** Interestingly, the results of these experiments are explained not by differences in tastes and standards—the belief, for example, that the taste of imported chocolate is likely to be better enough than domestic to justify the higher price--but as mistakes. These people just don’t know what’s best for them.  One economist captured such a judgment in the title of a book he wrote that included the chocolate experiment: Predictably Irrational.  Thomas Frank makes a similar judgment in What’s the Matter With Kansas?  Hard-pressed Kansans vote for Republicans who espouse policies antithetical to their economic interests but who support pro-choice and school prayer positions, according to Frank, not because of the depth and strength of these voters’ opposition to abortion and support for religion outweigh even their own economic well-being, but because they have been hoodwinked by conservative rhetoric into voting against their own demonstrable best interests.  They, too, just don’t know what’s good for them. One of the leaders among the behavioral economists is University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler, an adviser to Barack Obama.  Cf Obama’s attribution of small-town Pennsylvanians’ support for guns and religion not to sincere beliefs in those causes, but to bitterness at government’s failure to respond to their real economic problems.