Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
1–10 of 265 posts
Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
#2This makes sense given that there have already been studies that show that this is already practiced when people call to search for housing. https://source.wustl.edu/2006/02/linguistic-profiling-the-so...
It's not that much of a stretch to say that if real estate agents or landlords do it, that hiring professionals also do it.
Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
#3I 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 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.
Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
#4It would be nice to get a transcript so we could identify what speech was declared to be lower socioeconomic speech.
It's important to be able to speak and write proper English for a job interview, even though most speak in an informal English most of the time.
Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
#5“ The researchers based their findings on five separate studies. The first four examined the extent that people accurately perceive social class based on a few seconds of speech. They found that reciting seven random words is sufficient to allow people to discern the speaker’s social class with above-chance accuracy. They discovered that speech adhering to subjective standards for English as well as digital standards — i.e. the voices used in tech products like the Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant — is associated with both actual and perceived higher social class. The researchers also showed that pronunciation cues in an individual’s speech communicate their social status more accurately than the content of their speech.”
From the article.
Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
#6It would be nice to get a transcript so we could identify what speech was declared to be lower socioeconomic speech. It's important to be able to speak and write proper English for a job interview, even though most speak in an informal English most of the time.
The article specifies pretty clearly that the data used included, in part, things like voices from consumer speech recognition products. Furthermore, they found that speech patterns were associated with an actual higher social class.
Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
#7I've always wondered with things like this, could it be possible to make all interaction "text-based" until final stage?
Specifically for hiring:
What if applicants submitted resumes, but the name and school they attended are replaced with numbers. Then throughout the interview process all interactions were text-based and they were addressed by this number. Then offer/acceptance is based on merit (hopefully) and not on economic status, race, gender, etc.
I admit this isn't exactly well thought out, just a thought I've had as a possible way to hopefully weed out any areas for bias to creep into the process.
Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
#8I 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…
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.
Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
#9It would be nice to get a transcript so we could identify what speech was declared to be lower socioeconomic speech. It's important to be able to speak and write proper English for a job interview, even though most speak in an informal English most of the time.
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.
Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
#10I've always wondered with things like this, could it be possible to make all interaction "text-based" until final stage? Specifically for hiring: What if applicants submitted resumes, but the name and school they attended are replaced with numbers. Then throughout the interview process all interactions were text-based and they were addressed by this number. Then offer/acceptance is based on merit (hopefully) and not…
Sounds like applying for a loan right now. The person at the bank puts a few numbers into a computer that ties to a big database maintained by Experian/TransUnion/Equifax/ProfessionalParasites, and then it decides if I should get a loan or not.