Transcript United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

United States Equal
Employment Opportunity
Commission
Unconscious Bias
Krista Watson
Program Analyst
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What is “unconscious bias”?
Assumptions
 Stereotyping
 Cognitive shortcuts
 Implicit associations
The tendency of our minds to judge
individuals based on characteristics of
groups – “Filling in the Blanks”

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“95% of what we tell you is true we
have never seen. We think it is true
based on the 5% we have seen”
Harold Meyers
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Don’t Answer Out Loud

A man is at work and wants to go home.
However, he will not go home because a
man wearing a mask is waiting there for
him. What does the first man do for a
living?
4
Don’t Answer Out Loud

A man and his son are driving in a car one
day, when they get into a fatal accident.
The man dies instantly. The boy is
knocked unconscious, but he is still alive.
He is rushed to the hospital and sent
immediately to surgery. The surgeon
enters the emergency room, looks at the
boy and says “I can’t operate on this boy,
he is my son”. How is this possible?
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Unconscious Bias

What Does the Research Say?
“Mark of a Criminal Record”
Devah Pager – 2003
Employers in Milwaukee were given a hypothetical
situation. They were asked whether they would hire
an applicant who was reasonably well qualified for a
vacant position but had a recent drug conviction and
eighteen months of prison.
60% of the employers said they would hire the
applicant. This percentage was roughly the same
whether the applicant was black or white.
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“Mark of a Criminal Record”
Devah Pager – 2003
However, months before the survey
both white and black testers with and
without drug convictions and criminal
records applied for positions with these
same employers
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“Mark of a Criminal Record”
Devah Pager – 2003
34% of whites without a conviction were
called back
 17% of whites with a conviction were
called back
 14% of blacks without a conviction were
called back
 5% of blacks with a conviction were called
back

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“Are Emily and Brendan More Employable than
Lakisha and Jamal?,” Marianne Bertrand and
Sendhil Mullainathan – 2002
Hypothetical white applicants 50% more
likely receive call backs
 Improvement in resume quality
significantly improved the call-back
chances for white applicants only

http://gsb.uchicago.edu/pdf/bertrand.pdf
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Complexion Counts in Immigrant Wages – Joni
Hersch, Vanderbilt University - 2007
Survey of over 2000 legal immigrants
 Those with lightest skin made 8%-15%
more than those with darkest skin
 One shade lighter had the same effect as
an additional year of education
 Other factors such as English-language
proficiency , education, occupation, race
and country were considered, but skin
tone persisted as a determining factor

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Joan Williams, University of California, Project for
Attorney Retention, 2009
 50-70% female attorneys perceived they are
held to higher standards than their male
counterparts
 Female attorneys given lower performance
ratings than male attorneys, regardless of the
gender of the evaluator
 22 male attorneys earned all “5’s”. 2 female
attorneys earned all “5’s”. Women accounted for
38% of all attorneys evaluated
 “hard driving” female attorneys deemed difficult
to work with
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Age Preferences Against Older Women for
Entry Level Jobs - Joanna Lahey, Texas A&M
University - 2006
4000 fake resumes sent to employers in
Boston and St. Petersburg. For entry level
positions only. All with no more than ten
years experience listed
 High school attendance dates listed
 Women 35 to 45 were 43% more likely to
get an interview than women 50 to 62

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Height
30% of Fortune 500 CEO’s are 6 foot 2
and taller. In U.S. only 4% of all men are
6 foot 2 or taller. 90% of CEO’s above
average height. (Malcolm Gladwell –
Blink)
 Study controlled gender, weight and age –
each inch of height = $789 pay per year
(University of Florida 10/16/03)

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Blind Auditions for Musicians
Symphony Orchestras
Screen between judges and musician
increases by 50% the probability that a
woman will be advanced from certain
preliminary rounds and increases several
fold the likelihood that a woman will be
selected in the final round.
American Economic Review 2000

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Measurement of Implicit Bias
The Implicit Assumption Test (IAT) IAT’s
have been conducted at the website:
https://implicit.harvard.edu.
 Measures implicit bias against explicit
bias.

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Implicit biases live in subjective decisions,
such as:
- performance evaluation
- hiring
- promotion
- compensation
- job assignment
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SOCIALIZED BIAS?

Education contributes little toward equality
between men’s and women’s earnings.

Widest pay gaps occur in the best-paid jobs with
most highly educated workers, like doctors,
lawyers, scientists, executives.

Pay gap narrows but persists at bottom of the
wage scale where male and female dishwashers
earn about the same.
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Princeton University Press

Nearly all women in their 20’s said their
negotiating skills set them apart from earlier
generations.

Women of all ages, including 20’s, far less likely
than men to initiate salary negotiations and more
likely to take whatever the employer offered.
Women negotiate much less frequently and
intensely than their male colleagues for pay,
promotions and RECOGNITION which lead to
upper mobility.
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UCLA Study

70% of male business graduates said they
deserved more money than other job applicants.
This compares with the 70% of female business
graduates who said they were due salaries
equal to other applicants.

85% of men, but only 17% of women felt is was
up to them to make sure the company paid them
what they were worth.
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Negotiate!

Carnegie Mellon masters graduates; only
7% of women, contrasted with 57% of
men, negotiated their salaries.

Those men and women who negotiated
were able to raise their salary by an
amount slightly more than the average
difference between starting salaries for
men and women.
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Exercise

Pick a Disability
 Blindness
 Cerebral
Palsy
 Mental Retardation
 Quadriplegic

Pick one if you had to have one – pick the
one you would least want to have
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Exercise

Our reactions to each disability is driven
by 3 things:
 What
we don’t know – myths and stereotypes
 What we do know
 Pain
Some Things to Consider
Consciously strive to minimize influence of
unconscious bias.
 Instruct hiring committees to avoid bias.
 Spend sufficient time evaluating each
applicant and avoid distractions – don’t fill
in the blanks.
 Reach out to applicants from
underrepresented groups.

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Some Things to Consider
Develop evaluation criteria prior to
evaluating applicants and stick to it.
 Assure evaluation committees are diverse.
 Switch gender/race in your mind.
 Have decision makers take implicit
association test.
 Train on unconscious bias.

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