This Simple Trick Can Help Eliminate Gender Bias in Performance Ratings

Unconscious bias sneaks up on you. In medicine, it can be deadly, but in other fields, it can kill careers.

We’ve long known that university students favor male professors and rate them higher than female professors. While you can argue that overall men tend to be better professors than women, there was a strong suggestion that some unconscious bias was at play. (Additionally, I don’t think students are actually the best judge of a professor’s performance, but that’s a topic for a different day.)

A large American university changed their ratings from a 10 point scale to a 6 point scale for reasons unrelated to gender bias. Researchers Lauren Rivera is an Associate Professor of Management & Organizations at Kellogg School of Management and András Tilcsik is an associate professor at the Rotman School of Management thought this was the perfect data set to look at bias.

Read the full article @ Inc.

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