Myths about Our Ability to Judge Others
- People think their explicit intentions to be fair determine their behavior.
- People think that judging merit is straightforward.
- People think they know what it takes to be successful.
It’s important to debunk these myths. The book An Inclusive Academy: Achieving Diversity and Excellence, by Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian, provides a meta-analysis of numerous studies on inequity in faculty searches and reviews. They report: “People incorrectly believe their explicit intentions completely guide their evaluations and observations of others. People think that consciously saying and believing something – in the area of evaluation – make it so. At least, they think it is not so for them: they are not biased, or even if they are slightly biased, they do not behave in a biased way.” As the studies they cite reveal, this is simply untrue. We are all biased, and we all use implicit cognition and cognitive shortcuts. Therefore, we need to interrogate how potential bias and shortcuts might be contributing to unfairly evaluating faculty and their work, both in positive and negative ways. People think that evaluating “just on merit” is straightforward, but it’s not.
In addition, “People associate success with banner-headline achievements, tending not to see the slow accumulation of small successes that make large achievements possible. They also fail to see how a steady drumbeat of small bits of praise or criticism can encourage or suppress people’s efforts to be successful….” People who are routinely praised are far more likely to persist in trying while people who are routinely discouraged – for whatever reasons – are more likely to give up, and therefore, those who don’t, in the face of discouragement, should be valued. It’s why rating someone “a star” can be so damaging in conversations about a faculty member’s accomplishments; it misses all that is behind some people’s achievements, or lack thereof. One was mentored and praised; another was told they’d never make it.