Sophie & Mario: some economic aspects

Mario Balotelli's cheating on Sophie Reade raises three points which we see quite often in the social sciences.
1. Neglect of base rates. Ms Reade says; "I would never normally date a footballer because they have such bad reputations. Mario seemed very different."
This is a great example of a common deviation from Bayesian reasoning. We ignore basal probabilities - what are the chances of a footballer cheating? - and overweight weaker signals ("Mario's different.")
It's not just WAGs who do this. I suspect that one reason why corporate takeovers happen so often, despite their indifferent record of success, is that managers ignore base probabilities and so are over-optimistic about their chances of success. A similar thing might explain why people become entrepreneurs, or why the try to trade FX and stock markets.
2. Stereotype threat. Footballers cheat on girlfriends. Footballers have a bad reputation. The causality here could run both ways. People tend to live up or down to their stereotypes. So, if you give someone a reputation as a cheat, he'll be a cheat.
This has all sorts of important economic effects. It helps explain why older workers are less productive than others (because they are perceived as has-beens), or why blacks do worse in school.
3. Selection effects. If footballers have a reputation for cheating, girls who look for a long-term relationship won't go with them, which means that only fun-seeking girls will. But this in turn means that footballers will tend to cheat, because their relationships aren't serious anyway.
Again, selection effects are common. They explain why such various behaviour as why homeopathy has so many satisfied customers (sceptics don't use it!); why Pakistani men are more likely to be guilty of "grooming" young girls; or why public schoolboys do well in politics.  They might also explain why footballers have a bad reputation for girls like Ms Reade: ones who are happily married don't approach her and her friends, so only the more footloose ones do.
My point here - insofar as there is one - is that the distinction between high-minded news and celebrity gossip is some ways a false one, as the latter is a capable as the former of drawing attention to important issues.

Comments

[BenSix]

This is why Coleen Rooney is an unacknowledged genius. She knew that schlub of a husband would play away from home but Bayesian inference suggested that the fame that could be reaped from such controversy would create an attractive surplus of utility.

[Guerilla Economist]

Excellent and fun application of economics to life. I had a couple of additional thoughts you might be interested to read:
http://guerilla-economics.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-cheating-footballers.html