Morality and Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Thinking Theme Analysis

Freakonomics can be a challenging book because of the way that it entertains controversial ideas. When the book was first published in 2005, some readers and reviewers criticized Levitt and Dubner for discussing the possibility that there is an inverse relationship between gun sales and gun violence—an idea that people might find offensive. Others faulted the authors for claiming that the heightening abortion rate of the 1970s and 80s caused the falling crime rates of the 1990s. In the Epilogue to Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner acknowledge that some of their ideas might seem controversial, politically incorrect, or even immoral. However, they insist that economics and morality describe two different worlds: economics describes the world as it is, while morality describes the world as it should be. Understanding this difference is crucial to understanding Freakonomics.

In order to reach unbiased, scientific results, Levitt and Dubner try to limit their own political and moral preconceptions about the world. At times, they consider ideas that would strike some people as offensive, politically radical, or otherwise different from the “conventional wisdom” (see Theme Two). For instance, when considering the idea that people’s racist preconceptions influence the results of job interviews, the authors consider the possibility that an applicant named “DeShawn Williams” would be less likely to get a job interview than another applicant named “Jake Williams,” since “DeShawn” is a stereotypically black name. Even after the authors find that, indeed, an applicant named DeShawn would be less likely to get a job interview, they don’t simply assume that this is because of employers’ racism. Ultimately, the authors don’t accept the conclusion that racism prevents black job applicants from attaining success—a conclusion that conventional wisdom might support—because of insufficient data to support such a conclusion. In general, then, Freakonomics is based on the premise that the best way to study the world “as it is” is to analyze data mathematically, even if mathematical data doesn’t always agree with most people’s beliefs.

Because of their commitment to data analysis, Levitt and Dubner are more comfortable with descriptive than prescriptive thinking. Descriptive analysis is concerned with describing the world as it is (i.e., analyzing and explaining where existing data comes from), whereas prescriptive analysis is concerned with recommending what should be done. In analyzing the crime rate, for example, the authors conclude that the best explanation to describe the data for crime in the United States is that rising abortion rates in the 1970s reduced the number of children who would grow up to commit crimes. Some people found this idea outrageous because they interpreted it to mean that abortions should be used to fight crime (a prescriptive idea). In reality, though, Levitt and Dubner were merely suggesting that abortion was an important influence on the falling crime rates of the 1990s: one of the many descriptive points they make in their book.

In order to be a good economist, Levitt and Dubner argue, one must entertain possibilities that conflict with one’s morality, politics, and religion; Freakonomics tries to train its readers to think in this impartial manner. For example, after their analysis of abortion and the crime rate, Levitt and Dubner offer a long discussion of the relative morality of abortion and murder, in which they hypothesize that human fetuses might be “worth” one one-hundredth of an infant’s life. The passage seems shocking (and even deliberately provocative) in the way it uses numbers to talk about the relative value of human lives. And yet such discussions, off-putting though they might be, are important to the study of human behavior. By using surprising and somewhat provocative examples, the authors arguably encourage readers to think outside the box, rousing people from the “slumber” of politeness and conventional wisdom.