Discussion: View Thread

Dear colleagues:

For a course on diversity management, I am looking for experiential
exercises or other ways to have students experience their own subtle
biases, the automatic associations that they may form, and the subtle
prejudices that they may harbor again demographically different persons
(e.g., on the basis of gender or ethnicity).

I have referred to students to Harvard's IAT website
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. I have also confronted students
with the surgeon scenario (surgeon sees young man on operating table and
says: "this is my son." Who do you think is the surgeon?). I have also
recorded a job interview response in different accents. And I have heard
of a photo exercise that presents pictures to students and then asks for
their perceptions. Finally, I am aware of Banaji et al.'s HBR article
(how ethical are you?) that talks about automatic associations.

However, I still would like to learn about more ways to introduce the
topics of subtle biases/automatic associations/subtle prejudice to the
students in ways that lets them experience these.

I greatly appreciate your response.

Sincerely,

Joerg Dietz

Joerg Dietz, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior
Richard Ivey School of Business
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6A 3K7
Tel.: 519 661 4169
Fax: 519 661 3959
http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/faculty/Joerg_Dietz.htm

Joerge, the attractiveness bias has always intrigued me. I have to admit that there have been times where someone cut me off in traffic, and as I caught up to let them know of my irritation, discovered an attractive female. For some strange reason, my anger seems to disapear! How strange it is that I should want to cut someone a break based on their attractiveness, which has no relevance to the situation. Of course, I don't know if this particular kind of thing only afflicts men ;-)

However, Forgas has a paper that shows some very interesting effects that result from a person's attractiveness. You might be able to employ an activity using pictures similar to those that Forgas used if you wanted to demonstrate the bias in the class. Below is the abstract:

"Does the meaning of nonverbal signals depend on the physical attractiveness of the communicator? This study looked at the way positive or neutral facial expression cues by attractive or unattractive female communicators are interpreted. Subjects read detailed descriptions of a female target character accompanied by realistic pictures showing her as physically attractive or unattractive and displaying either a positive (smiling) or a neutral facial expression. Three dimensions of impression formation were assessed: evaluation, self-confidence, and responsibility. Results showed (1) that both physical attractiveness and facial expression had a positive main effect on judgments and (2) that there was a significant and nonobvious interaction on judgments of self-confidence and responsibility. Smiling made attractive targets appear more self-confident, and also more responsible for transgressions,
but the same expression had exactly the opposite effect when displayed by unattractive individuals. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for nonverbal communication in real-life situations and in terms of their relevance to current work on physical attractiveness and impression formation"


Forgas, J.P., 1987. The Role of Physical Attractiveness in the Interpretation of Facial Expression Cues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. 4, 478-489


On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, Dietz, Joerg wrote:

> Dear colleagues:
>
> For a course on diversity management, I am looking for experiential
> exercises or other ways to have students experience their own subtle
> biases, the automatic associations that they may form, and the subtle
> prejudices that they may harbor again demographically different persons
> (e.g., on the basis of gender or ethnicity).
>
> I have referred to students to Harvard's IAT website
> https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. I have also confronted students
> with the surgeon scenario (surgeon sees young man on operating table and
> says: "this is my son." Who do you think is the surgeon?). I have also
> recorded a job interview response in different accents. And I have heard
> of a photo exercise that presents pictures to students and then asks for
> their perceptions. Finally, I am aware of Banaji et al.'s HBR article
> (how ethical are you?) that talks about automatic associations.
>
> However, I still would like to learn about more ways to introduce the
> topics of subtle biases/automatic associations/subtle prejudice to the
> students in ways that lets them experience these.
>
> I greatly appreciate your response.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joerg Dietz
>
> Joerg Dietz, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior
> Richard Ivey School of Business
> University of Western Ontario
> London, Ontario N6A 3K7
> Tel.: 519 661 4169
> Fax: 519 661 3959
> http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/faculty/Joerg_Dietz.htm
>

Dear Joerg:

It sounds like you have quite a number of activities for your
students in the diversity class! I'll add one more to your list, but
the reference I cannot at this moment find the bibliographic information
for this exercise.

There was a publication in the Journal of Management Education,
perhaps as long as 10 years ago, which described an exercise which
involves a married couple talking about a job transfer for one of the
partners. Groups are supposed to discuss the perspective of both
marital partners and determine whether or not the partner offered the
transfer should accept it. Unbeknownst to the participants, the
individual offered the transfer is sometimes the husband and sometimes
the wife (the names are designed to be gender-neutral) and the
individual who would be the "trailing spouse" is sometimes the wife and
sometimes the husband. When the decision is being processed by the
class as a whole, the students are at first extremely puzzled, and then
they start to realize that there are two different versions of the
exercise with genders reversed for transferred and trailing spouse. Of
course, there are a number of statements that reveal gender-bias, and
the students become aware of the fact that what seems "reasonable" in
one situation does not seem so in another--only because of the gender of
the individuals involved.

If I could find the exact reference, I would give it to you. If
I manage to come across it in the near future, I'll send it along. Or
perhaps someone else on the listserv will recognize this activity and
have more details than I do. -- Gayle

Gayle Baugh
Associate Professor of Management
Department of Management & MIS
University of West Florida
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, Florida 32514-5752
(850) 474-2206 (office)
(850) 474-2314 (FAX)
gbaugh@uwf.edu (e-mail)

Dear Joerg,

I use an exercise that is called the "Neighbor Game." It is based on a variation of an activity developed by a diversity training specialist named Tracy Pender. In this interactive session, I ask the students to each select their three ideal neighbors from a list of potential neighbors that includes doctors, lawyers, single parents, homosexual couples, etc. etc. I ask them to be prepared to explain their choice criteria. I then go around the class and let them all share their choices and why they chose the neighbors they chose. You can see where this is going, nothing is as it seems on the surface, the lawyer neighbor is actually a shady character, with even shadier clientele, the single mom is a successful author of children's books, etc.

This tend to be a powerful illumination of all of the biases we use in our decision making. The point I make is not that these biases make us bad people, because it's human nature and explained well by bounded rationality. Rather, it's when we are unaware of our biases, and we let them influence our perceptions and decisions that we may create bad situations and unfair treatment of others.

I will be happy to send you an e-copy of the exercise,

Randy Blass



Randy Blass, PhD
Department of Management
College of Business
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-1110
Ph: (850) 644-7859
Fax: (850) 644-7843
E-mail: rblass@cob.fsu.edu <mailto:rblass@cob.fsu.edu>

________________________________

From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv on behalf of Dietz, Joerg
Sent: Thu 6/14/2007 3:11 PM
To: OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
Subject: Classroom Exercises to uncover automatic associations/subtle biases/subtle prejudices against demographically different persons



Dear colleagues:

For a course on diversity management, I am looking for experiential
exercises or other ways to have students experience their own subtle
biases, the automatic associations that they may form, and the subtle
prejudices that they may harbor again demographically different persons
(e.g., on the basis of gender or ethnicity).

I have referred to students to Harvard's IAT website
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. I have also confronted students
with the surgeon scenario (surgeon sees young man on operating table and
says: "this is my son." Who do you think is the surgeon?). I have also
recorded a job interview response in different accents. And I have heard
of a photo exercise that presents pictures to students and then asks for
their perceptions. Finally, I am aware of Banaji et al.'s HBR article
(how ethical are you?) that talks about automatic associations.

However, I still would like to learn about more ways to introduce the
topics of subtle biases/automatic associations/subtle prejudice to the
students in ways that lets them experience these.

I greatly appreciate your response.

Sincerely,

Joerg Dietz

Joerg Dietz, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior
Richard Ivey School of Business
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6A 3K7
Tel.: 519 661 4169
Fax: 519 661 3959
http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/faculty/Joerg_Dietz.htm