Lessons from Katrina: Do We Even Know Bias
When We See it In Ourselves? (cont'd.)
What is much more likely to happen is that when we see that person, we see leadership. A sense of competence in leadership simply arises in us. And so we often choose the taller person over a shorter, more qualified "him" or over a more qualified "her."
These associations have an even more pervasive impact because they are self re-enforcing. As a 6’5” man, I have had a lifetime of people looking at me in a certain way: expecting me to be the leader in groups that I am in; noticing my strengths; for that matter, noticing me at all! We know this plays out in the way people are reacted and responded to on an interpersonal level as well. I often have people ask me, “How tall are you anyway?” I doubt if very many 5’1” tall men have the same question asked. Why? Because we are more comfortable asking the question when it is being asked to identify a trait that is “favored.” These experiences begin to reinforce that sense of my own leadership competence. I begin to believe that the way people treat me is the way I am. I feel more present. I have more confidence. I expect that people will be interested in what I have to say, so I speak more freely. At some level, I begin to exhibit the same qualities that people attribute to me. I become the stereotype that people have about me. In my own mind, though, I would much rather believe that these traits are the result of my own competence than I would that they are the benefit of my biological luck!
The same may be true in the opposite case, if a person holds a negative stereotype. Their behavior towards people in the stereotyped group may similarly reinforce their feelings, both in their own mind and in the behavior that is encouraged or expected in the person they are stereotyping. We have known about this phenomenon for years…it has been called the “Pygmalion Effect” after the George Bernhard Shaw play of the same name that later was made into the musical, My Fair Lady. People invariably act in accordance with what is expected of them, and their behavior then is more data to reinforce the expectation.