Lessons from Katrina: Do We Even Know Bias
When We See it In Ourselves? (cont'd.)
“He is very charismatic,” etc. All of which is to say that many people associate height with leadership. In fact, Timothy A. Judge and Daniel M. Cable, in a study published last year in the Journal of Applied Psychology, assert that, when corrected for age and gender, an inch of height is worth $789 per year in salary! Political strategists have known this for years, because this last election was the first in over 50 years in which the shorter candidate won, which is why one of the major negotiations around presidential debates is always how often the taller candidate will be allowed to be seen standing next to the shorter one.
The point is this. Many people would say that they have a personal preference for height when they are choosing someone to date, but very few would acknowledge and, even more importantly, even realize, that they have a strong preference for it in choosing leaders. We know that implicit choices like this affect other areas of our life as well. For example, research has shown that “attractive children” (however that is defined) receive more attention from their teachers, and that people evaluate people who are overweight more harshly in employee evaluations than thinner people. The question is, if we have such strong associations with these relatively common distinctions in appearance, usually without even realizing it, how strong must our association with other aspects of human difference be --aspects that have much stronger negative stereotypes associated with them, such as race?
This is where the great challenge in uncovering bias occurs. Our general cultural conversation is grounded in the context of “good people and bad people.” That is that “good people” are not biased; they are inclusive and accepting of all people. And “bad people” are the ones who demonstrate bias, make exclusive choices, are bigoted, etc. Undoubtedly there are people who are consciously bigoted, but most of us, even when we make decisions that differentially negatively impact one kind of person for their group identity over others, don’t even realize what we’re doing. In fact, when we are accused of such decisions, we believe we have been treated unfairly because we know ourselves to be “fair people.” When we look at a tall person, for example, we don’t likely say to ourselves, “Wow, he’s tall…that will make him a good leader!” On the contrary, we probably don’t even notice our thinking and associative process.