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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

#161

Post by kristopolous »

fishtoaster wrote: post #35

Key bit here: > Devoid of any information about the candidates’ actual qualifications, the hiring managers judged the candidates from higher social classes as more likely to be competent for the job, and a better fit for it than the applicants from lower social classes. Moreover, they assigned the applicants from higher social classes more lucrative salaries and signing bonuses than the candidates with lower social s…

It's wild how people with different assumptions about the world can read the same thing, focus on the same part, and walk away with opposite conclusions.

I read that as them trying to control for other factors and get a clean signal to demonstrate their hypothesis as a testable, verifiable, and falsifiable phenomenon.

But some people apparently think that the process of isolation IS the confounding factor that produces the results.

This makes things difficult. If they don't do this people will accuse them of not controlling for everything but when they do do it then they say "well yeah, you're controlling for everything else, of course you'll get that".

The point from my reading was all things being equal except for the subtle verbal patterns of class, the verbal patterns are a real influencing factor in outcome

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

#162

Post by 99_00 »

vmception wrote: post #3

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…

>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 experience biases or don't inherit some of the privileges that they are assumed by others to have. A lot of racial discrimination is created and perpetuated by invalidating those potential allies' experience. While the class bias is never addressed at all.

It works so well and so consistently one might be fooled into think it is by design to protect social elites.

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

#163

Post by coding123 »

hn8788 wrote: post #64
throwawayboise wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this illustrates that it's possible to make changes in how you present yourself to overcome potential class biases. This levels the playing field a lot. And why shouldn't people seeking higher status jobs or education be expected to present and conduct themselves accordingly?

When my wife was working in the tutoring center during grad school, they were told that telling a minority student to write in "proper english" is racist. So there's clearly a double standard where you're advised that telling a black student to stop using slang and write in "proper english" is racist, but it's fine to tell a white southern student that if they had talked with an accent and used a southern vocabulary,…

And now that "anti-racist" advice leaves this student with less of a chance later on when college is over.

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

#164

Post by epgui »

throawy-poor wrote: post #63
flavius29663 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you will get some replies with the depth of "it would be worse if you were not white." I think there is only the smallest amount of truth there. Here are things that have happened to me, a poor white kid from california (and this is just off the top of my head): I could never join a sports team in school or other extra curricular, that shit's expensive. I had to steal food to get enough to eat. I've been pulled over…

Nobody can take these experiences away from you or discount the difficulties you went through.

But saying that you don't have white privilege because you grew up poor is not quite right either. The thing with privilege is that there's more than one kind, and they all add up (and most likely they interact as different factors, so they're more than additive).

* If you're non-white in the US, you're underprivileged.

* If you're poor, you're underprivileged.

* If you have a disability, you're underprivileged.

* If you have a health problem, you're underprivileged.

* If you're an immigrant, you're underprivileged.

* If you're a minority group, you're underprivileged.

There's no neat division between totally privileged and totally underprivileged people: it's a multifaceted and highly textured aspect of human experience, and all of the above statements are true.

If it helps, don't think of it as privilege "adding" anything to your life. Think instead of the opposite: being underprivileged subtracts from the opportunities you're given.

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

#165

Post by tomp »

kristopolous wrote: post #161
fishtoaster wrote: post #35

Key bit here: > Devoid of any information about the candidates’ actual qualifications, the hiring managers judged the candidates from higher social classes as more likely to be competent for the job, and a better fit for it than the applicants from lower social classes. Moreover, they assigned the applicants from higher social classes more lucrative salaries and signing bonuses than the candidates with lower social s…

It's wild how people with different assumptions about the world can read the same thing, focus on the same part, and walk away with opposite conclusions. I read that as them trying to control for other factors and get a clean signal to demonstrate their hypothesis as a testable, verifiable, and falsifiable phenomenon. But some people apparently think that the process of isolation IS the confounding factor that produc…

It’s simply invalid science.

It’s equivalent to having variables x, y, z, setting x = 0 and then exploring the correlation between y and z. That’s a fair experiment, but you simply cannot generalise the conclusion outside of the tested range for x (i.e. for x != 0).

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

#166

Post by esyir »

bjourne wrote: post #99
flavius29663 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not when accounting for a higher level of crime. In fact, whites are more than half of police victims, while causing way less than half of violent crimes. There are 32 million traffic stops each year. In 2019 the police shot 14 unarmed black Americans. I think every death is unforgivable, but let's not pretend that going to work and back as a black person you're putting your life at risk when meeting the police. Ther…

> not when accounting for a higher level of crime. In fact, whites are more than half of police victims, while causing way less than half of violent crimes. ... Think about it. How does higher levels of crime among black Americans explain why more unarmed black Americans are killed by police? Think about it ...

Simple. Assuming that unarmed shooting rate is a proportion of police calls, more crime directly results on more calls and thus more shootings.

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

#167

Post by anigbrowl »

flukus wrote: post #158
anigbrowl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rapidly evolving complexity of your arguments above and below suggests to me your appearance of cluelessness was no more than a rhetorical posture. I have more respect for people who make their strongest arguments up front.

Classic sealioning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

It's a pity you're getting downvoted.

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

#168

Post by kristopolous »

tomp wrote: post #165
kristopolous wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wild how people with different assumptions about the world can read the same thing, focus on the same part, and walk away with opposite conclusions. I read that as them trying to control for other factors and get a clean signal to demonstrate their hypothesis as a testable, verifiable, and falsifiable phenomenon. But some people apparently think that the process of isolation IS the confounding factor that produc…

It’s simply invalid science. It’s equivalent to having variables x, y, z , setting x = 0 and then exploring the correlation between y and z . That’s a fair experiment, but you simply cannot generalise the conclusion outside of the tested range for x (i.e. for x != 0 ).

No it's not.

It's like having x and claiming y and z might exist. You set it equal to zero and then you demonstrate the existence of the others.

Every study I've ever seen dealing with messy social sciences has some kind of fundamental counternarrative. That's why there's follow-up studies to try to demonstrate things in different ways.

Take the Milgram experiment. Some participants have claimed they knew the machine was fake but didn't want to mess up the experiment so they played along. Do we throw that out then? Everything real is complex, we aren't dealing with carefully defined clean room abstractions.

The Asch conformity test with the lines, many participants expressed extreme indifference to the arbitrary exercise after the confederates disagreed. They simply did whatever was required to complete the experiment. Do we toss that out?

All experiments are like this. Every single one. That's why you have to do multiple different kinds and have a preponderance of evidence from a diversity of approaches. That's the whole point

The opposite baseline belief, that mannerisms, poise and confidence have absolutely nothing to do with class signalling and that class absolutely does not reproduce itself through social institutions, seems to me to be the more implausible hypothesis here.

There'd have to be some new hypothesis to explain why it so clearly looks like going to Eton or Harvard and growing up in the Hamptons affords one preferences in the job market even when the prospect employer doesn't know such details.

Personally I think that's the one that should be on the defensive. A confounding factor there is the one that needs demonstration.

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

#169

Post by BeetleB »

throwawayboise wrote: post #44
hn8788 wrote: post #34

Doesn't suprise me. My wife is from a rural town in NC, and was told by her high school teachers that she needed to lose her southern accent if she wanted to be taken seriously in college. When she was working on or master's degree in Maryland, a writing professor commented "you speak and write so well, I never would have guessed you're from the south". That kind of discrimination is very prevalent in academia and me…

Yes, but this illustrates that it's possible to make changes in how you present yourself to overcome potential class biases. This levels the playing field a lot. And why shouldn't people seeking higher status jobs or education be expected to present and conduct themselves accordingly?

> This levels the playing field a lot.

If one person has to change an accent to play at the same level as another who did not have to change at all - I wouldn't call it "leveling the playing field".

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

#170

Post by vladvasiliu »

mavelikara wrote: post #90
beaner wrote: 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…

> The study simulates the other things being equal scenario by eliminating all other avenues for the hiring manager to judge.

I think the issue here is that if the hiring manager only has one variable on which to judge, of course that variable will be used. Whatever that variable may be.

Here is the speech, which is a proxy for class, which is a delicate topic. What if the candidates only differed in the color of their shirt?

I think the issue is not so much to see whether certain criteria matter "all else being equal". It probably does, and the fewer different criteria there are, the more a particular one will matter.

What's more interesting to me, though, is how much a given criteria matters compared to others. Especially criteria I cannot influence (say my race) versus others I can (say my coding level or even speech). And this kind of study cannot show that.

Should we all show up to interviews wearing lime shirts if some study showed that's what a bunch of hiring managers preferred when they had nothing else on which to judge? And how important is that compared to, say, knowing how to code a FizzBuzz? Given limited resources, should I invest in learning to code or in finding the greenest shirt possible?

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