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The problem -- and the reason they are popular -- with identity events like these are that they give lots of people except the most talented women a cop out: S

The problem -- and the reason they are popular -- with identity events like these are that they give lots of people except the most talented women a cop out: Sexist males - "See, women can't hack it as founders in the real world. They need extra help." Non-sexist males - "Whew. I'll support this event and stop second guessing myself whenever I choose to fund a male-led organization." Mediocre females - "Sweet. Now I can get recognition even though a don't deserve it" Talented females - "Crap. Now everyone assumes I have this position just because I'm a woman" Maybe I'm just a naive idealist. I still believe that on average people's individual greed causes then to hire the best people no matter their sex.

mtrimpe 13y ago
You probably are a naive idealist; there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to get rid of that give the IAT on gender a try at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit I'm willing to bet that just the experience of taking it will make you somewhat uncomfortable.
- tonyarkles 13y ago
  The moment where I felt my brain slowing down to parse things was rough. I knew I wasn't going as quickly but I felt like I couldn't do anything to speed up again. Very fascinating how that stuff works subconsciously.
- poorelise 13y ago
  I think I did that for homosexuals (as a random choice). I am not really convinced by it. So maybe I was more ready to associate negative things with gay people. But is that because I think those negative things about them, or because I have heard a lot about their struggles (the "negative things" were more like "troubled" or "depressed" and stuff like that iirc)? It's an interesting experiment, but I doubt it shows what many people would like to believe it shows (including it's creators). Haven't taken the one about gender, though.
- elohesra 13y ago
  Well, I took it and it determined that I don't associate gender with science or liberal arts. It also felt extremely contrived, and felt as though it functions largely on cheap tricks, like building a clear pattern of a theme being presented on one side of the screen for a long while and then suddenly switching it to the other side. To be frank, it seemed like the purpose of it was to induce cognitive stress from trying to figure out where you're trying to click than to actually assess anything to do with gender. I'm aware that biases are doubtless a very hard phenomenon to study accurately, because they can't simply be compared to some arbitrary 'unbiased' standard, because no-one is unbiased, but this did nonetheless feel like it was more a test of motor skills than beliefs. For what it's worth, I'd be interested in seeing something which accurately assesses personal biases, because it'd help one in determining where/if their reasoning might be being influenced by irrational factors.
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    The IAT is the bread-and-butter technique for determining implicit associations and are probably the best technique we have for assessing personal bias. When you try it out for a topic where you do have a strong association you'll actually feel directly what it's measuring and why it's relevant. P.S. Did you really try to answer as fast as possible? If you take your time it won't be able to measure much.
    - elohesra 13y ago
      Yes I really did try to answer as soon as possible. Why would I not? Because it might give me a 'bad' evaluation? Why would I care when I don't even feel that it's valid? In fact, attempting to answer quickly is what lead me to feel it was largely a trick, because it switched up locations of gender after consistent streaks of a given gender (or other metric) being presented solely in one place. Several times I'd be just about to click something and then think "Hey, what the heck? Why did it suddenly move the answer?". This represents a confounding variable in the experiment, because it no longer strictly measures beliefs, but instead measures a mixture of beliefs and motor ability (ability to react quickly to the changing locations of answers), so the test can't determine if an answer was due to belief or motor ability.
aiiane 13y ago
Would data help you change your mind? http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf

mtrimpe 13y ago

You probably are a naive idealist; there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to get rid of that give the IAT on gender a try at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit I'm willing to bet that just the experience of taking it will make you somewhat uncomfortable.

tonyarkles 13y ago
The moment where I felt my brain slowing down to parse things was rough. I knew I wasn't going as quickly but I felt like I couldn't do anything to speed up again. Very fascinating how that stuff works subconsciously.
poorelise 13y ago
I think I did that for homosexuals (as a random choice). I am not really convinced by it. So maybe I was more ready to associate negative things with gay people. But is that because I think those negative things about them, or because I have heard a lot about their struggles (the "negative things" were more like "troubled" or "depressed" and stuff like that iirc)? It's an interesting experiment, but I doubt it shows what many people would like to believe it shows (including it's creators). Haven't taken the one about gender, though.
elohesra 13y ago
Well, I took it and it determined that I don't associate gender with science or liberal arts. It also felt extremely contrived, and felt as though it functions largely on cheap tricks, like building a clear pattern of a theme being presented on one side of the screen for a long while and then suddenly switching it to the other side. To be frank, it seemed like the purpose of it was to induce cognitive stress from trying to figure out where you're trying to click than to actually assess anything to do with gender. I'm aware that biases are doubtless a very hard phenomenon to study accurately, because they can't simply be compared to some arbitrary 'unbiased' standard, because no-one is unbiased, but this did nonetheless feel like it was more a test of motor skills than beliefs. For what it's worth, I'd be interested in seeing something which accurately assesses personal biases, because it'd help one in determining where/if their reasoning might be being influenced by irrational factors.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  The IAT is the bread-and-butter technique for determining implicit associations and are probably the best technique we have for assessing personal bias. When you try it out for a topic where you do have a strong association you'll actually feel directly what it's measuring and why it's relevant. P.S. Did you really try to answer as fast as possible? If you take your time it won't be able to measure much.
  - elohesra 13y ago
    Yes I really did try to answer as soon as possible. Why would I not? Because it might give me a 'bad' evaluation? Why would I care when I don't even feel that it's valid? In fact, attempting to answer quickly is what lead me to feel it was largely a trick, because it switched up locations of gender after consistent streaks of a given gender (or other metric) being presented solely in one place. Several times I'd be just about to click something and then think "Hey, what the heck? Why did it suddenly move the answer?". This represents a confounding variable in the experiment, because it no longer strictly measures beliefs, but instead measures a mixture of beliefs and motor ability (ability to react quickly to the changing locations of answers), so the test can't determine if an answer was due to belief or motor ability.

aiiane 13y ago

Would data help you change your mind? http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf