profiling and unconscious bias – part 2
In a world of survival of the fittest, it makes sense that animals are hard-wired with a basic instinct that has them making snap judgments about their predators. Some chimpanzees attack chimps that are of the same species, but not a part of their group. And some fish attack their own kind simply because they weren’t hatched in the same lake.
But what about human beings? Psychologists say we categorize — or stereotype — by age and race and gender, because our brains are wired to do so automatically.
With the best will in the world, we can’t escape our brain’s tribal quick-think facility that throws everyone we meet into neat boxes. Sometimes our boxes have accuracy and relevance on their side, and sometimes our assumptions are miles from reality, and our natural bias is unreasonable and unhelpful.
In areas as seemingly innocuous as classical music, it has been demonstrated that gender bias is prevalent:
A change in the way symphony orchestras recruit musicians provides an unusual way to test for sex-biased hiring. To overcome possible biases in hiring, most orchestras revised their audition policies in the 1970s and 1980s. A major change involved the use of blind’ auditions with a screen’ to conceal the identity of the candidate from the jury. Female musicians in the top five symphony orchestras in the United States were less than 5% of all players in 1970 but are 25% today.
In more obviously male-dominated areas, the same kind of studies demonstrate bias towards men:
Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant.
When all else is equal, we make snap judgements that men are more competent.
Most of us accept that women should have equal opportunities to men when it comes to access to education, work and most things in life generally. Most of us are pleased that there are laws in place to ensure there can be no overt discrimination. But most of us seem unwilling to explore or acknowledge the levels of unconscious bias that affect the decisions made by all humans.
If women aren’t in top jobs, it’s because they’re not interested! If women aren’t represented in politics, media or on screen, it’s because better qualified male candidates were justly chosen! Really? Really?
Even among those who state gender-equitable ideals, individuals may have an underlying predisposition to favor male candidates over female candidates. So there appears to be a gulf between our conscious ideals of equality and our unconscious tendency to discriminate in the ballot box.
Last year, females comprised just 12 percent of protagonists featured in the top 100 (domestic) grossing films, according to the latest It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World study. This represents a decline of 3 percentage points from 2013 and 4 percentage points from 2002. Females accounted for 29 percent of major characters, and 30 percent of all speaking characters last year. These figures represent no change from 2013. In part, female characters remain underrepresented due to the dearth of women working behind the scenes. In 2014, women constituted 17 percent of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 (domestic) grossing films.
How do we tackle this? Quotas. Positive Discrimination. I don’t mean in companies (although there is an issue there), I mean in areas that are meant to represent society. What is the argument for year after year of leader pictures like this?
In politics, on screen, in the media, there is no excuse for women to be so chronically under-represented. Let’s campaign to change numbers in these key areas through the introduction of gender quotas, and see how unconscious bias based on gender can fall apart in every other area of life.
Legalized quota systems force people to sit up and ”take notice”, this is beyond dispute,but like any forced system is leaves the door wide open to corruption.
The ”blind audition” does away with any need for a forced quota, and simply means the best musician should get the job – and nobody cares who is playing the fiddle.
Now, if a similar competency test could be applied in every work situation ….?
LikeLike
The door’s wide open to corruption in any and all situations. Sigh.
LikeLike
Yes, well the screen idea reduced obvious primary bias did it not?
But as soon as you legislate a quota system then the skill factor can sometimes becomes secondary.
And we have the quota system here.
LikeLike
‘Every work situation?’ Every? Let’s have a look at the real world.
The so called ‘equality’ by an employer who hired a woman in an appliance store went out of business because she could not move a 300 lb refrigerator. Yeah, but she was ‘equal’ all right.
Could equally lift up paper, sell, trade, phone, type, and whatever else is necessary, yet, her physical strength disqualified her while the liberal birds cried fowl.
Equality? Between men and women? Btw, no two musicians are equal, as some think the Doors are great, while others find them despicable. Some think Dylan was God, others think he is the antichrist. Streisand? Greatest voice ever, or a whiny toy? Yeah, good luck with that analogy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, dipshit, there is always one dickhead like you that likes to think they know it all.
Sadly your ability to think further than your nose has always seemed to be your downfall.
One would imagine that if the major cirteria for emplyment in such an appliance stor was moving 300 lb fridges then the best solution would be to specify this as a prerequisite to employment – or employ a gorilla such as yourself and simply pay you in bananas.
LikeLike
I do like your gorilla idea……………….but hmmm, not sure they have ‘evolved’ to where they can operate the fax machine…….
I used your own argument against you, now you cry ‘no fair.’ ‘The best musician’ is actually a poor judge of equality because of the ears bias.
So if a person could judge fairly, without prejudice, then of course the best person for the job would be hired.
I dare say though, few females would be interested in ‘laying and carrying bricks all day.’
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bricklayers tend to lay bricks. That’s why they are called bricklayers. They have hod carriers and labourers to carry out unskilled work.
Before you ask, I’ve done drystone walling, building restoration involving bricklaying in France and wheeled barrows full of muck on archaeology sites.
LikeLike
@rs
Yep, a fine distinction, but the point was made. In some places, they who lay the brick also carry the brick, as not all have the luxury of a personal laborer.
Point still is, go to any construction site where hard physical labor is demanded, and the weaker of the sexes are not lining up to fill out applications.
It is not sexist to observe that bridge painters are men, that iron workers working high atop buildings are men, that sewer line excavators in sub zero weather are men; there is no shame in recognizing that the strength of men and women are not equal.
The bias here is disagreeing with what is obvious to humanity.
LikeLike
The bias here is yours.
http://nypost.com/2010/05/16/a-womans-touch-up-is-coming-to-city-bridges/
LikeLike
Tkx rs, you have inadvertantly made my point.
Efrosini “Efiy” Katanakis is set to become the first female bridge painter to join the city’s all-male bridge-painting division, following her victory last week over the city in a federal gender-discrimination suit.–
Now follow the story roughseas, when she is forced to dangle from the bridge in a harness, and when she quits……………yeah, you won’t hear that report though……..but it will come.
But did you catch the ALL male part???? As I said, women are not lining up to do mens work. It’s that simple.
LikeLike
A job is a job. “…few females would be interested in ‘laying and carrying bricks all day.” Most people who did that job here in Finland after the WWII were women, because there were not enough men for the job. Guess why? Who the hell is interrested in carrying bricks? People come to that line of work because of other reasons than that they find it in any way “interresting”. Most often because they need the money and that is something they actually can do, regardless of their gender.
I have done quite a lot of heavy lifting for work, as heavy as any (carrying bricks all day among others), but I know some women who could do the same jobs as I did and some men who could never have managed in them. That is not a gender issue, even though it is a lot more likely for men to have more upper body strength than women.
During my years as a labourer I have learned, that the trouble with men often is, that they often over estimate their strength, go lift too much on their own and break their backs. It is an attitude problem deriving from their view of themselves as men. This is because they are taught from childhood that their worth comes from being men and that men are strong. Weak men have invented the idea, that men are more intelligent than women, to supplement their sense of worth lacking in them not fulfilling the stereotypical expectation for male worth by being strong.
People should not be taught to get any extra sense of worth from such an irrelevant issue as their gender. It is as irrelevant as our “race”, or nationality in giving us any extra sense of worth. Those are all cheap methods of regarding other people less than oneself, without having to achieve anything at all. Just by virtue of having been born into different body, or place in the world. It should be enough that we are people and what we are good at regardless of our gender, perplexion or origin.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Not sure raut your idea of gender being ‘irrelevant’ carries much weight. It is certainly relevant to a ‘boy scout.’
Anyway, the ‘brick carrier.’ In the U.S. it is common for laborers to carry 12-16 inch blocks weighing 75-90 lbs each. This is one in each hand, all day………supplying the masons, and I can tell you, seeing thousands of sites over the years, I have never seen a woman doing this job. Never.
Is it possible? Certainly. Has it been done? Probably. Is it common? Nope.
I would agree as to your greater point that people are people and should conduct themselves in the skin given them, but there still are natural differences not to be ashamed of.
LikeLike
@ ColorStorm, since I am no boy scout, your analogy of the opinion of a one, on the relevancy of gender in work situations escapes me. What has the view of a child indoctrinated to value himself by a mere accident of being born with particular set of genitals, got to do with anything?
“Oh, ye of little faith…” I did not expect you, of all people, to evaluate the reality according to what you have personally seen. But perhaps I do not know you well enough… I honestly do not care how many, or how heavy bricks the US labourer commonly carries. That is totally beside the point. This is none the less a job a woman can do and have done. It is a job, that was mostly done by adolescent teens, like myself when I was young and carried bricks for my father who was a bricklayer. A good enough summer job for someone with only basic education and no actual professional skills aquired yet. He told me about the women having done most of that work when he himself was a young bricklayer after the WWII in the absence of men, many of whom had been killed or crippled by the war. There was a lot of building sites in Finland in those days after the Soviet air force had bombarded many of our cities with it’s full might. As you can propably imagine.
You may disbelieve me, according to your own personal experience, but you may also appriciate the fact, that my claim is not extraordinary at all, because as you admitted allready, it is possible for women to do this job. Hence, sexuality, sex and gender are indeed irrelevant. Strength may be relevant, but how strong any individual people are is not divided only along the line of their gender identity, or even genitals. Is it?
The jobs that really and precisely require a human male are few and diminishing in number with the devolpment of both technology and ethics. Topmost of them today, that come to my mind are a male prostitute, a male model and a sportsman in a sport event specifically designed for the physique of males and forbidden for women to compete in. Can you come up with any better examples than a brick carrier, or a shop assistant? Who by most insurance companies in Finland at least, would most likely get zilch compensation for complaint of broken back, after having lifted a 300 lb refridgerator alone regardless of his gender.
A politician has not been on the list of jobs only for men for less than hundred years even by most conservative people in the western world, but there are some societies that are even more conservative than the US, like for example Saudi Arabia, but even they are slowly giving in on this ridiculous demand, that because men are better suited for carrying bricks, there should be less women in politics. Right?
There are many natural differences between individuals. Between the sexes most dividing difference lies in that men can not give birth. But that is about the measure of what it surmounts to and there are women who are no less women even though they can not give birth. Are there not? Yet, most such “natural” differences are bigger between the individuals, than any generalized demographic about their percieved “race”, origin, or gender. Those only imply likelyhoods and often not even that. Especially when it comes to emotional or intellectual abilities, not to mention the capacity for such. That was what the topic post was about. Now, was it not?
However, it is nice to be in agreement of the bigger picture about the sense of worth of human beings.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tell me, do you ever have a salient point to make?
LikeLiked by 1 person
EVER? Yeah, once.
‘He made the stars also.’ Everything after that kinda falls right in place.
No bias necessary.
LikeLike
And how is this a salient point?
LikeLike
Are you serious? If God could easily arrange and keep in place the lights and perfections above…………then surely with equal ease having no sweat and losing no sleep……..could He construct man from mere dust.
Like you said, salient. Wake up, get the guitar fog out of your head, lose your bias against nature and common sense, and engage your God given brain.
LikeLike
Which god?
LikeLike
What a creepy photo. So many narcissistic blowhards in one place, I bet each one thinks the crowd is only cheering for him.
LikeLike
You’d fit in a treat! 🙂
LikeLike
I wish. Being a politician looks like a good gig: no hard work, no accountability, listen to myself talk all day…
LikeLike
Atheists and others who have fallen victim to the intellectual plague called Marxism, always make tragically flawed arguments like the ones presented here.
Case in point, this post begins stating a bizarre hallucination as if it were the Gospel truth:
“In a world of survival of the fittest…”
Therefore:
“With the best will in the world, we can’t escape our brain’s tribal quick-think facility that throws everyone we meet into neat boxes.”
This is total nonsense because man, of all creatures, possesses the ability to reason.
And it is with that ability to reason that allows civilized man to overcome tendencies that nothing other than the result of brute ignorance.
LikeLike
@Silenceofmind, you have now asserted, that the arguments of anyone “fallen victim” to Marxism are “tragically flawed”. Yet, you do not present any evidence for this massive over generalization, nor a connection from it to the question at hand. Do you? Why?
I see human beings as able to overcome some of their natural tendencies, as we like any other animals have many a competing natural tendencies, one among those of ours is reasoning, but I do not see how that would go against what the topic post was about. What do you even mean in context to the topic?
We share the ability to reason, but reasoning is necessarily dependant on the amount and esepecially the quality of anything close to objective information. Otherwise, no matter how good our ability is, we are prone to come to the wrong conclusions about reality. Are we not?
“Gospel truth”, is not objective infromation according ot anything else even remotely objective we can reliably measure and test. That is, if you are referring to a particular folk tale we both know? Is it?
We do live in a world of survival of the fittest, as far as the best even remotely objective methodology we do have, can tell us about biology. As you propably know. Do you not?
Yet, people do often fall back on tribalism and intuition, like for example when they are greatly affected by religions, wich most often are built on tribal morals and intuitive reasoning. Is this not so? People also often seem to have this funny twisted and fascistic view on what the survival of the fittest even means. Have you ever noticed? Where do you think that misconception has emerged and why do you think it persists, still even today?
LikeLike
Thanks for popping over SOM, always great to see your take on things. The point with unconscious bias is that it’s unconscious – if it was something we could reason against, it would be call ‘conscious bias’. As smarty pants humans though, able to identify and label this silly tendency, we can put measures in place to redress it e.g. auditions behind screens, blanking out gender info in applications, introducing quotas to ensure representation. Unconscious bias isn’t a result of brute ignorance, it’s just a result of blind evolution.
LikeLike