Quotes About Bias

if you believe your colleague Bill is a jerk, you will filter Bill's actions through that belief. No matter what Bill does, you'll see it through a prism that confirms he's a jerk. Even the times when he's not a jerk, you'll interpret it as the exception to the rule that Bill's a jerk.

The more we are committed to believing that something is true, the less likely we are to believe that its opposite is true, even in the face of clear evidence that shows we are wrong.

Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury.

My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know, we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.

When a man conclusively exalts one woman, and one woman only, "above all others," you can be pretty sure you are dealing with a misogynist. It frees him up for thinking the rest are shit.

Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs.

Bad logic was an early warning sign for prejudice.

Whenever fewer women than men study a subject, then this fact is immediately seen as a problem. However, when fewer men take up a subject than women, as is the situation in fields such as foreign languages, most of the liberal arts, and some of the social sciences, nobody seems to care.

The combination of modern anti-discrimination laws, on the one hand, and women's reluctance to pull up their sleeves, on the other, can lead to strange results. Thus, whereas 80 percent of all clerks in the United States are women, the one "clerical" job that involves substantial outdoor walking — mail delivery — is done almost entirely by men.[401

But my basic premise is that our mental, cultural template for a powerful person remains resolutely male. If we close our eyes and try to conjure up the image of a president or – to move into the knowledge economy – a professor, what most of us see is not a woman.

More interesting is another cultural connection this reveals: that unpopular, controversial or just plain different views when voiced by a woman are taken as indications of her stupidity. It is not that you disagree, it is that she is stupid: 'Sorry, love, you just don't understand.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

Love blinds us to faults, hatred to virtues

The more one judges, the less one loves.

Racism breeds racism in reverse.

I realized there were assumptions we made about people, and once we did, that was all we could see

The human race has always found a group to marginalize--every culture, every time, every race.

There's one rule for the men and another for us,

Inferior people often despise those who are different," Adam said calmly. "It's the only way they can feel superior.

Instead of taking all this information and using it as a window on the entire world, a big part of the media industry now exists in large part to confirm your beliefs. People have figured out that there's a lot of money to be made telling you that you were right in the first place. It makes both sides more dug in.

ones who had never met us but confidently

People look at interracial couples through their own, distorting racial lens. It doesn't matter what form they take.

And how could I believe that Australian wine was automatically inferior to wine sourced from other regions on the planet when I had never drunk anything but liquid nitrogen?

Ideas ... can elicit a kind of autoimmune response - an overreaction that feels protective initially but can ultimately be counterproductive and make it harder to find truth.