4 ms·

> 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 p

> 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, ... , demonstrates that: (a) people can accurately assess a stranger’s socioeconomic position — defined by their income, education, and occupation status — based on brief speech patterns and (b) shows that these snap perceptions influence hiring managers in ways that favor job applicants from higher social classes. > The solution is to just apply the interview and not judge based on a few seconds of dialogue. Agree, but ALSO be aware of such biases and try prevent those.

jdgoesmarching 6y ago
This is how research works, you isolate variables. By OP’s logic science is never testing for anything “real.” I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy, but this is kinda silly.
- pedrosorio 6y ago
  Isolating this variable allows one to study how good hiring managers are at estimating base probabilities for education/competence given social class (news alert: they are not independent). It says nothing about what actually matters: do hiring managers with the ability to properly interview "equally qualified" candidates from different social backgrounds do so effectively (i.e. offer them similar compensation), or do they still rely on the base rates (i.e. bias), and how big is that effect?
- jefftk 6y ago
  But this is also not how isolating variables works. If you give someone no information, and require them to make a decision based only on speech patterns, that does not actually tell you very much about how they would make a decision if they had lots of information including speech patterns. Compare: a) only speech b) lots of complex skills-based information that is (verified in a separate experiment) equivalent on balance, plus also speech It's quite possible that you could see a large difference in decisions in (a) without any detectable difference in (b). For example, imagine in this study hiring managers are (perhaps subconsciously) estimating education level from speech. If they already have lots of details about candidate's education, that "screens out" the rough proxy of their speech patterns.
- splitstud 6y ago
  Questioning the validity of the isolation, and conclusions drawn from the result is how science works.
- KMag 6y ago
  > I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy, but this is kinda silly. I think this is a straw man argument, unless you can point to more than one person here (now I see none) arguing hiring is a perfect meritocracy. I see lots of people questioning the methodology and conclusions drawn, but I don't see anyone claiming hiring is perfectly meritocratic. On the one hand, if we need to perfectly understand the problem before starting to solve it, we'll be forever stuck in analysis. On the other hand, if we are incorrect in our initial analysis, we risk wasting time and other resources on the wrong solutions, reducing resources available for other solutions further down the road. It's very important to distinguish constructive criticism from animosity.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  >I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy I'm surprised you evidently haven't seen the thousands of threads where HN predominantly does nothing but complain about how hiring is not a perfect meritocracy.
- michaelt 6y ago
  Well, the experimenters could have combined their corpus of job candidates describing themselves with a bunch of recordings of actors giving the same descriptions in different accents. Then each hiring manager could have been presented with a different subset of that pool, with both resume and recording. A multivariate regression would then reveal the relative impacts of class, being an actor, and the different self-descriptions.
WalterBright 6y ago
> education I.e. something that does matter. I notice with wry amusement that my own speech patterns vary depending on who I'm talking to. For an obvious example, using simpler words and a higher pitch when talking to very young children. But I use different vocabularies when talking to different groups of adults, too. This is all quite unconscious. I bet we all do this.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  More dramatically, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
pedrosorio 6y ago
> 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. In an interview where you're not allowed to evaluate "all other things". In other words, absent any other information, people believe those from a higher class are more likely to be competent. Is that true? The link says nothing about it. If it is true, the hiring managers did a good job at estimating average competence from social class based on their knowledge (i.e. "bias"). It does not show that in an interview process where you are allowed to evaluate the candidate on factors that matter for the job, higher class matters at all (i.e. given two equally qualified candidates that are interviewed by an experienced hiring manager, the higher class one gets better offers/evaluation of competence). And this is the bias that matters because it applies to the real world.
- ErikVandeWater 6y ago
  Exactly. It's not discrimination if it is objectively true.
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    I would certainly want to see proof before I accepted it was true. And even if it were true, we might find it socially undesirable for people to act on (it's "objectively true" that hiring disabled people costs an employer money too). I have previously seen a similar study to this one where landlords were able to determine a prospective tenant's race in brief phone conversations and were less willing to rent to minority tenants. Was that also just sound, evidence based reasoning?
    - midjji 5y ago
      Few challenge that the children of highly educated parents have higher academic achievement. As highly educated parents is strongly correlated with upper class. This is enough to make it quite likely that someone from an upper class background will be the better candidate in expectation, even if the only information you get is the socioeconomic background. We can quibble over details, but the more you dig into this the more convincing this will become. It does not matter as you already believe this. With regards to minority tenants, institutionalized racism often leads to the case that non-racist agents will have sound evidence based reasons to discriminate. Not based on the properties of the group discriminated, but based on the behaviour of a third party. A decent example is if banks discriminate against a group, then their availability of credit is worse. This can create self perpetuating circles of discrimination, which can be sustained even if all involved organisations and individuals aren't racist. For a hilarious example of something similar, see: https://i.snipboard.io/kdu77.jpg https://i.snipboard.io/kdu77.jpg This is a communication and organisational failure, not racism, but its difficult to distinguish, but critically yes, it means it could be. Non-discrimination and positive discrimination is best viewed as taxes designed to address this kind of problem, and its working. But the habit people have of challenging this kind of thing as a kneejerk reaction is harmful. What you are doing is essentially claiming that their judgements are corrupt or trying to shame by implied association, and that isn't helpful.
vladvasiliu 6y ago
> 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?

jdgoesmarching 6y ago

This is how research works, you isolate variables. By OP’s logic science is never testing for anything “real.” I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy, but this is kinda silly.

pedrosorio 6y ago
Isolating this variable allows one to study how good hiring managers are at estimating base probabilities for education/competence given social class (news alert: they are not independent). It says nothing about what actually matters: do hiring managers with the ability to properly interview "equally qualified" candidates from different social backgrounds do so effectively (i.e. offer them similar compensation), or do they still rely on the base rates (i.e. bias), and how big is that effect?
jefftk 6y ago
But this is also not how isolating variables works. If you give someone no information, and require them to make a decision based only on speech patterns, that does not actually tell you very much about how they would make a decision if they had lots of information including speech patterns. Compare: a) only speech b) lots of complex skills-based information that is (verified in a separate experiment) equivalent on balance, plus also speech It's quite possible that you could see a large difference in decisions in (a) without any detectable difference in (b). For example, imagine in this study hiring managers are (perhaps subconsciously) estimating education level from speech. If they already have lots of details about candidate's education, that "screens out" the rough proxy of their speech patterns.
splitstud 6y ago
Questioning the validity of the isolation, and conclusions drawn from the result is how science works.
KMag 6y ago
> I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy, but this is kinda silly. I think this is a straw man argument, unless you can point to more than one person here (now I see none) arguing hiring is a perfect meritocracy. I see lots of people questioning the methodology and conclusions drawn, but I don't see anyone claiming hiring is perfectly meritocratic. On the one hand, if we need to perfectly understand the problem before starting to solve it, we'll be forever stuck in analysis. On the other hand, if we are incorrect in our initial analysis, we risk wasting time and other resources on the wrong solutions, reducing resources available for other solutions further down the road. It's very important to distinguish constructive criticism from animosity.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy I'm surprised you evidently haven't seen the thousands of threads where HN predominantly does nothing but complain about how hiring is not a perfect meritocracy.
michaelt 6y ago
Well, the experimenters could have combined their corpus of job candidates describing themselves with a bunch of recordings of actors giving the same descriptions in different accents. Then each hiring manager could have been presented with a different subset of that pool, with both resume and recording. A multivariate regression would then reveal the relative impacts of class, being an actor, and the different self-descriptions.

WalterBright 6y ago

> education I.e. something that does matter. I notice with wry amusement that my own speech patterns vary depending on who I'm talking to. For an obvious example, using simpler words and a higher pitch when talking to very young children. But I use different vocabularies when talking to different groups of adults, too. This is all quite unconscious. I bet we all do this.

jacobolus 6y ago
More dramatically, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

pedrosorio 6y ago

> 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. In an interview where you're not allowed to evaluate "all other things". In other words, absent any other information, people believe those from a higher class are more likely to be competent. Is that true? The link says nothing about it. If it is true, the hiring managers did a good job at estimating average competence from social class based on their knowledge (i.e. "bias"). It does not show that in an interview process where you are allowed to evaluate the candidate on factors that matter for the job, higher class matters at all (i.e. given two equally qualified candidates that are interviewed by an experienced hiring manager, the higher class one gets better offers/evaluation of competence). And this is the bias that matters because it applies to the real world.

ErikVandeWater 6y ago
Exactly. It's not discrimination if it is objectively true.
- emodendroket 6y ago
  I would certainly want to see proof before I accepted it was true. And even if it were true, we might find it socially undesirable for people to act on (it's "objectively true" that hiring disabled people costs an employer money too). I have previously seen a similar study to this one where landlords were able to determine a prospective tenant's race in brief phone conversations and were less willing to rent to minority tenants. Was that also just sound, evidence based reasoning?
  - midjji 5y ago
    Few challenge that the children of highly educated parents have higher academic achievement. As highly educated parents is strongly correlated with upper class. This is enough to make it quite likely that someone from an upper class background will be the better candidate in expectation, even if the only information you get is the socioeconomic background. We can quibble over details, but the more you dig into this the more convincing this will become. It does not matter as you already believe this. With regards to minority tenants, institutionalized racism often leads to the case that non-racist agents will have sound evidence based reasons to discriminate. Not based on the properties of the group discriminated, but based on the behaviour of a third party. A decent example is if banks discriminate against a group, then their availability of credit is worse. This can create self perpetuating circles of discrimination, which can be sustained even if all involved organisations and individuals aren't racist. For a hilarious example of something similar, see: https://i.snipboard.io/kdu77.jpg https://i.snipboard.io/kdu77.jpg This is a communication and organisational failure, not racism, but its difficult to distinguish, but critically yes, it means it could be. Non-discrimination and positive discrimination is best viewed as taxes designed to address this kind of problem, and its working. But the habit people have of challenging this kind of thing as a kneejerk reaction is harmful. What you are doing is essentially claiming that their judgements are corrupt or trying to shame by implied association, and that isn't helpful.

vladvasiliu 6y ago

> 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?