Stop twisting what others are saying.

The onus is on you to prove the hypothesis. The 'evidence' you are presenting to prove it doesn't as it is based in a much more binary situation.


So what I'm saying is that in this thread nobody has proven that unconscious bias affects the outcome to any statistically significant degree, it's all just guesswork to back up their pet theory.

Err yes, being voted off a dancing show in the early weeks is clearly comparable to the way black people were treated in apartheid- era South Africa


Assuming someone takes the bet, and Ore doesn't win, how do you plan to prove conclusively it's because of his colour?


Well, at least I've learned something from this thread.

Very sad to see a reasonably good dancer, certainly a trier and a nice person go last night but when I saw the dance off, Anastacia's dance was beautiful imo. Before watching the dance off I imagined Anastacia would go but I was wrong. Had Naga been up against Ed she would have stayed but people are voting for Ed because he's fun - I don't argue with that because I like him and his obvious effort too, I think he's great. Won't last forever though, his time will be up soon.

Problem we have now is that all the dancers are very good and a few are exceptional. So good ones are going to be voted off (as well as our Ed). Now I've lost the point of all this, does a person's race come into it? Do any of us look at contestants and think, "Ooh that person is black", or whatever? I'm pretty sure I don't and even if I did it wouldn't make me biased towards someone white. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner, etc.

People interest in the idea of unconscious bias might like to take the test on this page which looks at skin tone related bias.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

I got: "Slight automatic preference for Light Skinned People compared to Dark Skinned People".

And, when you think about it, that's quite interesting and instructive because I did the test coming straight from a discussion about unconscious bias yet still showed some although I was aware that I should be trying not to. Also that I am one of the minority arguing that the cumulative effect of a number of SMALL unconscious biases add up together is to make a SYSTEM (not individuals) slightly racist.

The way that test is structured (associating positive and negative words with dark and light skin) is particularly germane to this discussion, I think.

That said, Mrs Moose, I doubt anyone arguing the other way will take the test! Thank you for posting that.

Thanks *gorlagon*. I was surprised by the result I got - and will just have to conclude that growing up in the 60s in a very 'non-diverse' affluent suburb - has shaped my unconscious, even if my conscious mind wants to work in a different way.

And that's the point, really, isn't it? Look at it this way though: a willingness to acknowledge such a thing about oneself is unpleasant but the only way to actually change it. So a good thing!

I might get my kids to do this test when they get in from school.

Thanks for posting that Mrs Moose. I got this as my result:


Here is your result:
Your data suggest no automatic preference between Dark Skinned People and Light Skinned People.

I did the Black People-White People test and got:

Your data suggests:
Strong automatic preference for Black people compared to White people.

So then I did the Dark Skinned-Light Skinned People test and got:

Your data suggests:
Slight automatic preference for Light Skinned People compared to Dark Skinned People.

So now I'm completely befuddled.

There is no definitive yes or no answer to that question. One can only answer for themselves as to whether they would personally vote for him regardless of ethnicity.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/it-happene...205952003.html

Depends, I've been to S. Africa and it can be cold, windy and wet there.

If you're on the Indian Ocean coast, even in winter it is lovely and warm there though. Durban for instance is lovely in their winter.

Higher ground such as Joburg can be freezing.

Even Cape Town can get cold. It snowed there when I was there 6 years ago.

Every box ticked with this one

Interesting test. Did the race one. Got slight pref for African American, which probably reflects my suspicion of America more generally

Yes, that's the kind of Implicit Association Test I mentioned earlier.

But one thing it shows is that people can become aware of an unconscious bias.

It's also possible to change an unconscious bias; and becoming aware of it can be helpful in doing so.

But the existence of an unconscious bias doesn't show it's had enough effect to change who's been in the strictly bottom 2s. (See my previous post for an explanation.)

Which one did you do, I tried one that just had pictures and words, you had to click to identify whether the person was either White European or African American , then you had to choose whether a word ( separate section not with pictures ) came under the good or bad category ( obviously Joy comes under good and Evil would come under bad) , quite how they then come up with answers for your preferences from that is beyond me as you can see the pictures so can answer correctly if a person is white or black and can also tell if a word is connected with something good or bad, from that it then tells you whether you have a preference to white or black people, utter garbage .

There seem to be quite a few of these tests around and for every expert that endorses them there is another who will say it is flawed and needs a lot more work to make it accurate

How do you think they add together? If a viewers bias isn't strong enough to change their own vote (when it's combined with other factors that affect them), then it has no effect on the result. It doesn't add up with other people's biases so that they have a combined effect

So individuals have to be at least "slightly racist" or there's no effect on the vote totals.

The point of unconscious bias is that you can't know as it's unconscious. Thinks we see as positive in one person we evaluate as negative in another. An example would be a man and woman doing exactly the same thing and it being judged as assertive in the man but bossy in the woman. Another would be a judgement a white personal as friendly and outgoing and a black person the same thing as loud and obnoxious.

The person still is evaluating the person as an individual but that is effected by their biases.

One problem with that is that we pretty much never see them doing exactly the same thing in Strictly contexts. Consider the attempts in this and other threads to suggest that, ethnicity aside, judge Rinder and Tameka were the same and so should be equally popular. What people would do is pick a description such as "loud and funny" that they thought applied to both of them as if that meant there couldn't be significant differences. We could call that the "same label, same thing" fallacy.

There is experimental evidence of bias when people are doing exactly the same thing in some important aspect. I'm not going to look up a URL about it right now, but one case involved different people playing a piece of music when (without it being known to the people evaluating them), the sound wasn't actually live and instead came from the very same recording each time.

Of course, people don't have to be exactly the same for differing perceptions to be questionable, but it's not trivial to decide when cases are similar enough.

I've no idea if the test has any credibility or not, but as I understand it, it measured the speed with which you make the positive/negative response. So, whether you were faster or slower to respond to a positive word where it was juxtaposed with 'darker skin' than when the word was sitting next to 'lighter skin' picture, was what was being measured (and the converse).

If the person with the bias can't know, then no one can know; and it's doubtful than an undetectable bias can reasonably be said to exist.

I've been agreeing that there are unconscious biases, but there are some problems with the idea, especially if it's taken to mean a bias that a person cannot know they have, rather than one that they normally aren't aware of and that works automatically behind the scenes (so to speak) rather than by conscious decision.

That's how I understood it too. Face processing is one of the fastest brain activities but there is a cultural element. By six months a baby's ability to identify individuals within any ethnicity is restricted to the groups seen around her or him. Neural economising at a time of rapid brain development.

(There are interesting exceptions to this face-reading in the emotional field...)

It's what you do with your neural economy in later years I guess that makes the difference.

Which many experts have said will depend on an individual some have quick reactions routinely some are slower , also it has been mentioned that on some of these tests they switch sides half way though and that can cause people to slow down for various reasons until they get used to it again , some not that sure using computers and cognitive fluency etc and make errors in side they choose. As I said I would agree with many that say these tests need more work to be classified as accurate

I got the same response, but wonder if the test was run the other way round it would eliminate bias towards the more often used hand. Particularly as most people are right handed.

There are many articles online and links in Wiki as well which talk about the flaws in the test, about how it can be faked , how a person can get different results each time they take it , slow responses , etc etc