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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
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 25 2019, @05:07PM (19 children)
Isn't it more accurate to say that candidates are being judged more directly by their level of education than by their social class? If Donald Trump came to you for a job interview (high class, near zero education) would you hire him?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 25 2019, @05:51PM (4 children)
Personally, no, but a simple look at his "employment" history suggests that he gets "hired" a lot in spite of obvious signs that he is under-educated and otherwise under-qualified.
It took many years for most banks to come to the realization that he is a bad risk for a loan.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Friday October 25 2019, @09:49PM (3 children)
The guy has made billions. Do you really think he couldn't make you money?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Friday October 25 2019, @10:32PM (2 children)
Based on history, HE would make money and I would end up holding the bag.
Based on analysis, he has consistently under-performed, it's just that he started on 3rd base.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Sunday October 27 2019, @09:56PM (1 child)
That's a lovely theory, and it's certainly a popular one these days. But if someone's education is so lacking that they can't express themselves in a normal manner the odds that they might be lacking in other ways is quite high. Hispanics often come over with 0 English language skill but the next generation has absolute mastery of English. Are there other groups that have been here for many generations, yet can't seem to master English? I suppose that's somehow not their fault, though.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday October 28 2019, @12:45AM
I think you replied to the wrong post, I'm going to need some context here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Friday October 25 2019, @06:00PM (2 children)
Being from a wealthy family does not make one high class.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 25 2019, @07:42PM
I mean high socioeconomic class as described in TFA, of course. If you mean high class in the more cultured sense of the term, I agree that Trump is a bad example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:46AM
And likewise, you being a worthless wretch doesn't grant you any sort of nobility.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2019, @06:01PM
I'd say it's less about social level, or education, than it is "culutral fit" - sameness with the existing organization, particularly from the hiring manager's perspective.
You don't get hired into a chain smoking, foul mouthed, stinking construction crew by displaying your Harvard pedigree and Boston accent, even if you do have the physical attributes and knowledge necessary to do the job and do it well.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @06:49PM (9 children)
He did interview with me for his current job, and I voted to hire him. I wouldn't want to take him away from his duties, since he is doing the best of anybody elected after 1904.
You have funny standards for "near zero education". University of Pennsylvania is Ivy League, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (where Trump went) is highly respected. It is the world's oldest collegiate school of business, and it has produced the highest number of billionaires in the US.
It also depends on the job. I wouldn't hire him as a dentist, firefighter, violinist, or masseuse. He'd make a decent stock broker, baseball coach, general contractor, branding expert, salesman, funeral director, school principal, or negotiator.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @07:47PM (6 children)
By what criteria?
War? Those troops he supposedly withdrew from Syria were going to be sent to Iraq instead. He could withdraw from the entire middle east if he wanted, but he won't, because he's not anti-war like he tries to claim. Oh, and Trump vetoed a bill that would have ended the US's support of Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen.
Health care? Millions of people have lost health insurance under Trump, and I sure don't see him supporting a universal healthcare system, which works much better for every other first world country and would be cheaper.
Trade? He correctly scrapped the TPP, but now is inserting provisions of it into the NAFTA renegotiation, which isn't actually otherwise all that different from NAFTA anyway.
Taxes? The rich are now paying a lower effective tax rate than many working people. That's socialism for the rich, and a benefit to no one but them. If ordinary people received any tax cut at all, it was extremely small. Oh, and this isn't helping with the debt or deficit, either, which Trump claimed to care about.
Net neutrality? He's definitely worse here than the Democrats. We don't need to give the already-monopolistic ISPs even more power over our communications than they already have, and yet that's exactly what Trump did.
Draining the swamp? If you think that appointing a bunch of Goldman Sachs goons and other corrupt establishment figures into his administration qualifies as draining the swamp, then I guess he's doing a great job. How about Saudi Arabia funneling massive amounts of money into his hotels, and then him vetoing the bill that would have ended the US's support of Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen? That's not suspicious at all.
The economy? Half of the country makes $30,000 a year or less and wouldn't have enough money for a $400 emergency. The vast majority of the country couldn't handle a $1,000 emergency. Real wages have barely changed at all. It's mostly the rich who benefit from the stock markets (when they're up), and thanks to Trump's tax cuts for the mega-rich, that's even more true now.
On some issues, Trump is little different from past administrations. On other issues, Trump takes the negative aspects of past administrations to an entirely different level. It's difficult to find significant issues that he's actually better on, and easy to find ones that he is worse on. I know partisan hacks will try to dismiss some of these points by pointing out that they were done by previous presidents as well, but that only means that Trump is just as bad or worse on those issues, not that it's okay.
Gee, I wonder how Donald Trump, who had a rich daddy, got into those virtue-signaling schools for the rich. It's almost like we don't live in a meritocracy or something, and that networking with the elites is more important than how intelligent or skillful you are. Nah, couldn't be. Trump is an anti-establishment figure who merely wants to drain the swamp, after all.
Producing billionaires is not necessarily a good thing at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @08:43PM (5 children)
If you're going to have troops abroad, they should be there in overwhelming numbers for safety. Scattering them about the world makes them easy pickings. It's better to have 10 million in 1 country than it is to have 8 million spread across 8 countries. (that is, 1 million in each of the 8 countries) Moving all troops from Syria to Iraq is thus an improvement.
We don't want a government monopoly on healthcare, so no complaints there. Being promised free care is useless if the wait time exceeds your expected lifespan, and it is useless if the government turns you down because treatment isn't considered cost-effective for a person of your age.
On trade, he's the only one willing to stand up to China.
If a person paying 10 million in taxes gets a 2 million tax cut and a person paying 10 thousand in taxes gets a 3 thousand tax cut, who got the bigger tax cut? Consider that cutting 2 million from the taxes of a person paying only 10 thousand would be absurd (goes negative) and that cutting only 3 thousand from the taxes of a person paying 10 million would be effectively no tax cut at all.
Nobody was supporting any form of Net Neutrality for end users. It would be nice! We could get Alex Jones back on youtube. The battle between Netflix and Comcast isn't terribly interesting to the end users.
Draining the swamp means getting rid of people like John Brennan, a communist muslim who ran our CIA. (no kidding, OMG WTF)
Yeman isn't our shithole to give a fuck about.
Trump isn't responsible for bad financial education. The lack of emergency funds at least tells us that people aren't worried that they could starve.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @09:02PM
An improvement would be getting all of our troops out of the middle east. Obama shuffled troops around as well.
As opposed to what, corporate death panels, tens of thousands of people dying every year from preventable medical issues, higher costs, more paperwork for doctors, more inefficiencies, lower quality care for the average person, and millions of outright uninsured people? That's what our current system gets us. And we still have waiting times comparable to other countries, thanks to private insurance companies. The statistics show that other first world countries which have universal healthcare systems outperform us in just about every way when it comes to the average person.
In an utterly disastrous way that is hurting farmers and many other people, yes. Vastly weakening our imaginary property laws would at least yield some improvement, but this trade war is a waste of time.
The rich paying a lower effective tax rate than many working people is disgusting. The people who need more money the least are the ones who disproportionately benefited from these tax cuts.
You're trying to change the topic. ISPs need to conform to net neutrality, or we'll end up with situations like Comcast throttling torrenting again, among other disastrous decisions.
Draining the swamp means getting rid of all corruption, including Goldman Sachs goons, regulatory capture, and so on. Instead, Trump is happily participating in the corruption. So much for being anti-establishment.
Cool, then we shouldn't be giving Saudi Arabia money. The bill that Trump vetoed would have ended that.
If people are having trouble saving up such meager amounts of money, maybe the economy isn't as great for ordinary people as the corporate media would have us believe.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 25 2019, @11:29PM (3 children)
“If you're going to have troops abroad, they should be there in overwhelming numbers for safety. Scattering them about the world makes them easy pickings. It's better to have 10 million in 1 country than it is to have 8 million spread across 8 countries. (that is, 1 million in each of the 8 countries) Moving all troops from Syria to Iraq is thus an improvement.”
This analysis completely ignores the grave strategic implications to Turkey of attacking US forces. It is universally accepted that Turkey would never cross the Syrian border without the withdrawal of troops and the assent of the Trump Administration— let alone actually attack US troops. If you’re going to defend Administration policy, you need to show that the cost of maintaining roughly 1000 US troops in Northern Syria is much larger than the value of the reputation that the US has with all of its allies, along with regional stability and other related US strategic interests. Suffice to say that even most Republicans in Congress thought it was an extremely bad play.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @09:09AM (2 children)
Yeah, but they're rabid warmongers, so of course they're going to object to even minor changes in troop levels. Let's not allow the military industrial complex to frame the discussion. The military industrial complex would have preferred to continue Vietnam, after all, because it's always in favor of war. Except for Iraq and Afghanistan, all of the wars are undeclared by Congress and thus unconstitutional; that's reason enough to leave. As for Iraq and Afghanistan, we have long since lost our original (which was poor in the first place) reasons to stay, so we should withdraw from there as well. If someone argues that we should stay in any of these places, I like to ask them to define "victory" for me, then give me a concrete timeline for when we'll be able to leave, and finally tell me how they'll get the notoriously corrupt military industrial complex to follow their little plan. If they can't do that, then they're effectively saying that we should stay in these wars forever, because a war without a definition of victory will be made into an endless one.
We should withdraw all of our troops from the middle east. Our presence in the vast majority of places serves as a destabilizing one, as it's not hard to imagine how droning innocent people might radicalize people against us. For the remaining areas, we still have no business being there, since we weren't attacked.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:11PM (1 child)
I share your distrust of the MIC, but your original critique was entirely different and purely tactical in nature.
I don’t have the answer to what the right strategic moves are, but surely going from roughly 1000 to zero is not a minor change in troop levels relative to sensitive region from which they are withdrawn. And whether or not as C-in-C you are suspicious of the MIC, JCS should be consulted and not surprised by a move agreed to with a foreign head of state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:20PM
But we have no right to be in most of these countries, and no reason to be in any of them. We're actually making the problems worse by killing innocent people and using wars as a means of profit. It's not our place to protect these "sensitive" regions, even assuming we could protect them, which we can't.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 25 2019, @07:59PM (1 child)
I wasn't talking about his current job, and I don't really think campaigning and debating is the same as interviewing.
I'll concede, though, that it really does depend a lot on the job you're interviewing for. Salesman seems like an especially good fit.
As far as his education level is concerned, graduating from an Ivy League school is hardly a guarantee of an educated man, particularly when the man comes from a family of wealth and influence. Trump has only to open his mouth to prove that he is an exception to that guarantee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @10:06PM
Trump also doesn't have to impress anyone.
He's the rich boss. It's not uncommon for people like that to show coarseness almost as a show of their power.