Professor studying implicit bias becomes the subject of implicit bias?

[ucbalumnus]

http://dcist.com/2017/07/implicit_bias_article_usa_today.php

@Rachel Kurzius in dcist.com

Media outlets often call upon Calvin Lai to explain his research into implicit bias, a term for the attitudes and ideas we have about others without even realizing it.

[… describes an article showing a photo of a different Calvin Lai …]

It could have been a clerical error, says Lai, but it could also be a case of … you guessed it … implicit bias, which Lai defines broadly as “all the little ways in which our everyday thinking about social stuff is unconscious or uncontrollable, and the stuff that we don’t realize is influencing us when we make decisions.”

[Cardinal_Fang]

Is it more common to have the wrong photo accompanying an article, when the subject is a person who isn’t white?

[CheddarcheeseMN]

^ Yes, we would need to know this to be able distinguish between bias and random error.

[ucbalumnus]

Re: #1

The article mentions this:

@Rachel Kurzius in dcist.com

This specific manifestation is called the cross-race effect, which finds that humans have a tougher time distinguishing people of different races than themselves.

“You could imagine an editor searching up my image on Google, seeing this array of images, and seeing a couple of them that kind of look like me on my website,” says Lai. “The one they ultimately chose had the cleanest picture and a white background. He has a similar haircut, glasses, and he’s Asian.”

This happens because “you might not be attuning to the right things,” he says. “Hair and eye color for white people is diagnostic, not so much for Asian men.”

Of course, there could be other implications with more serious consequences than the wrong photo in an article. For example, being mistaken for a criminal suspect may be more likely if you and the suspect are both of the same visible minority group relative to the population of witnesses and police officers who may be watching or looking for the suspect.

[Cardinal_Fang]

I understand that people are bad at telling the difference between two people of another race than their own.* That wasn’t my question. I’ve seen many other cases where the wrong person was pictured in an article about someone. I wondered whether whatever process newspapers use to choose pictures is more likely to result in wrong pictures when the subject is not a white person.

• Eyewitness identification of people not known to the identifier is terrible anyway. I wish it weren't used in criminal trials. People are bad at it, just so bad. Worse for people not of their race, but very bad for people who are of their race too.

[calmom]

CF, did you read the linked article? It’s not claiming that journlists are biased in general – so statistical data would not be relevant. It is explaining how the mistake in this instance is an example of implicit bias - combined with the well documented difficulties with cross-racial identification. The real Calvin K Llooks similar to the Hong Kong businessman - https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/in/calvinlai0505/ – even in the way they are dressed in their respective photos - but obviously anyone who read the linked in profile would realize that it was a different person.

Dr.Lai’s work is not limited to racial bias-- rather (quoting from the article) - he defines “implicit bias” as “all the little ways in which our everyday thinking about social stuff is unconscious or uncontrollable, and the stuff that we don’t realize is influencing us when we make decisions.”

Dr. Lai goes on to say, “Through my own eyes, this other Calvin Lai looked nothing like me. But to an editor, this other man may have looked “close enough” to be me. Mistakes like this show how implicit biases can creep into everyday decision-making without us ever knowing it.”

and "“If you’re tired, stressed, or under a deadline, you’re more likely to act on impulse, and similarly on implicit bias,”

In this case, it’s a simple case of a journalist taking a photo from a web page without reading the text on the page immediately underneath the photo – "Trilingual Marketing/ Business Development Professional ".

But I think that your response is something that Dr. Lai might also characterized as “implicit bias”. You apparently read the thread title and connected the word “bias” with racial bias – (that is, an assertion that hte journalist messed up the picture because of bias against Asians) – whereas Dr. Lai’s comments are addressing the broader notion of cognitive bias to explain why the journalist or editor was careless in publishing the wrong photo. Even if it had been two similar appearing white men with dark hair, glasses, and both wearing dark suits and red or pink ties … the issue of implicit cognitive bias would be the same. It’s just that it may be harder for non-Asians to distinguish the photo because of the cross-race effect on top of the other similarities, so that is one additional factor that contributes to cogntive bias. (In addition, of course, to them sharing the same name).