The main problem is not that you can’t, or even shouldn’t, draw conclusions based on personal appearance. The problem is that obvious, superficial differences are very easily observed and remembered, and so seem to carry more weight than they deserve.
For instance, upon observing one woman and three men exhibiting Annoying Behavior X, many will immediately go for “it must be a guy thing” rather than looking for more powerful explanations, for instance all four people sharing the same profession, or being from the same geographic region, or any number of even more subtle things.
I’d like to test myself somehow, to find out how often I make mistakes along those lines, but nothing occurs to me right now. Yes: just because I have no reason to be especially biased toward making positive or negative associations toward e.g. pretty vs. ugly people (let’s not even consider race), it doesn’t follow that I’m free from a general tendency to form and cling to assocations from chance, or interpreted as causal without recognizing confounds.
Link to cool study/test, anyone? Such demonstrations on Overcoming Bias are the primary reason many of us are here today.
Unfortunately, I expect this sort of thing to be difficult to deliberately test an individual on, because if someone goes in knowing what’s being tested, or figures it out from the test, it’s going to alter the results beyond use. Self-testing may not be possible at all.
I recall having read about blind studies being done on related topics but, alas, I am terrible about keeping organized links to such things.
That I have some implicit association doesn’t actually tell me I make errors in thinking (but maybe if I’m distracted, my errors will tend in the direction of my implicit association?)
The main problem is not that you can’t, or even shouldn’t, draw conclusions based on personal appearance. The problem is that obvious, superficial differences are very easily observed and remembered, and so seem to carry more weight than they deserve.
For instance, upon observing one woman and three men exhibiting Annoying Behavior X, many will immediately go for “it must be a guy thing” rather than looking for more powerful explanations, for instance all four people sharing the same profession, or being from the same geographic region, or any number of even more subtle things.
Example: xkcd
I’d like to test myself somehow, to find out how often I make mistakes along those lines, but nothing occurs to me right now. Yes: just because I have no reason to be especially biased toward making positive or negative associations toward e.g. pretty vs. ugly people (let’s not even consider race), it doesn’t follow that I’m free from a general tendency to form and cling to assocations from chance, or interpreted as causal without recognizing confounds.
Link to cool study/test, anyone? Such demonstrations on Overcoming Bias are the primary reason many of us are here today.
Unfortunately, I expect this sort of thing to be difficult to deliberately test an individual on, because if someone goes in knowing what’s being tested, or figures it out from the test, it’s going to alter the results beyond use. Self-testing may not be possible at all.
I recall having read about blind studies being done on related topics but, alas, I am terrible about keeping organized links to such things.
The link you are looking for.
I’ve seen that, but you’re right, it’s related.
That I have some implicit association doesn’t actually tell me I make errors in thinking (but maybe if I’m distracted, my errors will tend in the direction of my implicit association?)