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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: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @07:10PM (2 children)
Perhaps that is true, for some arbitrary definition of "poverty". The facts, however, indicate that few if any children go to bed hungry in the United States today. I have actually read of a couple cases where children died of malnutrition or starvation, in recent years. But, those children also suffered pretty horrible physical abuse before they died. That is, those children were starved to death by hateful parents and/or guardians.
If you can identify some town, county, or city in the US that regularly buries people starved to death, then I'll have to reconsider this post. Unless you can offer such citations, then I'll insist that the US is extremely wealthy, and that our poor has little to complain of. I've been in cities in this world, where the desparate jump into the dumpsters to get at the food that we threw away. I don't see that in the US. Here, dumpster divers are after retail store discards, like computers and computer components that didn't sell, or last year's fashions that didn't sell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @08:44PM (1 child)
Sure, but all nations are improving. Holding our system up to the worst possible places on Earth for those in poverty and calling it a success makes a failure pretty much impossible. The modern food stamp program didn't even exist until the mid 60s. Suffice to say we weren't having carts drive by asking folks to bring out their dead then either.
But maybe the big boys are where things get really interesting. Medicare/medicaid/social security are absolutely huge programs. Our spending on those programs alone is going to be hitting $2.8 trillion in 2020. That spending is more than the GDP of all but 5 countries. For instance it's more than the entire GDP of the United Kingdom! I mean think about what that means. With our spending on just those 3 programs, you have the entire sum of all money generated in a year in the entirety of the United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
If you go back in time just several decades and told people that we'd be spending more on our social programs than the entire GDP of the United Kingdom, which is a quite well developed region in its own right. What would they expect the standard of living for the poor to be like? Probably something somewhat nicer than 'well, they don't immediately jump into a dumpster when I throw out my food'! I'm not even saying these programs are bad (definitely not saying they're good either - but that's another topic). But rather that you're never going to have lasting equality when people are not identical. And the more diverse a people you have, the more inequality you're going to have.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:38AM
And, that is the ultimate answer to socialists.