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Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

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Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There once was a study where they eloquently demonstrated this by putting the same white actor into two situations: one had him lay down acting like he was dying from a hear attack in front of Wall Street wearing a suit. The other had him doing the same thing but wearing worn out sports clothing. They found that people responded more favorably to the actor when he appeared to be of the same social class.

We can thank the wars against poverty, drugs, homelessness, and crime for this. These all serve as foils against considering ones own class and how easy it is to move downwards in America without any support for those not in abject poverty nor consideration for the disappearance of community building locations, events, and organizations, in large part due to union busting.

You are suggesting that draconian actions against drugs, homelessness and crime are causes for people associating with their own class and prejudicing other classes. I suspect it's the other way around; we are prejudiced to favor our own kind across many metrics and the consequence of that prejudice is homelessness, crime, poverty etc...

I say this because the kind of prejudice you point out is rampant across all societies, not just America and if anything, America handles it a lot better than any other society.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#112

I think US-bias is more so class bias than race bias and this comes with a 99% correlation to racial discrimination due to the half millenium of directly ensuring certain races could not access the economy or capital or literacy. Racial discrimination also occurs. A lot of support for racial equality is lost because it is too reductive and invalidates the experience of potential allies in the majority power who exper…

as a white that grew up very very poor, I can't possibly understand why so many black people try to convince me that I'm guilty of white privilege, when most of them had many more resources growing up.

privilege is a misnomer when its really freedom from some distractions

nobody is going to call the police on you for simply walking in a neighborhood

nextdoor and facebook groups arent going to have messages from vigilant bored housewives just because you walked down the street

sundown towns and the ideas that reinforce them don't exist for you

but saying “privilege” suggests other things are handed to you that wouldn't necessarily be true

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#113
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of support for racial equality is lost because it is too reductive and invalidates the experience of potential allies in the majority There was a study on that recently: https://osf.io/tdkf3/

I've got a lot of problems with this work, but I think I can best summarize my issues with the question: Who are the "Democratic elites"? A list of "Democratic politicians" and quotes from them is given, but I'm curious if that's the full summation of who the "elites" are, or if there are other, thus far unnamed "elites". I can't think of a better example, but this reminds me of some of the papers on skull size from…

While I don't think the study is particularly strong by itself, your criticisms are kind of strange.

I find that hard to believe that defining a roster of "Democrat elites" materially changes the survey responses and analysis. The only way this critique is relevant is if you reject the premise of the paper, but you don't seem to be doing that?

Is that a critique of all correlative studies? What specifically is this paper doing that you think bridges on phrenology (or all that other brain-size hokum)?

Why must this paper do that? There's a whole field of political science and opinion polling devoted to effective messaging, and they produce studies like this all the time. Maybe you find focus-group-shaped messaging "insulting", but that seems orthogonal to the goals of this paper. But maybe you can crack that nut and then we can purge like half of Twitter and most political talking heads ;)

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#114
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the point taken from the study is really designed to stoke tension when it is not really reflective of anything meaningful when it comes to job applicant filtering. It reminds me of a learning from one of Thomas Sowell's books. There were communities that thought that background checks for employees in certain industries were racially discriminating by their very nature. They moved to ban them. Race disparities…

> So it's not testing for anything real. You are too quick to dismiss the study, I think. What the study shows, I think, is that other things being equal the person who sounds to be from higher class is likely to get the job. The study simulates the other things being equal scenario by eliminating all other avenues for the hiring manager to judge. Here is the quote from the TFA, lightly edited for emphasis: The study…

This is how research works, you isolate variables. By OP’s logic science is never testing for anything “real.”

I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy, but this is kinda silly.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was stopped too by police and one time briefly searched, so what? Being stopped by the police is not a game changer. If you haven't done anything wrong you'll walk away and go to work and back home. Why is being stopped by police such a big deal? I think the police should do more of that in the US, it would reduce crime considerably.

Black peoples in the US are far more likely to be summarily executed when interacting with police.

They're more likely to be roughed up and about equally likely to be shot

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_anal...

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was stopped too by police and one time briefly searched, so what? Being stopped by the police is not a game changer. If you haven't done anything wrong you'll walk away and go to work and back home. Why is being stopped by police such a big deal? I think the police should do more of that in the US, it would reduce crime considerably.

Black peoples in the US are far more likely to be summarily executed when interacting with police.

An unfortunate myth that is easily disproven after a quick glance at the data. Yet, it persists.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#117
Also: weight, looks, gender, attire, name, skin color, mannerisms, confidence, positivity/enthusiasm/attitude/energy, and age are definitely biases that will get candidates hired or discarded.

It never clicked to me at the time, but when I was 14-18, I was offered interviews for office jobs nearly everyday where other workers were 25+ and had degrees. At 15, by attending a colloquia at IBM, I was offered a paid dark matter research assistant job, which didn't make any rational sense. I think it was physical attributes and speech bias rather than utility for a particular job.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#118
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't take into account things like accent, which does count. Many people native to the Boston area looking to get high-paying jobs (esp. in tech) work on breaking their Boston accents to sound higher class.

Practically all US regional accents, especially if thick, register as "lower" than Standard American English spoken with a generic or newscaster accent.

There's an interesting documentary on American accents.

Do You Speak American?

https://www.pbs.org/speak/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_You_Speak_American%3F

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#119
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't take into account things like accent, which does count. Many people native to the Boston area looking to get high-paying jobs (esp. in tech) work on breaking their Boston accents to sound higher class.

Practically all US regional accents, especially if thick, register as "lower" than Standard American English spoken with a generic or newscaster accent.

What's interesting is I moved to Austin from CA. I'm used to Texans having accents because my maternal family is from north Texas. I haven't heard one drawl yet. It could be class or proliferation of CONUS emigration.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no Standard US English accent. Even people from the US Pacific Northwest speak with an accent. Interestingly, there are AI apps to make your English accent [1] more mainstream, but the fact is that judging a person by their accent is xenophobic. Anyways, I practice my pronunciation for a foreign language using speech recognition software/apps. [1] Class Is in Session: AI App Schools on English Pronunciation:…

The national news anchors de facto define the standard US accent.

Perhaps analogous to BBC and Received Pronunciation (RP).

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

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