How Unbiased are our Judgements?

Originally Posted on the Common Threads Blog,
Centre Daily Times, Feb 27, 2008

The first two months of 2008 have brought us reports about the divisive riots in Kenya, the sectarian rivalries in Iraq, the tensions in Serbia and Kosovo, and the divisiveness of our own election primaries.

As a writer who focuses on the common threads that link us all, it has been depressing to try and figure out why the links between people break down, and why nations fracture along religious, ethnic and tribal lines, and even along gender, age, race, and class lines.

How do we lose the common bonds we share as human beings? When do certain aspects of our identity, be it religion, gender, ethnicity, political ideology become more important than our common humanity? When do our differences begin to matter more than our commonalities?

I don’t know the answers, but know that we lose a lot when we begin to divide up into groups.

I have often seen little kids, separating out into groups of “boys” and “girls” at elementary school. And now, a friend who lives in a major metropolitan area tells me that in the very diverse elementary school her child attends, there are many kids from different racial and ethnic groups, and kids in elementary school play at recess in groups formed along racial and ethnic lines.

Are these groups inevitable, I wonder?

I turn to Blink, the wonderful book by Malcolm Gladwell, in an attempt to understand how we are arriving at these groups - how do we judge who to hang out with? Is it similar to how we judge on who to vote for? Who to hire for a job?

Gladwell uses scientific research to demonstrate how we make “judgments” in the first two seconds of any interaction, via an “unconscious” mechanism. Many a time, these snap judgments, which we may call our instinctive reactions, may be right on the dot.

But they are not always infallible. Many of our prejudices and dislikes towards others can stem from these snap judgments. So that we can pronounce that someone looks a leader, or that someone looks like a terrorist, just on the basis of a snap judgment.

In the last chapter of his book, Gladwell writes about how the number of women in orchestras in the US went up by five times, once the rules for auditions were changed three decades ago, to have musicians auditioning from behind a screen. Once the screen hid the gender of the musician from the selection committee, more women were hired, thus proving the previous existence of bias on the basis of gender.

Perhaps a similar process to select our presidential candidates will help – analyze their records, without giving them any face time with us – in order to make sure we simply vote for the most competent person. Would such “screens” have given us presidential candidates who are more diverse – including more women and more people from all races? And filtered out irrelevant parameters like gender, race, age, religion and so forth?

The data from the classical music world showed us that women were being excluded when no screens were used. And it is not a stretch to say that this has happened, and is happening in other areas too.

After all, women were the last group to get the right to vote, are playing catch up in getting to positions of power, including the presidency, and are judged differently by our society, which includes the media.

I wish there was a way to use such “screens” in the world of politics, like in the world of classical music auditions - "screens" which would help us judge, based only on the records of the candidates, and not based on any other irrelevant factors which can cloud our perceptions.

A helping hand at an MRI

Originally Posted at the Common Threads Blog
Centre Daily Times, on June 20, 2007

Last week, I had to go in for my first ever MRI. A friendly staff attended to the initial paperwork, and I got shown into the procedure room.

I was fine, till I lay down and figured out the reality of the procedure – the length of time, the small space, the stillness expected of me.

The two people there adjusted the headphones for my music – and suddenly I wondered if I could do it. I felt a wave of panic and voiced it.

They were instantly responsive. Would I like to just test it out – go inside and see what it was like?

Yes, I replied, that would be wonderful.

Having done that, I asked some more questions about the procedure. I made a decision of earplugs over headphones, and tried to get comfortable.

But I was still tentative. As I was mentally steeling myself for the procedure, one of the people in the room threw me a lifeline – would it help if he held my hand through the procedure?

You can do that? I heard myself asking incredulously.

Yes, I can, was the reply.

I am sure I can go through with it then, I replied. I asked him his name.

It was Dave.

Thank you, Dave, I said, thank you for doing this.

I got into position in the machine, and Dave held my hand. Five minutes into the procedure, I was comfortably settled, the newness and strangeness of the experience a thing of the past. I can handle this, I thought – this is a piece of cake.

And suddenly, with Dave still holding my hand, and the machine doing its job, I had an epiphany about what life was all about, and the incredible power embedded in that moment – the power of one helping hand holding another, making a difficult time easier.

The differences between us - race, gender, ethnicity did not matter at that instant. It was a simple but profound moment of connection between strangers, based on a common humanity. And on the power we all have to help each other.

So thank you, Dave, and thank you, Jennifer, for using that power well. What you did was all in a day’s work for you – for me, it made all the difference.