9 ms·

Study: Bias Drops Dramatically for Sexual Orientation and Race – But Not Weight

TACIXAT 8y ago
The weight one is really interesting. If we were to see a drop in the rates of overweight and obese people, I wonder if an increase in bias would be a precursor. Not in the sense that everyone hates them and they change their habits out of societal pressure, but even among that population, a negative bias toward obesity could be a shift toward a more healthy mindset.
- nategri 8y ago
  There is already TONS of negative cultural bias towards being overweight/obese. The fact that there are still so many overweight/obese people shows that we really still don't understand the problem or how to treat it.
- jotm 8y ago
  Goes hand in hand with mental illness (depression, anxiety, etc), which often leads to weight gain through food and alcohol/drug abuse. I'd like to see if bias has dropped for that.
beering 8y ago
There was some discussion about the methodology on Reddit, but I think there is some controversy over whether the methodology used to measure bias is sound. Basically, you're asked to categorize a series of items as quickly as possible, and the time taken is used to measure your "implicit bias". You can try it out for yourself at: https://implicit.harvard.edu/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/
- Retra 8y ago
  Your biases when making quick decisions might not have any relevance to your biases when making day-to-day decisions or when making long term policy-like decisions.
- User23 8y ago
  As usual for things where people can have strong incentives to lie, revealed preference is the only reliable indicator. But since that can't be observed in a psychology lab, instead we see questionable attempts at mind-reading like drawing spurious conclusions from response times. It would be just as scientific to hook the subject up to a polygraph and ask about biases. Since obesity is generally seen as a moral failing rather than something that can't be controlled, people are comfortable admitting their bias. However, for race where it's rather unfair and also doing so will get you fired or worse they prefer not to.
wilgertvelinga 8y ago
Unlike being of a certain skin color or sexual orientation being overweight is actually bad for your health and both mental and physical performance. I'm not surprised bias is not falling.
- hashkb 8y ago
  And in many cases (not all) is a result of lifestyle choices, which are on the table for value judgment.
  - rhcom2 8y ago
    Choices you can't assume to understand by just looking at someone though.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    > lifestyle choices Where have we heard that before... I'm not saying that obesity isn't bad for you, that shit will kill you, nor is it not understood how you can lose weight. But I feel like morbid obesity isn't as simple a solution as that, just like homosexuality can't be "cured" by simply stopping having sex with your own gender.
  - jasonlotito 8y ago
    So you feel it's fair and reasonable to be biased against someone with a disease?
    - jazoom 8y ago
      A disease of their own causing, I think was their point. People are probably likely to be biased against someone with terrible dentition from not brushing, or from using methamphetamines.
      - jasonlotito 8y ago
        Then they can answer with a "Yes, it's okay to be biased against someone with a disease."
ralusek 8y ago
Fantastic comment on reddit regarding how unscientific these "implicit bias" tests are: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/afmxkx/americans_unconscious_bias_on_the_basis_of_sexual/ee0t1xs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/afmxkx/americans_u...
- noobermin 8y ago
  Tbh, we all have qualms about psychological studies in general, especially coming from a physical scientist (physics) like myself. Every time I see data points where the error bars overlap and the authors declare an difference between the points, my gut says, "that's BS." But then again, they can't just "run more experiments" like I can, so we're left with what they have. I'm not sure what the solution is.
  - asabjorn 8y ago
    I would argue that the replication crisis is a sign of improved rigor, but certain parts of psychology is more political than science and hence doesn't replicate well. The positive news is that psychology is in the process of establishing a clear methodology, which means it is becoming a science, and as a consequence we are seeing the replication crisis for everything that doesn't hold water relative to this methodology. Huge wins are things such as BIG5 etc, and IAT being administered at scale before it was validated seems like a huge mistake.
  - jerf 8y ago
    One of the accidental biases I think is introduced to people by their schooling is the idea that all problems have solutions. This is not a deliberate bias or anything, but an accidental one introduced by the fact that the entire process of being educated is basically being walked down a cultivated garden trail in which you are presented with a series of carefully-designed problems where the answers are intended to help your understanding of some topic. But in the real world, problems don't always have answers. If you can't get the data to answer a question, the correct answer is to not answer the question. If you can't gather enough data to separate the error bars, then you don't have an answer to the question. All you can say is that the effect, if it exists, isn't large, and you're not too sure about the effect. If what you have is not sufficient to make a call... stop. Once you see this clearly, the idea that one can be literally unable to gather enough data, but somehow one is obligated to just create an answer even so is just... weird. And one of the major criticisms of the current scientific system is that you can't publish a paper that says "We looked for X and didn't find it", so there's massive incentive to just force an answer out. And when you force an answer out, whereever the answer came from... it isn't the data. It's something else. Varies depending on the topic, of course, but it's certainly not the data. (By contrast, in life we must frequently create answers to questions we don't have enough data to scientifically answer the question. That's the nature of the ride we're on. But it is improper to force answers in the scientific domain.)
heavymark 8y ago
That makes sense, as orientation and race one are born with and we are also not born to be bias against them but nurtured. Where is weight (which we are certainly nurtured with every marketing element we see) its also nature and evolution to in general be attracted or find pleasing healthy people since that results in healthier communities and off spring in general. The same goes for the others they mentioned such as disability. So while the nurture part could certainly change our genetic bias towards healthy people most likely will not. Hopefully the nurture part will since people are bias against people who are healthy but not peak perfection healthy.
- noobermin 8y ago
  i think there is a big argument that the rise of obesity specifically in America is in large part due to diet, heavy in sugars and corn syrup, in response to the "low-fat" fad and corn subsidies respectively. That coupled with the love of cars and sprawl, society in America leads to obesity unless you are wealthy and have time to exercise and can afford food without processed sugars and corn syrup. Therefore, fat is more or less a signifier of class, just as race is, and the bias against fat people is more or less just a manifestation in part of how much we demonize the poor in this country.
  - drankula3 8y ago
    Rich fat people exist, and are demonized too. Obesity is a result of overeating, and can be avoided even if you're poor. Rice and frozen bags of rich veggies are cheap.
- simmanian 8y ago
  > as orientation and race one are born with A friend who studied developmental psych told me scientists are still far from reaching an agreement about the causal factors of homosexuality, that there's actually growing evidence that homosexuality is actually more correlated with one's environment during early (first 3-5 years) childhood. But since how one develops in early childhood is just as binding as the expressions of your genes, you might as well say you're born with your orientation.
yters 8y ago
There is such focus on being tolerant regardless of sexual orientation, but many more people face much greater discrimination on a wider variety of issues, such as being handicapped, unattractive, mentally challenged, etc. I wonder why these groups don't get anywhere as much focus as the small number of gender non-conformist? Seems from a utilitarian perspective a much greater reduction of human suffering would be achieved by learning to appreciate the groups I mentioned, than the current mega focus on gender non-conformists. I think it is because gender-nonconformists can still be highly intelligent and attractive, thus are still useful from our society's image and performance driven perspective.
- maldusiecle 8y ago
  This feels a bit off to me. Most of the people I've met who are really passionate about fighting discrimination against LGBT people have also been very interested in fighting fatphobia (discrimination against overweight people) and ableism (discrimination against the disabled). I think the difference may be that accommodations for disabled and obese people are often more difficult or expensive, although I don't have numbers or anything to prove that. Accessibility for the disabled is also less of a "culture war"-type issue, so progress (or lack of progress) doesn't tend to be as visible.
  - turtlecloud 8y ago
    The unspoken one is heightism for men.
- andonisus 8y ago
  My guess would be because those in the former camp (sexual or racial minority) have been actively persecuted and deprived of life and liberty.
- Djvacto 8y ago
  I feel like this varies based on your personal experience. For example, I've been exposed to a variety of these things in close family and friends from a young age (mental handicaps, eyesight problems/legal blindness, and elderly relatives who are now wheelchair-bound or otherwise restricted). With these experiences in mind, and evaluating the people I surround myself with, I encounter very little discrimination towards these types of people in my day-to-day. But that's just based on my perception and my limited experience. It could be that outside of my social bubble, there are people who actively discriminate against those with disabilities. Could you elaborate on the kind of discrimination you're thinking of? I'm sure people who can't see have a harder time getting jobs (and for sure have to work harder to overcome things like websites with screen-reader-hostile content), but I'm not sure if you're referring to subconscious discrimination or explicit discrimination. The subconscious stuff is harder to deal with because it might not even hit a surface level. On the other hand, the open hostility that the LGBTQ+ people faced was easier to 'diagnose' or recognize, and thus begin dealing with.
noobermin 8y ago
Philosophy academics (the dreaded "post-modernists") have been saying how such biases are socially constructed for so long, that if the conditions in society change, people's perspectives will change. Looks like attitudes really are not so "natural" as people put them.
- tlb 8y ago
  Also, bird migration patterns are changing, therefore they must also be socially constructed. When you use "socially constructed" to mean "influenced in any way at all by society," it becomes meaningless. Its strong meaning, "entirely constructed by society with no natural basis at all," is a useful idea. I don't know that any serious person has claimed that attitudes about weight and homosexuality are unchanging human universals. Historical literature shows a variety of attitudes to both. Societies around the world have a range of attitudes. A post-modernist who claims to have discovered this idea is being disingenuous.
asabjorn 8y ago
One of the core authors of the IAT paper administered here to measure implicit bias released a paper last year showing how the test doesn't actually measure bias, and how it is not clear what this kind of test actually measures. Many of us wish that there was a simple link between an unconscious bias, as measured by the popular IAT test administered by Hardvard or similar tests, and biased behavior. This would give a clear path to fix any bias problem. However, Brian Nosek who is one of the co-authors of the IAT test just released a paper [1] that show that changes in implicit bias don’t lead to changes in behavior. You can find a summary of the article and its findings here [2]. The paper examining 499 studies over 20 years involving 80,859 participants that used the IAT and other, similar measures. They discovered two things: One is that the correlation between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior appears weaker than previously thought. They also conclude that there is very little evidence that changes in implicit bias have anything to do with changes in a person’s behavior. These findings, they write, "produce a challenge for this area of research." The finding that changes in implicit bias don’t lead to changes in behavior, Forscher says, "should be stunning." "I see implicit bias as a potential means to an end, something that tells us what to do and some possible remedies for what we see in the world," Forscher says. "So if there’s little evidence to show that changing implicit bias is a useful way of changing those behaviors, my next question is ‘What should we do?’" [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308926636_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Change_in_Implicit_Bias https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308926636_A_Meta-An... [2] https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Implicit/238807 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Impl...
- xster 8y ago
  This is my biggest confusion reading the summary. Since all kinds of inputs can lead to the same measured output (such as being more scared about the entire theme and self-censoring), how would they single out 'implicit bias' and decide to label it as the cause? Also http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implicit-bias/ http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implic... "Implicit biases are malleable. Our brains are incredibly complex, and the implicit associations that we have formed can be gradually unlearned through a variety of debiasing techniques." I don't know... isn't it almost by definition not 'implicit bias' then?
babyslothzoo 8y ago
Unsurprising, given that sexual orientation and race are not the result of choices. There is no decision to be made, no change in input will change the output. Dietary habits are entirely active choices, it's an active decision making process, and weight is the outcome of those inputs. Gaining or losing weight is basic physics. Perhaps obesity and food abuse/addiction should be looked at much the same way that drug abuse/addiction is looked at. Obesity is the natural outcome of food abuse.
- LanceH 8y ago
  > Obesity is the natural outcome of food abuse. Or food enjoyment. A different reaction to the realization that we are mortal.
  - babyslothzoo 8y ago
    Sure, now replace "food" with "drug" or "alcohol" and it's the same argument, and much of the same pathology for that matter
erikpukinskis 8y ago
Intetesting they didn’t look at sex-based discrimination.
bloak 8y ago
The term "bias" is unhelpfully vague, as is the term "unconscious", so "unconscious bias" is a dialectical disaster zone. The IAT tests measure association (that's what the "A" stands for), not "bias". Probably I associate "Norwegian" with "tall", but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll overestimate the height of a Norwegian person who is standing in front of me. Perhaps I will, but that's an entirely different question, and the bias might go in the other direction from the association: if you're expecting someone to be tall then they might look short when they're in fact average.

The weight one is really interesting. If we were to see a drop in the rates of overweight and obese people, I wonder if an increase in bias would be a precursor. Not in the sense that everyone hates them and they change their habits out of societal pressure, but even among that population, a negative bias toward obesity could be a shift toward a more healthy mindset.

nategri 8y ago
There is already TONS of negative cultural bias towards being overweight/obese. The fact that there are still so many overweight/obese people shows that we really still don't understand the problem or how to treat it.
jotm 8y ago
Goes hand in hand with mental illness (depression, anxiety, etc), which often leads to weight gain through food and alcohol/drug abuse. I'd like to see if bias has dropped for that.

beering 8y ago

There was some discussion about the methodology on Reddit, but I think there is some controversy over whether the methodology used to measure bias is sound. Basically, you're asked to categorize a series of items as quickly as possible, and the time taken is used to measure your "implicit bias". You can try it out for yourself at: https://implicit.harvard.edu/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/

Retra 8y ago
Your biases when making quick decisions might not have any relevance to your biases when making day-to-day decisions or when making long term policy-like decisions.
User23 8y ago
As usual for things where people can have strong incentives to lie, revealed preference is the only reliable indicator. But since that can't be observed in a psychology lab, instead we see questionable attempts at mind-reading like drawing spurious conclusions from response times. It would be just as scientific to hook the subject up to a polygraph and ask about biases. Since obesity is generally seen as a moral failing rather than something that can't be controlled, people are comfortable admitting their bias. However, for race where it's rather unfair and also doing so will get you fired or worse they prefer not to.

wilgertvelinga 8y ago

Unlike being of a certain skin color or sexual orientation being overweight is actually bad for your health and both mental and physical performance. I'm not surprised bias is not falling.

hashkb 8y ago
And in many cases (not all) is a result of lifestyle choices, which are on the table for value judgment.
- rhcom2 8y ago
  Choices you can't assume to understand by just looking at someone though.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > lifestyle choices Where have we heard that before... I'm not saying that obesity isn't bad for you, that shit will kill you, nor is it not understood how you can lose weight. But I feel like morbid obesity isn't as simple a solution as that, just like homosexuality can't be "cured" by simply stopping having sex with your own gender.
- jasonlotito 8y ago
  So you feel it's fair and reasonable to be biased against someone with a disease?
  - jazoom 8y ago
    A disease of their own causing, I think was their point. People are probably likely to be biased against someone with terrible dentition from not brushing, or from using methamphetamines.
    - jasonlotito 8y ago
      Then they can answer with a "Yes, it's okay to be biased against someone with a disease."

ralusek 8y ago

Fantastic comment on reddit regarding how unscientific these "implicit bias" tests are: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/afmxkx/americans_unconscious_bias_on_the_basis_of_sexual/ee0t1xs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/afmxkx/americans_u...

noobermin 8y ago
Tbh, we all have qualms about psychological studies in general, especially coming from a physical scientist (physics) like myself. Every time I see data points where the error bars overlap and the authors declare an difference between the points, my gut says, "that's BS." But then again, they can't just "run more experiments" like I can, so we're left with what they have. I'm not sure what the solution is.
- asabjorn 8y ago
  I would argue that the replication crisis is a sign of improved rigor, but certain parts of psychology is more political than science and hence doesn't replicate well. The positive news is that psychology is in the process of establishing a clear methodology, which means it is becoming a science, and as a consequence we are seeing the replication crisis for everything that doesn't hold water relative to this methodology. Huge wins are things such as BIG5 etc, and IAT being administered at scale before it was validated seems like a huge mistake.
- jerf 8y ago
  One of the accidental biases I think is introduced to people by their schooling is the idea that all problems have solutions. This is not a deliberate bias or anything, but an accidental one introduced by the fact that the entire process of being educated is basically being walked down a cultivated garden trail in which you are presented with a series of carefully-designed problems where the answers are intended to help your understanding of some topic. But in the real world, problems don't always have answers. If you can't get the data to answer a question, the correct answer is to not answer the question. If you can't gather enough data to separate the error bars, then you don't have an answer to the question. All you can say is that the effect, if it exists, isn't large, and you're not too sure about the effect. If what you have is not sufficient to make a call... stop. Once you see this clearly, the idea that one can be literally unable to gather enough data, but somehow one is obligated to just create an answer even so is just... weird. And one of the major criticisms of the current scientific system is that you can't publish a paper that says "We looked for X and didn't find it", so there's massive incentive to just force an answer out. And when you force an answer out, whereever the answer came from... it isn't the data. It's something else. Varies depending on the topic, of course, but it's certainly not the data. (By contrast, in life we must frequently create answers to questions we don't have enough data to scientifically answer the question. That's the nature of the ride we're on. But it is improper to force answers in the scientific domain.)

heavymark 8y ago

That makes sense, as orientation and race one are born with and we are also not born to be bias against them but nurtured. Where is weight (which we are certainly nurtured with every marketing element we see) its also nature and evolution to in general be attracted or find pleasing healthy people since that results in healthier communities and off spring in general. The same goes for the others they mentioned such as disability. So while the nurture part could certainly change our genetic bias towards healthy people most likely will not. Hopefully the nurture part will since people are bias against people who are healthy but not peak perfection healthy.

noobermin 8y ago
i think there is a big argument that the rise of obesity specifically in America is in large part due to diet, heavy in sugars and corn syrup, in response to the "low-fat" fad and corn subsidies respectively. That coupled with the love of cars and sprawl, society in America leads to obesity unless you are wealthy and have time to exercise and can afford food without processed sugars and corn syrup. Therefore, fat is more or less a signifier of class, just as race is, and the bias against fat people is more or less just a manifestation in part of how much we demonize the poor in this country.
- drankula3 8y ago
  Rich fat people exist, and are demonized too. Obesity is a result of overeating, and can be avoided even if you're poor. Rice and frozen bags of rich veggies are cheap.
simmanian 8y ago
> as orientation and race one are born with A friend who studied developmental psych told me scientists are still far from reaching an agreement about the causal factors of homosexuality, that there's actually growing evidence that homosexuality is actually more correlated with one's environment during early (first 3-5 years) childhood. But since how one develops in early childhood is just as binding as the expressions of your genes, you might as well say you're born with your orientation.

yters 8y ago

There is such focus on being tolerant regardless of sexual orientation, but many more people face much greater discrimination on a wider variety of issues, such as being handicapped, unattractive, mentally challenged, etc. I wonder why these groups don't get anywhere as much focus as the small number of gender non-conformist? Seems from a utilitarian perspective a much greater reduction of human suffering would be achieved by learning to appreciate the groups I mentioned, than the current mega focus on gender non-conformists. I think it is because gender-nonconformists can still be highly intelligent and attractive, thus are still useful from our society's image and performance driven perspective.

maldusiecle 8y ago
This feels a bit off to me. Most of the people I've met who are really passionate about fighting discrimination against LGBT people have also been very interested in fighting fatphobia (discrimination against overweight people) and ableism (discrimination against the disabled). I think the difference may be that accommodations for disabled and obese people are often more difficult or expensive, although I don't have numbers or anything to prove that. Accessibility for the disabled is also less of a "culture war"-type issue, so progress (or lack of progress) doesn't tend to be as visible.
- turtlecloud 8y ago
  The unspoken one is heightism for men.
andonisus 8y ago
My guess would be because those in the former camp (sexual or racial minority) have been actively persecuted and deprived of life and liberty.
Djvacto 8y ago
I feel like this varies based on your personal experience. For example, I've been exposed to a variety of these things in close family and friends from a young age (mental handicaps, eyesight problems/legal blindness, and elderly relatives who are now wheelchair-bound or otherwise restricted). With these experiences in mind, and evaluating the people I surround myself with, I encounter very little discrimination towards these types of people in my day-to-day. But that's just based on my perception and my limited experience. It could be that outside of my social bubble, there are people who actively discriminate against those with disabilities. Could you elaborate on the kind of discrimination you're thinking of? I'm sure people who can't see have a harder time getting jobs (and for sure have to work harder to overcome things like websites with screen-reader-hostile content), but I'm not sure if you're referring to subconscious discrimination or explicit discrimination. The subconscious stuff is harder to deal with because it might not even hit a surface level. On the other hand, the open hostility that the LGBTQ+ people faced was easier to 'diagnose' or recognize, and thus begin dealing with.

noobermin 8y ago

Philosophy academics (the dreaded "post-modernists") have been saying how such biases are socially constructed for so long, that if the conditions in society change, people's perspectives will change. Looks like attitudes really are not so "natural" as people put them.

tlb 8y ago
Also, bird migration patterns are changing, therefore they must also be socially constructed. When you use "socially constructed" to mean "influenced in any way at all by society," it becomes meaningless. Its strong meaning, "entirely constructed by society with no natural basis at all," is a useful idea. I don't know that any serious person has claimed that attitudes about weight and homosexuality are unchanging human universals. Historical literature shows a variety of attitudes to both. Societies around the world have a range of attitudes. A post-modernist who claims to have discovered this idea is being disingenuous.

asabjorn 8y ago

One of the core authors of the IAT paper administered here to measure implicit bias released a paper last year showing how the test doesn't actually measure bias, and how it is not clear what this kind of test actually measures. Many of us wish that there was a simple link between an unconscious bias, as measured by the popular IAT test administered by Hardvard or similar tests, and biased behavior. This would give a clear path to fix any bias problem. However, Brian Nosek who is one of the co-authors of the IAT test just released a paper [1] that show that changes in implicit bias don’t lead to changes in behavior. You can find a summary of the article and its findings here [2]. The paper examining 499 studies over 20 years involving 80,859 participants that used the IAT and other, similar measures. They discovered two things: One is that the correlation between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior appears weaker than previously thought. They also conclude that there is very little evidence that changes in implicit bias have anything to do with changes in a person’s behavior. These findings, they write, "produce a challenge for this area of research." The finding that changes in implicit bias don’t lead to changes in behavior, Forscher says, "should be stunning." "I see implicit bias as a potential means to an end, something that tells us what to do and some possible remedies for what we see in the world," Forscher says. "So if there’s little evidence to show that changing implicit bias is a useful way of changing those behaviors, my next question is ‘What should we do?’" [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308926636_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Change_in_Implicit_Bias https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308926636_A_Meta-An... [2] https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Implicit/238807 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Impl...

xster 8y ago
This is my biggest confusion reading the summary. Since all kinds of inputs can lead to the same measured output (such as being more scared about the entire theme and self-censoring), how would they single out 'implicit bias' and decide to label it as the cause? Also http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implicit-bias/ http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implic... "Implicit biases are malleable. Our brains are incredibly complex, and the implicit associations that we have formed can be gradually unlearned through a variety of debiasing techniques." I don't know... isn't it almost by definition not 'implicit bias' then?

babyslothzoo 8y ago

Unsurprising, given that sexual orientation and race are not the result of choices. There is no decision to be made, no change in input will change the output. Dietary habits are entirely active choices, it's an active decision making process, and weight is the outcome of those inputs. Gaining or losing weight is basic physics. Perhaps obesity and food abuse/addiction should be looked at much the same way that drug abuse/addiction is looked at. Obesity is the natural outcome of food abuse.

LanceH 8y ago
> Obesity is the natural outcome of food abuse. Or food enjoyment. A different reaction to the realization that we are mortal.
- babyslothzoo 8y ago
  Sure, now replace "food" with "drug" or "alcohol" and it's the same argument, and much of the same pathology for that matter

erikpukinskis 8y ago

Intetesting they didn’t look at sex-based discrimination.

bloak 8y ago

The term "bias" is unhelpfully vague, as is the term "unconscious", so "unconscious bias" is a dialectical disaster zone. The IAT tests measure association (that's what the "A" stands for), not "bias". Probably I associate "Norwegian" with "tall", but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll overestimate the height of a Norwegian person who is standing in front of me. Perhaps I will, but that's an entirely different question, and the bias might go in the other direction from the association: if you're expecting someone to be tall then they might look short when they're in fact average.