Dancing with the stars: No fear for the underdog?

By Natsumi Oye [Current Events Bureau Chief]

The winner was announced May 25, and now, half way through June, Twitter is still blowing up with Tweets about the latest season and suggestions for the one coming up.

Kate Gosslin is still getting slammed for being on the show, her harshest critics insisting that she would do anything for money, while @JDBieberonDWTS is trying to get teen pop sensation Justin Bieber onto the next season.

The volume of Tweets is amazing. What is even more amazing is that the issue of Kate Gosslins intentions for entering the contest is still overshadowing the fact that Nicole Sherzinger had a ridiculously unfair advantage going into the show.

It was pretty obvious that Sherzinger was going to be in the finals right from the very beginning. How could she not? She dances and performs in front of crowds much larger than on the DWTS set for a living. She was a shoe-in for the coveted mirror ball trophy. So why bother watching?

Simply put, nothing is ever certain. Third-place winner Erin Andrews is the perfect example of the underdog that could have gone all the way.

Whether or not Sherzinger was destined to win the competition because of the advantage she had, it’s nice to hope that an underdog will rise to become a legitimate contender.

There are many theories as to why we root for the underdog.

One of them is a “deep desire for equality,” wrote Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide, in a post on Science Blogs.

This goes along with one of the two theories that University of South Florida psychologist Joseph Vandello and his team of researchers came up with after researching the underdog phenomenon. The theory is that we cheer for the less likely candidate because it “seems to ignite our innate sense of fairness and justice,” according to a post by Steven Kotler on psychologytoday.com.

If Erin Andrews had won DWTS it may have given legitimacy to the idea that the contestants on the show were more equally matched than it had first seemed.

If football player Chad Ochocinco had been in the finals it would have shown that hard work pays off.

The fact that the figure skater and pop star were in the final two, and that the pop star won, should crush the illusion that the competition was at all fair.

On a show that is based partly on viewer votes, there may be an explanation for why the underdog didn’t get through.

Sherzingers outburst on one of the pre dance packages could have been a factor. She broke down during rehearsal insisting that she didn’t have an advantage over the other contestants, which may have fooled some into believing that her performances were products of hard work instead of products of experience.

In the end, the votes turned in favour of a contestant who couldn’t seem to own up to the fact that she had a significant advantage over her competition.

The sympathy vote beat out the underdog vote.