Not surprisingly, [subjects] reported that weight was the least important factor in their choice. However, their actual decisions revealed that no other attribute counted more heavily. In fact, they were willing to sacrifice quite a bit to have a thin team-mate. They would trade 11 IQ points—about 50% of the range of IQs available—for a colleague who was suitably slender.

Maybe PC is a veneer, or an attempted quick-fix for deep rooted cultural biases…

When it came to salary, location and holiday, the students’ decisions matched their stated preferences. However, the boss’s sex turned out to be far more important than they said it was (this was true whether a student was male or female). In effect, they were willing to pay a 22% tax on their starting salary to have a male boss.

Economist: Price of Prejudice

Coding Horror: Avoiding the Uncanny Valley of User Interface

With an institutional nudge in the right direction, most consumers wise up pretty quickly.

This is where government needs to step in.

“The traditional economic model is too perfectly rational,” Laibson says. “People tend to get a lot of important decisions wrong.” But Laibson, 42, says there is no reason to despair…

For instance, he says, only about half of US employees save enough for retirement, in part because the average worker waits two years to enroll in a 401(k) program. But one of Laibson’s studies showed that when new workers needed to take action to opt out of a 401(k) program — the standard model requires effort to opt in — the participation rate for new employees jumped from about 50 percent to 85 percent in a year. “A lot of big problems can be fixed by introducing defaults,” Laibson says. Given a little help, the most doltish consumer can act smarter — without even realizing it.

David Liabson: Tweaking Human Behavior