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posted by Fnord666 on Friday October 25 2019, @03:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the sorry-that-position-has-been-taken dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

Candidates at job interviews expect to be evaluated on their experience, conduct, and ideas, but a new study by Yale researchers provides evidence that interviewees are judged based on their social status seconds after they start to speak.

The study, to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates that people can accurately assess a stranger's socioeconomic position -- defined by their income, education, and occupation status -- based on brief speech patterns and shows that these snap perceptions influence hiring managers in ways that favor job applicants from higher social classes.

"Our study shows that even during the briefest interactions, a person's speech patterns shape the way people perceive them, including assessing their competence and fitness for a job," said Michael Kraus, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. "While most hiring managers would deny that a job candidate's social class matters, in reality, the socioeconomic position of an applicant or their parents is being assessed within the first seconds they speak -- a circumstance that limits economic mobility and perpetuates inequality."

[...] "We rarely talk explicitly about social class, and yet, people with hiring experience infer competence and fitness based on socioeconomic position estimated from a few second of an applicant's speech," Kraus said. "If we want to move to a more equitable society, then we must contend with these ingrained psychological processes that drive our early impressions of others. Despite what these hiring tendencies may suggest, talent is not found solely among those born to rich or well-educated families. Policies that actively recruit candidates from all levels of status in society are best positioned to match opportunities to the people best suited for them."

Journal Reference:
Michael W. Kraus et al. Evidence for the reproduction of social class in brief speech[$]. PNAS, 2019 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1900500116


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @03:52PM (22 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25 2019, @03:52PM (#911676) Journal

    is almost certainly going to be a better candidate for a job

    Actually, I think citations are needed for that. Separate citations for different classes of jobs. Say, maybe, a shop foreman in an auto shop, vs a public relations guy at a huge corporation, vs a spokesman for a political party, vs a factory production worker, vs a factory robotics technician, vs a barber/hair dresser.

    What I see here, is the ages old "good ole boy's" club. If you talk like me, then I'll presume that you share my values, and I'll give you a break. If you talk like a New Yorker, well, sorry Bubba, but we can't use you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX2AyjVrrck [youtube.com]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:00PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:00PM (#911683)

    What the fuck's wrong with you lately Runway? You have re-joined reality. What traumatic event occurred that reset the Fox brain - we need to repeat it with others.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @04:35PM (3 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25 2019, @04:35PM (#911714) Journal

      I'm the same old asocial asshole. Your perception of me varies with the time of the month, the seasons, whether you've been laid recently, and the zodiac. Don't ask ME to explain stuff to YOU. BTW - one more time: I'm not a Fox News watcher. No television, remember?

      • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @05:33PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @05:33PM (#911741)

        By "same old asocial asshole" he means emotionally reactive right qing nutjob that sometimes gets clobbered over the head by reality hard enough to disrupt the brainwashing.

        Or a shill playing a persona and shifting with the winds.

      • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Saturday October 26 2019, @10:33PM (1 child)

        by Pino P (4721) on Saturday October 26 2019, @10:33PM (#912207) Journal

        What traumatic event occurred that reset the Fox brain

        I'm not a Fox News watcher. No television, remember?

        Last I checked, viewing the foxnews.com website did not require a television or a video subscription.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:05PM (16 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:05PM (#911688)

    As I mention below (in a root level reply), the study itself (see sci hub [wikipedia.org] for access) is a sufficient citation. It acknowledges that the most readily and accurately determined characteristic of individuals, based on their speech patterns, was their educational attainment. Even here in text, consider what you can infer about me based on a few sentences of text that could be written, at least in theory, by anybody in this world. Educational attainment and general intelligence level for one. And from that you can also probably guess reasonably accurately all of the stuff that let's "researchers" create click bait - my race, my age range, my socioeconomic class, etc. All that from 120 words.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:22PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:22PM (#911704)

      is your use of commas in your sentences.

      • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:36PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:36PM (#911715)

        and his use of apostrophes . . . *chuckle*

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:46AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:46AM (#911958)

          Though he did, like you, start a sentence with an "and". Which is supposedly against the grammar rules, but I'm glad to see others doing that, because I do it too.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @04:44PM (12 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25 2019, @04:44PM (#911716) Journal

      I thought I went to lengths to demonstrate that the person who sits in a college classroom, learning how to conjugate verbs, etc, may NOT be the best candidate for the job.

      IRL, some damned fool from a college manages to land a manager position. Once his ass is embedded behind the desk, he does his best to surround himself with like-minded people. People who speak like him, people who laugh at the same inane jokes that he finds funny, people who share his life's experience, as much as possible.

      For that reason, we see many experienced people prevented from advancing within the heirarchy, while pimply kids who know nothing are given high paying jobs for which they are not qualified.

      What would you think of an "engineer" who can't even draw up a rough drawing, let alone an actual blueprint? This "engineer" walks into a shop, and verbally describes some hare-brained idea, then walks away, expecting the toolmaker to produce something by tomorrow morning. But, the kid knows when to laugh for the boss, and he knows when not to laugh. And, the toolmaker who laughs AT the boss? He'll never get a raise, let alone a promotion.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @05:54PM (11 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @05:54PM (#911757)

        If companies hire poorly qualified people for dumb reasons and I'm more qualified than they are then I have huge incentive to start my own company and hire all of these overqualified people that never get jobs. I will drive all my competitors out of business just like that since my company will have more skills than them.

        These arguments that companies hire all the wrong people and keep getting away with it and hire based on other factors other than merits don't make sense because if you are oh so much more qualified than everyone else and you know how to identify talent so much better than they do no one is stopping you from starting your own business and outcompeting those that refused to hire you.

        Unless you want to argue that the government creates anti-competitive laws that restrict competition in favor of those less qualified and increases barriers to entry. I agree that there are many instances of this. Point to those specific laws and we can discuss the merits of each individually. Then the problem here lies within the laws, not so much with hiring practices, and it is those laws that need to be discussed.

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @06:06PM (10 children)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25 2019, @06:06PM (#911766) Journal

          I call bullshit on that. One doesn't just start up a company, and overnight challenge a multi-national multi-billion dollar company, no matter how much talent you can corner.

          If you've never seen a freaking half-wit supervising highly talented people, then either A: you haven't been paying attention or B: you are the half-wit. Nepotism is alive and well in the corporate world, among other counter-productive practices.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @06:28PM (9 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @06:28PM (#911779)

            I agree, it does happen, but I do think it's exaggerated because if it happens to such an extreme degree then someone will hire all this underutilized / unutilized talent and outcompete their competitors.

            Big companies got big by doing something right, hiring the right talent. Sure they have the first mover advantage that can help them rest on their laurels to some extent but, short of regulatory capture (which is an important issue that needs to be discussed and if the problem is regulatory capture it's the regulatory capture that needs to be discussed), if they rest on their laurels too much the competition will take them out of business.

            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @06:45PM (4 children)

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25 2019, @06:45PM (#911785) Journal

              Regulatory capture. I'm not sure if you'll count "intellectual property" as regulatory. But, it's a real hurdle, in the Western world. Not so much in China, though. It's impossible for me to start producing the stuff my company produces, without a lot of years tied up in court. Walmart, however, is producing a competing product in China, using Chinese labor, and thumbing their nose at the concept of intellectual property, with the assistance of the Chinese government.

              And, I am serious as a heart attack here. We lost our Walmart contracts, only to watch Walmart start stocking their shelves with nearly identical products bearing the Walmart brand, produced in China.

              You are perfectly right, in that big corporations got big by doing something right. In today's world, those things that they did right more than a hundred years ago may not be right today. Those things that they did thirty years ago, may not even be right today.

              Meanwhile, we have these strange new mutant creatures, called "MBA" who have changed everything that those companies DID do right thirty, or fifty, or a hundred and fifty years ago. Today, the dumbest of people who hold a degree are deemed smarter than any fool who failed to get a degree.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @07:25PM (2 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @07:25PM (#911807)

                I absolutely count intellectual property as regulator capture and a topic worth discussing with respect to a meritocracy.

                • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Friday October 25 2019, @08:18PM (1 child)

                  by exaeta (6957) on Friday October 25 2019, @08:18PM (#911844) Homepage Journal
                  We could start by substantially weakening IP laws so we could compete with China. Why do you think China is out-competing us? Stronger IP laws will only reduce Chinese imports into the US, not other countries. If we try do that eventually China will just stop trading with the U.S. and the U.S. will become irrelevant on a global scale. Instead of trying to stop IP "theft" we should weaken IP laws so that competition and manufacturing can flourish.
                  --
                  The Government is a Bird
                  • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Friday October 25 2019, @08:22PM

                    by exaeta (6957) on Friday October 25 2019, @08:22PM (#911848) Homepage Journal
                    Another huge burden to manufacturing is the red tape required to do chemical manufacturing. Really simple chemicals (like iodine for christ sake) have huge amounts of associated red tape. We cannot compete in manufacturing with a country that has lax chemical laws when ours are so strict. We NEED chemicals to make shit. Environmental laws are important, but we could at least get rid of the drug laws, so environmentally relatively harmless substances like iodine aren't regulated to hell. At least get rid of the precursor regulations, if not the drugs themselves.
                    --
                    The Government is a Bird
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @08:13PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @08:13PM (#911842)

                Also worth discussing are non-compete clauses and regulations surrounding them. The focus should be on anything that prevents a competitor from outcompeting a company that employs poor hiring practices.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:25AM (3 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:25AM (#911930)

              The problem lies more in different domains of competency than in the complete lack of it. The 'halfwits in management' are generally very good at schmoozing, selling shit and office politics. The tech people regard that as irrelevant bullshit and keep complaining about the immoral idiots in charge. The managers in turn regard the techs as blunt, unsocial, politically naive fools.

              They are both right within their respective domains.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @01:01AM (2 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @01:01AM (#911941)

                The managers aren't right if they don't know how to manage tech workers properly, which they so often don't.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @01:22AM (1 child)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @01:22AM (#911945)

                  And you demonstrate that you don't understand evolution. The first job of a manager is to survive at any cost.
                  Managing subordinates well might be useful, but if you can pin failures on rivals, then managing badly might be even more useful. The typical tech view of "let's get the job done" is often in conflict with the manager's desire to protect his position, and grow his empire. If he can pin a failure on his boss it can result in a promotion. If he can pin it on a subordinate, it holds down a potential rival. If he can't blame a rival, then techs make useful scapegoats. Getting the job done is a side effect of the ecosystem in which he swims.
                  The tragedy of the commons applies to the management landscape too, he will enhance his personal position at the expense of the company right up until the commons collapses (company goes bankrupt), and beyond.

                  Techs often don't understand this, and when they do, they find the whole system morally repugnant.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @08:54AM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @08:54AM (#912015)

                    The first job of a manager is to survive at any cost.

                    Even at the cost of the organization, yes. But in turn, we must strip their lives away from them at any cost.