told by on you Dubner she gets trapped in a castle she meets this big beast and he becomes nice and gentle and then somehow he becomes a handsome prince if you've seen the 2017 remake with Emma Watson you probably noticed some tweaks we did recognise that from a gender perspective it's a complicated story and so we really worked to you know sort of boaster and ballast parts of the story such as why does Bell live in the provincial town and we gave a backstory that the mother had fallen ill with the plague in Paris and they'd moved away and that the father with Maurice was incredibly over protective and why he didn't want her to leave we really worked on the idea that why doesn't Belle just leave so we worked hard on the scene where for example the beast to save her from the wolf attack and he's in mortal peril and so that she stays with him because she's such a good soul that her conscience couldn't allow her to leave him to die which gave them a little time to bond and we also thought it was really important to have her try to escape have her not engage with him and at a certain point the movie and I'm not going to the dialogue exactly right but he says could you ever be happy here and she says Can anybody be happy if they want free. This Neo princess is a model seems to be paying off Beauty And The Beast became one of the highest grossing films in modern history which along with the other high grossing films with female leads you might think would naturally lead to even more starring roles for more women in more films but that's not quite the case. Why not Shawn Bailey from Disney has a theory one thing we've seen that I think is interesting and relevant is directors tend to be very visual and I'm talking from both a both a gender and sort of inclusion diversity perspective if you send a script to a director they're going to read the script and vision things in their mind and once a director has painted a picture in his or her head it's more difficult to sort of disavow them of that vision and so we've started trying in our screenplays to more specifically call out gender ethnicity so that they can have a different opinion but they aren't starting from you know whatever their baseline bias and assumption may be the other thing we often find as let's talk in these fairy tale movies as example the filmmaker says well you know I'm being true to the period of the film I'm being true to the historical period to which we say What on earth are you talking about because we have you know. Spells and magic mirror you know you know candelabras that used to be people so there is no period we can we can make the history you know as we would like it to be there's also the delicate issue you wouldn't think it would be delicate but it is of casting an African-American actress to play Ariel in a live action remake of The Little Mermaid with Halle Bailey that's just sort of a case of for us we looked for the very best aerial Halle Bailey no relation to Sean Bailey is a 19 year old r. And b. Singer I remember specifically all of us sat in the room and heard her saying and saw her perform and we thought that's her and you know we heard some criticism criticism especially from the Twitter verse the cartoon Ariel had white skin and red hair how could how he barely replace her. There and I heard things like when the announcement went out some friends of mine who were at the essence of and it landed described they didn't know why a cheer went up through the hall you know I heard all sides of it and and for us it was just as simple as I say is you know Talent wins the original Little Mermaid was also considered problematic on the gender front because Ariel in order to get her man has to give up her voice her most magical and distinctive quality you can see why this might fly in 1900 Denmark when Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Little Mermaid fairy tale but in 21st century anywhere the idea of a woman literally silencing herself in the pursuit of romance feels. Pretty 1980 the new Little Mermaid is scheduled to come out next year and we asked Shawn Bailey about that well I don't want to say too much about it because they do involve some sort of plot changes it's something we've talked a lot about and we are definitely working to still sort of deliver the beautiful foundations of that story while being cognizant of the times we find ourselves in I will say on a more personal front I have a daughter and you know I took this job around 10 years ago she was around 7 years old and I watched as I was preparing to take the job a lot of the old animated pictures and while they're wonderful in many many ways I was watching them with my daughter and you know I thought if we're going to tell them now there's a lot of things we should probably do for little girls who are going to watch these versions and for young men by the way as well so what's the world that we want to reflect wall respecting what is clearly you know timeless about stories. Those are pigeons are dabs hope not but she looks a little like about her. So this is what you're talking about of the right yeah I think this is like the 1st time we really hear her speak and we don't know anything about her except she wants to find a print and then here he comes. Well 2 you. Know. If I find a new. Voice. Point lead. My daughter Anya and I wrapped up our princesses in conversation by watching snow white that was the movie that led her as a teenager to start rethinking how she used to think about Princess I asked her what specifically had bothered her mainly what she wanted she was to meet a man that was her one wish she had here to the stereotypical woman of the house role I watch this is a kid and was unfazed by how objective Lee suggestive this movie was the feeling that took over me most was confusion like why did my parents let me watch the what were they thinking now if I mean what were you thinking did he realize it was problematic in any way or Honestly I think the opposite so you were born in 2002 right so and Snow White was made in the 1930 s. I believe yes so I think most parents of my generation probably thought that going back to then was not only normal but like it was the right kind of traditional right because it's like not full of weird modern terrible things right and it's kind of sweet and lovely and did you think that back when you were a kid too I mean did you like that stuff yeah I mean it's fantasy Who wouldn't want to show their kids that I think it's just the underlying factors that make you take a step back and be like wow that could be really impactful what I mean when you say underlying factors the ideals of princesses wanting to be beautiful finding a prince and having your wishes come true is fun of course and I don't think that they should completely be found on the only thing is that. They shouldn't be exclusive of you know being a bad ass woman and being really really determined and having your life go well and working hard for what you want so let me ask you this if you were running let's say a Hollywood studio right now or a t.v. Network what do you think are good solutions should it be like a quota system should you ban men from certain production facilities that would be the worst thing to do because why because that would send out a big middle finger to all men and then more people would be angry you know we need men we just need women too and I think that that's probably the biggest misconception in feminism and if that's what feminism are I'd be the opposite of a feminist but I think the only people that really are able to have the biggest impact on movies and how they affect children are people and to see himself Emma Watson she's somebody that I admire greatly she was Princess Belle in the most recent movie and she refused to wear chorus that and it was this big deal you know why would he wear course I'm 29 t. You know sure if you to perpetuate the body that little girls were both to look up to she said no this is going to be my real body and I think that's a small really small action but I think it speaks volumes like my initial reaction would be you know that society has to change 1st but I think it has so why haven't the movies. Coming up after the break we take a look at a wholly different American institution that may be changing the institution of tipping We'll be right back. Freakonomics Radio is supported by Progressive insurance providing tools designed to help customers consider options for multiple insurers comparisons available at progressive dot com or 1800 progressive Now that's progressive Freakonomics Radio is supported by the Sims foundation since 1905 supporting progress in education science and the arts Information Foundation org there's a night 50 years ago that Nina fuller still can't understand if you ask her how she should have acted she knows the answer I walk out and I get in my car and I drive home it definitely but that's not what I did why our own behavior can be mystifying this week on Hidden Brain from n.p.r. . Saturdays at 3 pm and Sundays at 1 pm on p.b.s. . 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Where news matters. This is Freakonomics Radio here's your host Stephen Dubner. Time for Rydal name something that many people say they dislike and yet they do it all the time something that many people consider tax and others see as a form of altruism something that almost always happens in many circumstances and yet in many similar circumstances never happens everybody practically leaves a tip in a full service restaurant nobody leaves a tip when they go to McDonald's. Let's begin with history courtesy of John List an economist at the University of Chicago some people argue that tipping goes all the way back to the Roman era and some argue that it was the 17th century in England but either way tipping ended up coming to the u.s. Roughly in the 18th century and there was actually a lot of resistance so you had people like Mark Twain saying we pay that tax knowing it to be unjust and an extortion and you had the New York Times in 897 writing that tipping was the violinist of imported vices and even in 1915 in America there were actually 6 states that abolished hippie in and they abolished it because they viewed it sort of like Twain did is kind of a social pressure way to extort money. Monitor the most interesting behaviors that we have right and that is were you can easy He's an economist at the University of California San Diego I sometimes when I go to my coffee place in the morning I always keep the restaurant I never t.p. McDonald's. So why is it that it's so different from me so you can see why economists would find tipping to be a topic worthy of their inspection it's really a very strange behavior and we seem to be acting according to some kind of norms. And these norms are very hard to follow you know the social norms around tipping in the United States it's like no other that I've ever witnessed. It's estimated that tipping in America adds up to at least $40000000000.00 a year that is larger than the entire health and fitness industry it's double the annual budget for NASA $40000000000.00 is a lot of money especially when you consider that tipping is optional but of course in some cases restaurants particularly it's not really optional if you try to not leave a tip of the $15.00 or 20 percent in a full service restaurant you may well be told quite directly just how not optional tipping is there more than 2 and a half 1000000 waiters and waitresses in the United States they are often paid below minimum wage in which case the bulk of their pay comes from tips most of us are accustomed to this Others think it's strange that restaurants rather than paying employees a set wage as most industries do instead pass along their labor costs to customers in the form of a croissant voluntary tax yes it is a way to keep menu prices low but it's a weird custom don't you think. And want to look more closely you'll see there are a lot of weird things about tipping why for instance is it now customary for casual restaurants and coffee shops even to ask for tips on takeout orders or think about going to a nice hotel a porter carries your suitcases to the room takes about 2 minutes and that's his job and yeah we usually tip it even though he does now ask Now think about the person who cleans your hotel room is often a little on the low in the room to leave a tip for the housekeeper you know how often that is used one study that was conducted in an upscale independent hotel so that for every $100.00 nights spent their tips. Were left on just 5 of those lines and cleaning your room takes a lot longer than the 2 minutes a carrier bag it also means dealing with the mess you left behind the why does the housekeeper not get it while the porter does. A couple possible answers the housekeeper is usually a woman in the Porter a man probably more important she's invisible he's standing right there in front of you. Still it's weird Here's another weird one why is it that you're always expected to tip the taxi driver but when you the car service app like Uber you're not. Oh hang on that's how it used to be. But if you use Uber you notice that now you are asked after the trip if you'd like to. Would you like to know one of the people who made that happen my name is John List who you'll remember is I'm a professor of economics at the University of Chicago but also I am also the chief economist at left now I understand you used to be the chief economist at Hoover That's correct I was a chief economist at Uber for nearly 2 years and I decided to move over to the left and do similar work at left. There's one more thing you need to know about John List and his friend were going easy they both love to run huge experiments out in the real world economists didn't used to do this if they ran any experiments at all they were likely to be small lab experiments the kind often run by psychologists you can learn a lot from d.s. But it's limited limited in that your research subjects are likely to be a few dozen undergraduates making artificial choices in an artificial environment big field experiments Meanwhile the new breed of a communist sees this as a great way to gather meaningful data the most recent Nobel Prize for Economics went to 3 economists banner g. Esther do flow and Michael Kramer for using real world experiments to address poverty a lot of people in the field say it won't be long before John list gets his Nobel Prize here are some of the questions he's tried to answer by running a big field experiments Why do people discriminate against one another why do women earn less pay than men in labor markets how do we convince people to pay their taxes on time and so it's not very surprising that John List when he was working at Burger would try to cook up an interesting experiment and what's more interesting then tipping even though it does have kind of Us body history when you think about the potential economic incentives of tipping it actually presents an interesting way to induce higher quality amongst your workers your drivers your contractors in other words a tip is an incentive for better service that's always been the main argument for why we tip the servers in restaurants Here's Danny Meyer I'm the founder of the Union Square Hospitality Group Myer is one of the most successful and prolific restaurateurs in New York we have 9 full service restaurants and then an enormous number of cafes whether they're in ballparks or new. Theatre's He's also the man behind the global hamburger chain Shake Shack correct recreated Shake Shack but it's now a public company and I remain the chairman of the board Meyer is a zealot for great customer service he likes to say his business is hospitality as much as its food but he does not like the idea of tipping as a means to induce hospitality the theory has always been in the tipping system that the only way I could possibly get someone to be nice to me or to bring my food promptly is you know to create a scenario in which they know that I will either punish them if they don't or reward them if they do so that's another weird thing about tipping there's also this uncomfortable fact it's discriminatory That's Michael Lynn he is a social psychologist at Cornell and one of the world's preeminent scholars on tipping both groups blacks and whites will tip a white server more than a black server and that's even controlling for perceptions of service quality wins research shows that tipping is an unfair way for workers to be paid because personal characteristics like a servers race gender and appearance factor too much into customers tipping decisions we interviewed Lynn several years ago for an episode called Should tipping be banned you know I think I would outlaw it you can make the argument that tipping is a condition of employment that has an adverse impact on a protected class and the Supreme Court has ruled that even neutral business practices that are not intended to discriminate if they have the effect of adversely impacting a protected class are illegal. So there's yet another reason to dislike tipping you think therefore that the last thing you'd want to do is introduce tipping into a business seem to be getting along fine without it a business like. Next week we will look into why Uber did introduce tipping and what economists learned from the experiment that's actually 60 percent of people 60 percent of people never tip once that's next time on Freakonomics Radio we want more of our show subscribe to the podcast on any pod cast app you can get our entire archive on Freakonomics that com or you can also sign up to get our e-mail newsletter we can also be found on Twitter Facebook Linked In or via e-mail at Radio at Freakonomics dot com I'm Stephen Dubner Thanks for listening. 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Checking on traffic and northbound 15 at Interstate 8 a hazmat cleanup is still underway with the right lanes closed only the left lanes open and traffic is jammed from Adam's avenues all because of an earlier jackknifed semi from this morning south 163 busy through a ball park and we do have the summer nights under way in Balboa Park the north 163 a motorcycle crash on the babbo offramp still some activity there to watch for as you approach keep the p.b.s. Strong for future San Diego's with a gift a new will trust or a retirement plan go to keep p.b.s. Dot org slash plan giving the learn more my can talk for key p.b.s. I'm Shankar Vedantam and from n.p.r. This is Hidden Brain. More than a decade ago N.P.R.'s social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam began looking into the unseen influences that shape our lives psychologists even have a term for this behavior is racial just might also be playing licensing they say what I found astonished me not a lot of people know that this is I fell off my chair when I saw this was one of those things that the world was never supposed to see or hear bringing these hidden influences into the light that's what the show is all about we uncover clues to our deep ourselves the archaeology of our daily lives this week feelings like pain and anger can overtake us but can they turn us into different people I was telling my friend about this and I'm like I don't know that girl like I don't know her coming face to face with our shadow selves 1st this news. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Janine Herbst a vigil was held at the Naval Air Station Pensacola today for the 3 people shot and killed when a Saudi military pilot opened fire at the base sheriff's deputies then shot and killed the gunman Roger White House was at the ceremony he says he will always remember the victims we're going to keep it in our minds we're going if you go ahead sir and you can argue that we're going to get this moment and it doesn't pack us authorities in.