Telling Women's Lives

Andrew Gormley- Reader Response 3/21/17

Reader Response

One thing that I thought to be significant was the prevalence of implicit association, which most people seem to be wholly unaware of, just as I was before reading the assigned articles and watching the video. This is significant because people may truly believe themselves to be an equal and unbiased person, but actually foster subliminal beliefs that prove otherwise. I think it is important that more people, especially those in positions of power such as hiring managers, are made more aware of their potential of implicit association which could result in unfair decisions being made, potentially on a large scale, without anyone knowing that an element of unfairness or inequality had been present. My interest was piqued by the talk of the Harvard Project Implicit in the video, so I went to the website to take the test. The data from my results suggest that I have a “neutral automatic attitude toward Niffites,” however, my results may have been skewed given that I knew the intent of the study before participating in it. I would be very interested however to see how those in positions of power, without first knowing the objective of the study, would perform.

I would not be surprised to learn that many of those surveyed are in fact affected by the effects of implicit association, as Mahzarin Banaji suggested in the video. If this proved to be true, as it very well may, then I would suggest that the measures suggested in The Science of Equality: Volume 2 be more rigorously implemented. It is, however, valid to say that much is already being done in the work place to try to instill these changes, and has been for some time now, without significant improvement. I think this has much to do with men and people of certain ethnic groups being too quick to disregard these concerns of inequality. To address this, I think it is important to first make sure everyone is aware of and accepts the indisputable evidence of the existence of such inequalities and bias.’ This way, people will be less likely to wholly disregard such initiatives to achieve more fairness and equality and therefore, these initiatives will be more effective.