The real issue with stereotypes isn't that they are false but that people tend to apply them in situations where they are inaccurate because of conditionization on other information.
Whether or not it's true that on average blacks tend to be less conscientious workers or asians more conscientious [1] isn't really that important when making a hiring deciscion. What you'd want to know is whether -- conditional on the information you have -- that variable still has the supposed relationship. People aren't good with conditionalization so they tend to make that assumption but it's quite plausible that the relationship is actually reversed once you know information like what college someone went to.
And it's such a tempting mistake to make even mathematics grad students can't help but feel the pull [2]. That's what makes stereotypes dangerous regardless of whether they are true in some context.
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1: I'd be quite surprised if conscientiousness wasn't usually less for people raised in low income situations generally so it's plausible if -- controlling for nothing else -- this shouldn't be expected merely from average income statistics.
2: Even math graduate students who intellectually know better can't help but emotionally feel that if women are on average worse at math it calls into question the abilities of the women in a graduate math program. Yet, of course, what's true on average for women tells you nothing about what's true for women conditional on scoring well in math classes/tests/getting accepted into a given program.
I don't bring this up to claim it's true or false merely to note how difficult it is to emotionally grapple with conditionalization.
It would be nice if stereotype-free assessment of individuals lined up with rational self-interest, but I doubt it does. For one, considering the future influences on an individual of family and friends is going to involve regression to the mean. For another, success at public-facing jobs will depend upon the stereotypes held by lots of people, in short interactions where assessing the individual is impractical or impossible. Laws and social rules prohibiting group discrimination against individuals make ethical sense based upon the range of common normative foundations, but the problem may end up being rational selfishness as much as irrationality.
Obviously, rational self-interest won't line up with stereotype free evaluation. However, rationally speaking stereotypes tend to be useful only in particularly low information settings and in the modern technological age we can ensure those aren't usually the high stakes interactions.
Well, for the person the stereotype is being applied to. It is high stakes in some sense when you use a stereotype to decide a situation is dangerous or the like but while it might be emotionally hurtful briefly if some stranger treats you as scary (most men suffer this to some degree) it's not really that harmful.
Also, intuitively we just don't find it as objectionable when it is rational and considers all the evidence. Maybe you would make a good employee despite your resume sucking but we don't see that as being similarly objectionable as the case where someone can study hard and be quite gifted but there isn't any way they can convince people to pay attention.
I think we're generally on the same page, but what do you think of my first example there: an individually high-quality member of a social group with undesirable characteristics, who might have a substantially greater risk of problems arising from family, old friends, etc? Ethically, I think we ought to incur some personal cost to protect this individual's individual achievement, but I'm far from convinced that such cost is trivial.
I think it's important here to be clear about the social good we are trying to secure.
If it's merely fairness/second chance etc then anyone who you can do a records search on and discover they grew up/went to school in a not great area (and if they have some tats with bad association even clearer). With Facebook and other social media as well as ancestry databases it's not too hard to find out about people's likely less desierable family connections.
So while I tend to agree there are important societal reasons why we may want to make sure such individuals aren't locked out of opportunity -- indeed I think the same is true for ex-cons, perhaps more so if we don't want reoffenses -- I'm not convinced this is really going to have that much to do with rationally applied stereotypes or that it will tend to correlate much with things like race, religion etc.
But yes doing this likely requires spending money/effort. I think there are neat ideas like offering buisnesses free insurance against employee theft or even non-performance to give some people with particularly tough resumes a chance (ex-cons).
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If it's worries about the social effects of perceived alignment with things like race, religion etc (over and above the concern above) then I think in many if not most cases one can fix the rational problem with more information.
Will it work in every case? Possibly not but it's also hard to care because this is deeply hypothetical. In the real world people are pretty irrational about this stuff and it's hard to imagine that changing so I tend to suspect any fix strong enough to overcome the irrational failure to conditionalize will end up basically overcorrecting and taking care of this point.
Indeed, I think that's exactly what we see in many hiring programs for elite institutions.
Some complexities arise when politics comes in. Whatever bias that feudal societies with male primogeniture had against male bastards was heavily influenced by the fact that noble bastards - whatever their personal qualities - were more likely to provoke civil wars. They didn’t really have the luxury to distinguish between the two levels of stereotype.
The real issue with stereotypes isn't that they are false but that people tend to apply them in situations where they are inaccurate because of conditionization on other information.
Whether or not it's true that on average blacks tend to be less conscientious workers or asians more conscientious [1] isn't really that important when making a hiring deciscion. What you'd want to know is whether -- conditional on the information you have -- that variable still has the supposed relationship. People aren't good with conditionalization so they tend to make that assumption but it's quite plausible that the relationship is actually reversed once you know information like what college someone went to.
And it's such a tempting mistake to make even mathematics grad students can't help but feel the pull [2]. That's what makes stereotypes dangerous regardless of whether they are true in some context.
--
1: I'd be quite surprised if conscientiousness wasn't usually less for people raised in low income situations generally so it's plausible if -- controlling for nothing else -- this shouldn't be expected merely from average income statistics.
2: Even math graduate students who intellectually know better can't help but emotionally feel that if women are on average worse at math it calls into question the abilities of the women in a graduate math program. Yet, of course, what's true on average for women tells you nothing about what's true for women conditional on scoring well in math classes/tests/getting accepted into a given program.
I don't bring this up to claim it's true or false merely to note how difficult it is to emotionally grapple with conditionalization.
It would be nice if stereotype-free assessment of individuals lined up with rational self-interest, but I doubt it does. For one, considering the future influences on an individual of family and friends is going to involve regression to the mean. For another, success at public-facing jobs will depend upon the stereotypes held by lots of people, in short interactions where assessing the individual is impractical or impossible. Laws and social rules prohibiting group discrimination against individuals make ethical sense based upon the range of common normative foundations, but the problem may end up being rational selfishness as much as irrationality.
Obviously, rational self-interest won't line up with stereotype free evaluation. However, rationally speaking stereotypes tend to be useful only in particularly low information settings and in the modern technological age we can ensure those aren't usually the high stakes interactions.
Well, for the person the stereotype is being applied to. It is high stakes in some sense when you use a stereotype to decide a situation is dangerous or the like but while it might be emotionally hurtful briefly if some stranger treats you as scary (most men suffer this to some degree) it's not really that harmful.
Also, intuitively we just don't find it as objectionable when it is rational and considers all the evidence. Maybe you would make a good employee despite your resume sucking but we don't see that as being similarly objectionable as the case where someone can study hard and be quite gifted but there isn't any way they can convince people to pay attention.
I think we're generally on the same page, but what do you think of my first example there: an individually high-quality member of a social group with undesirable characteristics, who might have a substantially greater risk of problems arising from family, old friends, etc? Ethically, I think we ought to incur some personal cost to protect this individual's individual achievement, but I'm far from convinced that such cost is trivial.
I think it's important here to be clear about the social good we are trying to secure.
If it's merely fairness/second chance etc then anyone who you can do a records search on and discover they grew up/went to school in a not great area (and if they have some tats with bad association even clearer). With Facebook and other social media as well as ancestry databases it's not too hard to find out about people's likely less desierable family connections.
So while I tend to agree there are important societal reasons why we may want to make sure such individuals aren't locked out of opportunity -- indeed I think the same is true for ex-cons, perhaps more so if we don't want reoffenses -- I'm not convinced this is really going to have that much to do with rationally applied stereotypes or that it will tend to correlate much with things like race, religion etc.
But yes doing this likely requires spending money/effort. I think there are neat ideas like offering buisnesses free insurance against employee theft or even non-performance to give some people with particularly tough resumes a chance (ex-cons).
--
If it's worries about the social effects of perceived alignment with things like race, religion etc (over and above the concern above) then I think in many if not most cases one can fix the rational problem with more information.
Will it work in every case? Possibly not but it's also hard to care because this is deeply hypothetical. In the real world people are pretty irrational about this stuff and it's hard to imagine that changing so I tend to suspect any fix strong enough to overcome the irrational failure to conditionalize will end up basically overcorrecting and taking care of this point.
Indeed, I think that's exactly what we see in many hiring programs for elite institutions.
Am I sure
The book link is page not found
What is meant by "criteria" in this context?
So, who's the guy in the picture? He's very furry.
Pop superstar Joe Jonas. He's been in a very dark place ever since his wife Sophie left him to become Taylor Swift's lesbian paramour.
Some complexities arise when politics comes in. Whatever bias that feudal societies with male primogeniture had against male bastards was heavily influenced by the fact that noble bastards - whatever their personal qualities - were more likely to provoke civil wars. They didn’t really have the luxury to distinguish between the two levels of stereotype.