United States Equal

Employment Opportunity

Commission

Unconscious Bias

Krista Watson

Program Analyst

1

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”

2

“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

3

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?

5

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

9

“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

10

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

11

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

12

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

13

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)

14

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

15

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.

18

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.

19

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.

20

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.

21

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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