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> Our small study showed what you'd expect- students- men and women students rated male writers more highly than female writers, and initials were right in the

• pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Yes, but also is that "what you'd expect", why? Most things I read I have no idea of the sex of the author. Do people even look at author names before they start reading (online, say), and even then they can be nom de plumes, or non-gendered names (sometimes surprisingly).
  • emacsen 4y ago
    We announced the name of the author. The script went something like "We're going to ask you to read this piece, written by J. Smith.". During debriefing, we would tell the subjects what we were actually looking for (perceptions based on gender) and most reported not remembering/caring about the gender of the author, but nonetheless the results were clear that there was a gender bias, regardless of whether they reported remembering or caring about the gender of the author.
• emacsen 4y ago
  We didn't have a huge study, <40 participants, so whatever we found wasn't publishable, but I remember the results surprised me. At the time, I felt like "Sexism is dead" and the university I was in was 2/3rds women to 1/3rd men, so we'd never find a bias. As a young man (18/19) I learned to question my assumptions. I thought "It's the 90s, sexism is dead.", but it just wasn't true.