3 ms·

Aline from interviewing.io here. Great idea!

• t0mbstone 10y ago
  You all should record the audio from the original modulated interviews, then play them in both male and female versions to sample sets of separate observer groups that rank the performance of the person being interviewed. That way, you would be isolating the thing you are testing to just the voice, and you would be able to establish controls and a baseline for the exact same interview. The way your test is described right now, there are still way too many factors that could explain the results. Your controls are far too loose.
  • leeny 10y ago
    You're absolutely right re controls. Re your suggestion, totally agree, and please stay tuned :)
    • drunkpsychmajor 10y ago
      I have read a lot of the comments here and your article and I find this fascinating. On controls and such: on reddit someone pointed out that more prosocial people may be more likely to sign up but I believe you controlled for this using random assignment so I think you are good there. The biggest thing, and I believe it has already been mentioned, is trying not to bias the raters. The best way fmpov being to pre-record interviews and play them to several different people. The above would prevent testing for attrition but I think one variable at the time is the way to go. You could test attrition later by having ratings go a certain way and then seeing how subjects respond when they know that they interviewer knows their gender vs when they dont etc. If you have any interest in trying to get this published academically, and I want to make sure you understand I am a very lowly research assistant, I could talk to some of the professors at my university to see if there is any interest.
• amyjess 10y ago
  On a similar note, I'm wondering what will happen when somebody is perceived as gender non-conforming. Will a woman using a modulated voice to sound male come off as a woman disguising her voice, or will she come off as an effeminate gay man? There's a lot of stigma to being perceived as the latter.
  • internaut 10y ago
    > Will a woman using a modulated voice to sound male come off as a woman disguising her voice, or will she come off as an effeminate gay man? The sample sounded more like an Englishman to me, not effeminate per se. I've noticed a lot of Americans feel western european accents like Danish/French/English to be 'gay-ish' if they haven't heard them before. Not sure what is going on there.
• belorn 10y ago
  Please make sure that the question is after they have already answered the other fields, and only one per interviewer. Priming is a major problem in this kind of testing, and if you are asking people to find fault in the perceived gender of a person, they then have a high chance the reverse a previous decision.
• lawnchair_larry 10y ago
  I'm not sure if voice modulation is the answer or not, but very cool to see you working on this problem and trying things out. It's a difficult space and most are springing for short-sighted bandage solutions. Best of luck, and keep sharing your findings!