I can agree with all of this.
With regards to the last sentence, I am a bit confused though...
Are you saying that the desired qualities for the job are skewed in order to fit a specific demographic (i.e., rigging the game to a specific demographic), or that interviewers (etc.) perceive qualities in certain candidates due to the candidates' demographic profiles and the interviewers' unconscious associations?
The first one. But the rigging isn’t consciously done. It’s a post-decision rationalization. In one example, there is a male candidate and a female candidate, he has more experience, she has better qualifications. The male candidate is chosen on the basis that “experience counts for more than qualifications in this jobâ€. But where the situation is flipped and the female candidate is more experienced, the male candidate is chosen – on the basis of his being better qualified.
I don’t have the study to hand, I’ll have to get back to you with references.
I'm not sure I'm willing to say the unconscious has no reasoning process.
I think the unconscious could very well have a phenomenal reasoning process.
Which, I add, is not to deny the fact that it can also have plenty of irrational workings and associations.
What would you say to this notion?
Clearly some kind of algorithm is at work. But the results are what we call “intuition†–the process by which we’ve arrived at a conclusion is unknown to us. So we have no way of validating it. Reasoning has to be a conscious process.
So one can know something accurately, but their accurate thought is not a rational thought unless its accuracy can be proven by logic?
Rational means based on reason. Reason requires logic, so yeah.
You can come to the right conclusion but have the wrong set of premises. That isn’t sound reasoning.
Part of my concern is where you draw the line between an accurate association and an inaccurate association.
Do you consciously or unconsciously recognize what a stop sign means?
If unconscious, then it would seem rather important to possess these unconscious associations, would it not?
This is a conscious learning process, which with repetition becomes automatic - delegated to the unconscious but via conscious practice and effort.
The implicit associations which are the focus of Project Implicit – are not ones that we consciously train ourselves to make, they are in a sense, subliminal, but still influence our decision-making processes.
There is a well-known study* which demonstrates the effects of subtle stereotype priming on behaviour.
Two groups of men were shown a bunch of television adverts. The first group watched mostly sexist adverts (wherein women where portrayed as sex objects – draped over cars, around beer bottles, etc – tellingly, the men themselves did not perceive the content to be sexist or in any way unusual - just your average beer/car commercial). The control group were shown neutral material. Both groups were then asked to interview a female candidate. The men who were “primed†to view women as sex objects behaved in a very different fashion to the control group. They sat closer to the interviewee, flirted more and asked her more sexually inappropriate questions. Their memories and ability to gauge her qualifications were affected – they remembered more about her physical appearance but far less information that would help them to decide her suitability for the job. They also rated her as less competent – purely based on their own sexualisation of the encounter.
*Rudman, L. A., & Borgida, E. (1995). The afterglow of construct accessibility: The behavioral consequences of priming men to view women as sexual objects.
Also, to what extent can we consciously override these unconscious associations? And to what extent do we override them?
To the extent that we are 1. Aware of them. 2. Disturbed by them and desire to change them.
http://footballscholar.net/bias/Unl...ity of Implicit Prejudice and Stereotypes.pdf