Cognitive Shortcuts
The schemas and categories that permit implicit cognition contribute to cognitive shortcuts which feel like and mimic – but actually short circuit – more careful reasoning. In peer review of faculty, cognitive shortcuts are often couched in mushy assessments of things framed as commentary about quality but that actually might be masking other, less relevant, concerns or biases.
- NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES are characterized by presumptions of incompetence or poor quality. The work of women and underrepresented minorities are scrutinized much more than majority faculty at all stages of their academic career. People who speak with an accent are subject to similar negative stereotyping.
- POSITIVE STEREOTYPES occur when dominant group members are automatically presumed to be competent or qualified or as producing quality work. They receive the benefit of the doubt and negative qualities or characteristics are glossed over. For example: the quality of the venues in which a white male’s work is included is not scrutinized while a person of color’s is. It’s differential treatment and it’s unconscious.
- Positive stereotyping is allied to ELITISM, which manifests as increasing the expectations for the quality and quantity of work performed by underrepresented candidates and the calibre of the venues in which their work is included because the review committee members are skeptical about, for example, the nature of the journals that published their work or the venues in which they exhibit. A response to this bias is simply to evaluate the quality of the work rather than evaluating it based on the reflected sheen of the venue that included it. This is a common behavior in faculty reviews and reviewers need to be aware of the ways in which it may be shading their perceptions of the faculty under review.
- EUPHEMIZED BIAS can appear especially in certain “code” words that show up in search and review committees, words like “visionary,” “he has vision,” “she lacks vision.” What does that mean? They’re a “star,” when the committee member is a fan of a particular faculty member, remembering that “fan” comes from “fanatic,” which is not based in reason but in bias.
- We make SNAP JUDGMENTS based on insufficient (or no) evidence. Snap judgments can result from perceptions like the Halo effect, in which a physically attractive person gets the benefit of the doubt that might not be afforded someone who is not or who is a person with darker skin, because colorism is also real. What might there be about the faculty member who is being reviewed, or their work – or even the way they presented their dossier – that might be causing a reviewer to “feel” more positively or negatively about them? Is it that the reviewer doesn’t like the font they used or that they feel the margins are too narrow or that they’re frustrated with the organization? Is it affecting the way the reviewer is thinking about and evaluating the faculty member and their work?