In the past few weeks, the
New York Times sent reporters around, asking the common man if Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens—two men “accused” of steroid abuse—deserved to go into baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Well, the results are in and they’re something of a psychological puzzle.
To quote the Times: The poll findings illuminated significant differences among fans based on
education level and income. Those with a college education and those earning more than $50,000 a year were more likely to say Clemens and Bonds should not be eligible for the Hall of Fame than those who did not have a college education or earned less than $50,000 a year.
This is puzzling because it contradicts accepted psychological studies that look at the effects of class and culture on
morality.
“Typically, there’s a big difference in what’s called harm-based morality,” says University of Virginia psychologist Jonathon Haidt.
“Liberals and college-educated people usually say they don’t think something deserves punishment unless it hurts another person.”
On the other side of the equations, working class people tend to favor broader moral codes like God and country (something that is used to explain why poor people often favor the death penalty when the death penalty is historically only used to kill poor people).
Somehow, baseball has reversed this trend.
“That’s because baseball is the values refuge of the privileged class,” says University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan. “People have a crazy romantic view of the sport. George Will and Roger Angell rhapsodizing about mundane details. You just don’t get that in hockey.”
Which is to say, as Caplan also puts it, “Our national pastime is an upper crust morality play and steroids destroy the myth of the landed gentry.”
