I think it would be more accurate to say that the test was meant to check whether the TV shows were effective than whether the children had a maximal inherent tendency towards virtuousness.
I think they’re a way to make an experiment easier to do. (It’s not actually clear what the point of the experiment is—to figure out how to shape behavior, or what.)
There’s also variation in the amount of children’s television watched by people in the test population. The protagonist mentions seeing “less children’s television than most children in our age cohort”, and it’s a safe bet that this was tracked as part of the data set.
Seems like the real test would be to do it without the television shows?
I think it would be more accurate to say that the test was meant to check whether the TV shows were effective than whether the children had a maximal inherent tendency towards virtuousness.
I think they’re a way to make an experiment easier to do. (It’s not actually clear what the point of the experiment is—to figure out how to shape behavior, or what.)
Maybe there are multiple test conditions, or maybe this is just the one that the market settled on.
There’s also variation in the amount of children’s television watched by people in the test population. The protagonist mentions seeing “less children’s television than most children in our age cohort”, and it’s a safe bet that this was tracked as part of the data set.