9 ms·

Did blind orchestra auditions benefit women?

78 points by jsweojtj 7y ago

beloch 7y ago
If you're trying to justify the practice of blind auditions, it might be better to target a different prejudice. Sexism may well not be a significant factor in hiring musicians today, but it's likely that other prejudices persist. Although it would be hard to quantify, if you could show that unattractive people or people who do not dress like typical musicians do better in blind auditions to a significant degree, then you might well have justified blind auditions.
- mattigames 7y ago
  But there is a chance you could skip some important judgement by doing blind auditions, for example if someone has sociopathic behaviors that will damage the orchestra team in the long run and that personality trait may have been clear in a face-to-face interview but not so much in a blind one.
  - devteambravo 7y ago
    That is very interesting. Art being compared to business. Should we censor talent to benefit the whole? This isn't a dev team with production deadlines... And yet, where do we draw the line? The artists know.
    - skookumchuck 7y ago
      Why do "we" need to draw a line? I couldn't care less who they hire.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      If you're a working artist then art is business. Most (all?) working artists make compromises in their art for business reasons IME. Professional artists IME (fine art, photography, ceramics) very much operate with production deadlines.
  - necovek 7y ago
    Which you can establish by having a non-musical person (commonly HR person in tech) have an independent screening 1st phase interview. In theory, such a person should be better suited to such evaluation too: it's not uncommon to have psychology majors in HR departments, for instance. And finally, once you find someone is detrimenal to the team (the orchestra), you can still fire them (I know it might be harder).
    - wtdata 7y ago
      If you have a non musical person doing a first - non-blind - screening, than the outcome of the all process becomes non-blind anyway.
  - replyguy912 7y ago
    Must be pretty cool to able to identify sociopaths just by "lookin' them in the eye!" The more I do interviews and get assigned the "culture & fit" asessment role, the more depressed I get. It's really just code for the bias "looks and acts like me => good"
- xiphias2 7y ago
  This can be true, but orchestra is a performance act. If I look at it as a business, I don't see anything wrong in giving higher value to more attractive performers. On the other hand it's important how much higher value they get (and the multiple round audition when only one of the rounds is blind makes sense).
  - leereeves 7y ago
    That's essentially saying the orchestra should cater to the audience's prejudices, and could be used to justify any prejudice.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      That's how entertainment industry works though?
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        Indeed, if it doesn’t it doesn’t make any money and disappears unless it gets subsidies. So the WNBA and orchestras get subsidised and can have professionals whereas without subsidy their losses would force them out of existence in short order.
        leereeves 7y ago
        And orchestras do get subsidies because society feels they have value even if a cabaret would earn more money. Certainly a segment of the entertainment industry earns money by catering to the worst aspects of human nature, but that's not the whole industry.
      - deleted 7y ago
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      - Retric 7y ago
        The majority of people involved in the industry are not visible to the audience.
charliebrownau 7y ago
Any university on the planet not pushing Equal Outcome + Removing Merit + Removing Reward/Talent and Marxism from 2010-2020 ?
kfk 7y ago
Honest question, how does it work if you are trying to have a good balance man/women in your team? Especially in IT trying to keep a good mix and avoid man only teams? Is this kind of advise even “safe” to ask these days?
- idlewords 7y ago
  It's a great question to ask, and I hope you get some good advice here.
- T2_t2 7y ago
  The conjecture - in the article - is it doesn't work at, well at all is strong but certainly not to the degree that is claimed. Also, given the replication crisis in this field, any benefit is possibly noise. By far the better approach than removing information by having blind / limited information applications is to have MORE information, e.g. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/reducing-discrimination-with-more-information.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/re... > We conduct four randomized field experiments among 1,801 hosts on Airbnb by creating fictitious guest accounts and sending accommodation requests to them. We find that requests from guests with African American-sounding names are 19.2 percentage points less likely to be accepted than those with white-sounding names. However, a positive review posted on a guest’s page significantly reduces discrimination: When guest accounts receive a positive review, the acceptance rates of guest accounts with white-sounding and African American-sounding names are statistically indistinguishable.
- Crontab 7y ago
  In my opinion one should be seeking to hire the best person for the job every single time regardless of the person's race or gender. But I also believe that considering diversity needs is fair when tie-breaking between equally qualified candidates.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    I think implicit in the parent's question is that a team might be better without you, even if you're the best person for the specific activities a candidate is being sought for. That is: you want your team to succeed, but you'll accept a little less productivity if the team is fun, or there's less drama, or you feel happy being with your co-workers. >considering diversity needs // What are these needs? I've struggled with this issue recently - in my kids school all the teaching staff are female. All the appointed governors are female too. So the people choosing the staff are females used to working in a female-only environment. There's no [visible or reported] effort to bias towards employing any men. I think not having any men in teaching roles, only the janitor is a man, is a bad thing for all the kids in the school. But, I don't really agree with "positive discrimination" as it's just discrimination and a woman who fails to get the job solely because of her sex would, IMO, be being unfairly discriminated against. My sense is that the unfair discrimination is perhaps necessary, but it sits very uneasily with me. To my mind this is the same sort of consideration, choosing a worse candidate because on a broader perspective, considering characteristics of the system rather than only the character, there's a benefit. tl;dr systemic optimisation rather than local optimisation.
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hmottestad 7y ago
I did not find this very nuanced. The comments from Pallesen seem to try to advocate for extremes. One such comment: "Table 4 presents the first results comparing success in blind auditions vs non-blind auditions. . . . this table unambigiously shows that men are doing comparatively better in blind auditions than in non-blind auditions. The exact opposite of what is claimed." I had a look at the linked paper. And it is true that the table shows that women perform worse in blind auditions. However, the paper does not claim that this table shows that women perform better. Instead the paper elaborates on the options of why women perform worse by arguing the following: "One interpretation of this result is that the adoption of the screen lowered the average quality of female auditionees in the blind auditions. Only if we can hold quality constant can we identify the true impact of the screen." The paper goes on to explain how they discovered that during blind auditions there were a lot more under-qualified women and that this was skewing the data. They discovered this because they had the names of all the participants and saw that some women would participate in both blind and non-blind auditions while others would only participate in blind ones. The following was the papers conclusion on this matter: "When we limit the sample to those who auditioned both with and without a screen, the success rate for women competing in blind auditions is almost always higher than in those that were not blind."
- leereeves 7y ago
  Why would blind auditions lower the average quality of female auditionees, and not male auditionees? That seems like searching for an explanation that fits a theory. Worse, the authors acknowledge that blind auditions were part of a larger effort to recruit more women, but fail to account for other aspects of that effort. They simply attribute the entire effect to the blind auditions. But it seems likely that orchestras that were actively trying to recruit more women (like the NYPhil, which the paper claims increased the percentage of women in the orchestra from least in the nation to most) would have hired more women with or without blind auditions. Original paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w5903.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w5903.pdf
  - dx87 7y ago
    It might lower the average quality of female auditionees because you'd get females that aren't good enough to play in the orchestra, but told themselves that the only reason they weren't previously selected is because they're female. Males haven't been told "the only reason you weren't selected is because you're male", so you're not going to have less skilled males auditioning who think their sex is the only reason they didn't pass previous auditions.
Jolter 7y ago
Did no one follow up on this study since 2000? Presumably more blind auditions have taken place since then, and the basic problem seems to have been lack of data.
jl2718 7y ago
Perhaps it is a problem when the investigator’s entire career would be destroyed if they were to discover anything to contradict the zeitgeist of the field. It seems to me that tenure was meant to solve this, but it doesn’t. Academics are groomed and selected to be career climbers, willing to sacrifice anything to please the gods of their establishment. 1000 years later, still a monastery.

78 points by jsweojtj 7y ago

If you're trying to justify the practice of blind auditions, it might be better to target a different prejudice. Sexism may well not be a significant factor in hiring musicians today, but it's likely that other prejudices persist. Although it would be hard to quantify, if you could show that unattractive people or people who do not dress like typical musicians do better in blind auditions to a significant degree, then you might well have justified blind auditions.

mattigames 7y ago
But there is a chance you could skip some important judgement by doing blind auditions, for example if someone has sociopathic behaviors that will damage the orchestra team in the long run and that personality trait may have been clear in a face-to-face interview but not so much in a blind one.
- devteambravo 7y ago
  That is very interesting. Art being compared to business. Should we censor talent to benefit the whole? This isn't a dev team with production deadlines... And yet, where do we draw the line? The artists know.
  - skookumchuck 7y ago
    Why do "we" need to draw a line? I couldn't care less who they hire.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    If you're a working artist then art is business. Most (all?) working artists make compromises in their art for business reasons IME. Professional artists IME (fine art, photography, ceramics) very much operate with production deadlines.
- necovek 7y ago
  Which you can establish by having a non-musical person (commonly HR person in tech) have an independent screening 1st phase interview. In theory, such a person should be better suited to such evaluation too: it's not uncommon to have psychology majors in HR departments, for instance. And finally, once you find someone is detrimenal to the team (the orchestra), you can still fire them (I know it might be harder).
  - wtdata 7y ago
    If you have a non musical person doing a first - non-blind - screening, than the outcome of the all process becomes non-blind anyway.
- replyguy912 7y ago
  Must be pretty cool to able to identify sociopaths just by "lookin' them in the eye!" The more I do interviews and get assigned the "culture & fit" asessment role, the more depressed I get. It's really just code for the bias "looks and acts like me => good"
xiphias2 7y ago
This can be true, but orchestra is a performance act. If I look at it as a business, I don't see anything wrong in giving higher value to more attractive performers. On the other hand it's important how much higher value they get (and the multiple round audition when only one of the rounds is blind makes sense).
- leereeves 7y ago
  That's essentially saying the orchestra should cater to the audience's prejudices, and could be used to justify any prejudice.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    That's how entertainment industry works though?
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      Indeed, if it doesn’t it doesn’t make any money and disappears unless it gets subsidies. So the WNBA and orchestras get subsidised and can have professionals whereas without subsidy their losses would force them out of existence in short order.
      - leereeves 7y ago
        And orchestras do get subsidies because society feels they have value even if a cabaret would earn more money. Certainly a segment of the entertainment industry earns money by catering to the worst aspects of human nature, but that's not the whole industry.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 7y ago
      The majority of people involved in the industry are not visible to the audience.

charliebrownau 7y ago

Any university on the planet not pushing Equal Outcome + Removing Merit + Removing Reward/Talent and Marxism from 2010-2020 ?

kfk 7y ago

Honest question, how does it work if you are trying to have a good balance man/women in your team? Especially in IT trying to keep a good mix and avoid man only teams? Is this kind of advise even “safe” to ask these days?

idlewords 7y ago
It's a great question to ask, and I hope you get some good advice here.
T2_t2 7y ago
The conjecture - in the article - is it doesn't work at, well at all is strong but certainly not to the degree that is claimed. Also, given the replication crisis in this field, any benefit is possibly noise. By far the better approach than removing information by having blind / limited information applications is to have MORE information, e.g. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/reducing-discrimination-with-more-information.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/re... > We conduct four randomized field experiments among 1,801 hosts on Airbnb by creating fictitious guest accounts and sending accommodation requests to them. We find that requests from guests with African American-sounding names are 19.2 percentage points less likely to be accepted than those with white-sounding names. However, a positive review posted on a guest’s page significantly reduces discrimination: When guest accounts receive a positive review, the acceptance rates of guest accounts with white-sounding and African American-sounding names are statistically indistinguishable.
Crontab 7y ago
In my opinion one should be seeking to hire the best person for the job every single time regardless of the person's race or gender. But I also believe that considering diversity needs is fair when tie-breaking between equally qualified candidates.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  I think implicit in the parent's question is that a team might be better without you, even if you're the best person for the specific activities a candidate is being sought for. That is: you want your team to succeed, but you'll accept a little less productivity if the team is fun, or there's less drama, or you feel happy being with your co-workers. >considering diversity needs // What are these needs? I've struggled with this issue recently - in my kids school all the teaching staff are female. All the appointed governors are female too. So the people choosing the staff are females used to working in a female-only environment. There's no [visible or reported] effort to bias towards employing any men. I think not having any men in teaching roles, only the janitor is a man, is a bad thing for all the kids in the school. But, I don't really agree with "positive discrimination" as it's just discrimination and a woman who fails to get the job solely because of her sex would, IMO, be being unfairly discriminated against. My sense is that the unfair discrimination is perhaps necessary, but it sits very uneasily with me. To my mind this is the same sort of consideration, choosing a worse candidate because on a broader perspective, considering characteristics of the system rather than only the character, there's a benefit. tl;dr systemic optimisation rather than local optimisation.

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hmottestad 7y ago

I did not find this very nuanced. The comments from Pallesen seem to try to advocate for extremes. One such comment: "Table 4 presents the first results comparing success in blind auditions vs non-blind auditions. . . . this table unambigiously shows that men are doing comparatively better in blind auditions than in non-blind auditions. The exact opposite of what is claimed." I had a look at the linked paper. And it is true that the table shows that women perform worse in blind auditions. However, the paper does not claim that this table shows that women perform better. Instead the paper elaborates on the options of why women perform worse by arguing the following: "One interpretation of this result is that the adoption of the screen lowered the average quality of female auditionees in the blind auditions. Only if we can hold quality constant can we identify the true impact of the screen." The paper goes on to explain how they discovered that during blind auditions there were a lot more under-qualified women and that this was skewing the data. They discovered this because they had the names of all the participants and saw that some women would participate in both blind and non-blind auditions while others would only participate in blind ones. The following was the papers conclusion on this matter: "When we limit the sample to those who auditioned both with and without a screen, the success rate for women competing in blind auditions is almost always higher than in those that were not blind."

leereeves 7y ago
Why would blind auditions lower the average quality of female auditionees, and not male auditionees? That seems like searching for an explanation that fits a theory. Worse, the authors acknowledge that blind auditions were part of a larger effort to recruit more women, but fail to account for other aspects of that effort. They simply attribute the entire effect to the blind auditions. But it seems likely that orchestras that were actively trying to recruit more women (like the NYPhil, which the paper claims increased the percentage of women in the orchestra from least in the nation to most) would have hired more women with or without blind auditions. Original paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w5903.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w5903.pdf
- dx87 7y ago
  It might lower the average quality of female auditionees because you'd get females that aren't good enough to play in the orchestra, but told themselves that the only reason they weren't previously selected is because they're female. Males haven't been told "the only reason you weren't selected is because you're male", so you're not going to have less skilled males auditioning who think their sex is the only reason they didn't pass previous auditions.

Jolter 7y ago

Did no one follow up on this study since 2000? Presumably more blind auditions have taken place since then, and the basic problem seems to have been lack of data.

jl2718 7y ago

Perhaps it is a problem when the investigator’s entire career would be destroyed if they were to discover anything to contradict the zeitgeist of the field. It seems to me that tenure was meant to solve this, but it doesn’t. Academics are groomed and selected to be career climbers, willing to sacrifice anything to please the gods of their establishment. 1000 years later, still a monastery.