I was feeling a little more tired than usual last night, so rather than running on the treadmill (the temperature is still in the single digits here), I decided to work-out on the stationary bicycle (not the Peloton!). I occasionally like to read when I'm on the bike, particularly during an easier work-out, so I ended up reading an article in the Harvard Business Review about the Army's new selection process for batalian-level commanders ("Reinventing the Leader Selection Process"). It's a really nice article that I will definitely be posting about in greater detail soon. However, I wanted to talk today about an older research study and concept mentioned in the article that the Army is using to try to reduce implicit bias.
As a reminder, implicit bias can be defined as "the pre-reflective attribution of particular qualities by an individual to a member of some social out group" (think: stereotype). We tend to make generalizations and stereotypes based upon the unconscious opinions that we hold about someone. So, for example, someone who is interviewing a prospective job applicant may be more or less likely to hire that individual based upon these stereotypes and opinions.
Implicit bias is an important issue that unfortunately remains quite prevalent in the workplace. For example, a recent study by Katherine A. DeCelles at the Harvard Business School found that minorities who "whiten" their resume in order to hide any references to their race are 50% more likely to get an invitation to interview. In another classic study, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan found that job resumes with a "white" name versus a "black" name are much more likely to get a call-back. Job applicants with common "white" names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one call-back, while job applicants with common "black" names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one call-back. Even more startling, a resume with a "white" name yielded as many more call-backs as an additional eight years of professional job experience.
It's not just race and ethnicity that drives bias. There is ample evidence of implicit gender bias in the workplace too, which brings me to the study that I mentioned at the very beginning of this post. The story begins in 1952 and the Boston Symphony Orchestra has a diversity problem - too many men and not enough women are members of the Orchestra. The leaders run a small experiment using blind ambitions (basically, musicians played their instruments behind a screen during the audition). The thinking was that by hiding the musician's identity, he or (preferably) she would be judged based solely on their merit. Unfortunately, the initial results still skewed towards hiring male musicians! The problem was that the judges could still determine whether the musician was a man or woman based upon the sound of the women's heeled shoes. The solution - remove the shoes! Once the musicians played their instruments behind a screen AND without wearing any shoes, the number of women who were selected to advance in the audition process increased by 50%!
Blind auditions quickly spread to other symphony orchestras - it's become almost standard practice. On the surface, this practice change seems to have been successful. According to statistics from the League of American Orchestras, prior to blind auditions male musicians outnumbered female musicians by 2-to-1. Now, at least as of 2013, the breakdown of male to female orchestra members is 54% to 46%.
Which brings me to the actual study (Orchestrating impartiality: The impact of "blind" auditions on female musicians), which was published in 2000 in the journal American Economic Review. Two economists, Claudia Goldin from Harvard and Cecilia Rouse from Princeton collected four decades worth of data from eight leading American orchestras. They found that similar to the experience reported way back in 1952 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, blind auditions increased the probability that a woman musician was selected by 50%!
It's a really famous study (according to Google, the original paper has been cited over 1,500 times and is the subject of a number of TED talks, thousands of media mentions, and countless diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) workshops. The study has been criticized as of late (see the Wall Street Journal report "Blind spots in the 'Blind Audition' Study"). Moreover, a follow-up study in 2017 conducted by a team of Australian behavioral economists suggested that perhaps blind auditions aren't as effective as previously believed. In this study, more than 2,000 managers were asked to select recruits from randomly assigned resumes - some of these resumes were de-identified so that the gender of the applicant was masked. The investigators found that de-identifying the resume actually reduced the likelihood that women were selected these positions. While the reasons for these unexpected results can't be known for sure, perhaps some of the managers were aware of implicit gender bias and were therefore proactively hiring women. Anthony Tommasini, writing for the New York Times posed this exact question and further suggested that the use of blind auditions kept orchestras from being racially and ethnically diverse.
On the surface, blind auditions make sense. However, we will not know whether they truly level the playing field until they are subjected to randomized, controlled trials. It's hard to argue with more than 50 years of experience though. Perhaps the changes in the Army's officer selection process will help answer this question in the future.
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