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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


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Arik on Friday October 25 2019, @07:39PM (10 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Friday October 25 2019, @07:39PM (#911813) Journal
    "And, I'm told that doing so is racist. In fact, doing so can be, and sometimes is, racist. When telling someone where my home is, I say something like, "I live at (insert street address here)". Many, or even most, black people say "I stays (street address)". Just one example of many, of the way black people speak differently from me. So, you're saying it's alright that I would never hire a black person, justifying it with "He doesn't talk like me.""

    Let me snip this down a bit more, there are a few key phrases.

    You go from:
    "Many, or even most, black people say"
    to
    "black people speak differently from me."
    and on even further to
    "So, you're saying it's alright that I would never hire a black person"

    What you've lost along the way is the fact that this is a statistical correlation, not an inherent property. And that's an important distinction, much too important to elide in the course of three sentences like that.

    Even if we agree that it's completely acceptable to never hire someone who speaks differently from you (which we don't btw) that wouldn't mean it's ok to never hire a black person. Because not all black people speak differently than you do. No matter what dialect you speak, there's a black person somewhere that either speaks it natively or can mimic it effectively. So your syllogism fails.

    The other question isn't so easy or clean cut though. On the one hand, there's a legitimate interest in hiring someone that you can communicate with easily, that your customers can communicate with easily. And unfamiliar dialects can impair that. On the other hand, I think it's harmful, offensive even, to discriminate against someone because they have a different dialect than you do. We have many many dialects in this country, no one is 'better' than another. English is a language with a particularly large range of dialects, and the way we have managed to avoid splintering into multiple languages so far is by giving the *literary* language a unifying role. So no matter what your natural dialect is, when you are trying to communicate with someone who speaks another, you both modulate your speech more closely to the written form, and that works wonders. As long as you're both literate.

    I'm afraid literacy is actually decreasing however :(
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @07:57PM (9 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25 2019, @07:57PM (#911830) Journal

    I built those phrases that you keyed on, intentionally. I scaled up from some, to a more inclusive term, to "nevery hire a black person". Parent poster's justification of hiring people they understand easily scales right along with what I answered with. And, when you cut all the bullshit away, you're left with the very same classism/racism - you have plausible deniability to go with your prejudices.

    • (Score: 1) by Arik on Friday October 25 2019, @08:11PM (7 children)

      by Arik (4543) on Friday October 25 2019, @08:11PM (#911841) Journal
      "And, when you cut all the bullshit away, you're left with the very same classism/racism - you have plausible deniability to go with your prejudices."

      I kind of agree.

      It's not 'the very same' because it's clearly different. But it's a subset of what you're starting with - so it's an improvement. A large part of the previous problem, by far the largest part, is now gone.

      I'm parsing that last phrase to mean that you're able to deceive *yourself* at that point. You're not being consciously prejudiced. You're simply making errors of judgement, because you're not sophisticated enough to avoid them.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:29AM (6 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:29AM (#911953) Journal

        I believe that a lot of people do deceive themselves. Watch a few re-runs of Archie Bunker. Archie doesn't realize what a bigot he is. Archie thinks he's a helluva nice guy, just because he hasn't taken the Meathead apart, and flushed the parts down the toilet. His attitude toward black people is even worse of course.

        And, there are other people who outright HATE blacks, and don't even try to convince themselves otherwise.

        Both of those people can use that plausible deniability for their own benefit.

        • (Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 26 2019, @03:29AM (5 children)

          by Arik (4543) on Saturday October 26 2019, @03:29AM (#911966) Journal
          "Archie doesn't realize what a bigot he is."

          I think the character was a little more complicated than just being a bigot, though. That was what made him so powerful - that and being beamed into our homes back in the day when there was only 1 or 2 alternatives.

          "Archie thinks he's a helluva nice guy, just because he hasn't taken the Meathead apart, and flushed the parts down the toilet. His attitude toward black people is even worse of course."

          In a lot of ways he /is/ a helluva nice guy. He loves his wife, he loves his daughter, he works hard to provide for them and you know he'd die to protect them. And despite his horrible unexamined prejudices, he's even a decent neighbor to the Jeffersons, for the most part.

          The best parts of that show were always the moments where he manages to transcend his prejudice.
          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
          • (Score: 2, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:05AM (4 children)

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:05AM (#911971) Journal

            The single best part of that show, was that it helped some of us to understand the world around us. I already knew that some of my acquaintances, and some of my family, were prejudiced. Archie and company helped me, and millions of others, to understand how and why they were so prejudiced. And, as you point out, it helped to understand that just because some asshole was prejudiced, he/she wasn't necessarily a lost cause, or even a monster. Archie Bunker, The Jeffersons, and maybe the Cosby show helped some of us to understand that "different" wasn't "wrong" or "unequal".

            Today's SJW's really need to look back to those shows, evaluate and analyze them, and look at what they accomplished. Then they need to emulate what those shows accomplished, instead of trying to tear down the white man, tear down the establishment, and undermine America itself. Those three shows did as much or more than today's SJW movements to rectify real prejudice. With today's resources, those shows could be improved on by orders of magnitude.

            But, alas, SJW's don't WANT racism to go away. Instead, they capitalize on racism. That is the whole reason for identity politics - they want to "get even" and to dominate the hetero white Christian male.

            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:08AM (3 children)

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:08AM (#911974) Journal

              Oh yeah - Red Fox - what was his character's name? And Lamont. They went a good way toward dispelling stupid ideas about the black race. "I'm coming, Ethel!" That old man could manipulate his son to do just about anything with that stupid trick.

              • (Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:36AM (1 child)

                by Arik (4543) on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:36AM (#911981) Journal
                "Red Fox - what was his character's name?"

                Fred Sanford.

                Red Fox was a great comedian on his own right, outside that show, as well.

                But yeah, it had a huge impact on a lot of us.
                --
                If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
                • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:51AM

                  by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:51AM (#911986) Journal

                  Yeah, Sanford & Son. And, yes, Foxx was a fine comedian outside of the show.

              • (Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:40AM

                by Arik (4543) on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:40AM (#911983) Journal
                Gotta remember to double the final consonants.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redd_Foxx

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXhwQDIbvUg
                --
                If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:43AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:43AM (#911934)

      Communication is important. One of the worst guys to work with was the same color and class as me, but he had a bad habit of mumbling. Every single sentence would start off with two or three words you could understand then trail of into indistinct murmuring. Everybody who worked with him called him mumbles and he was constantly asked to repeat himself, often three or four times. He was mostly sidelined onto jobs he could do on his own, just because two-way communication with him was so difficult.
      He was not a stupid guy in other ways, he just had a bad speech habit and refused to overcome it