BU Research: A Riddle Reveals Depth of Gender Bias | BU Today | Boston University (01/16/2014)
By: Mikaela Wapman (Boston University)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
What's your answer to this question?
- Rich Barlow
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Here's an old riddle. If you haven't heard it, give yourself time to answer before reading past this paragraph: a father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he's about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, "I can't operate—that boy is my son!" Explain. (Cue the final Jeopardy! music.)
If you guessed that the surgeon is the boy's gay, second father, you get a point for enlightenment, at least outside the Bible Belt. But did you also guess the surgeon could be the boy's mother? If not, you're part of a surprising majority.
In research conducted by Mikaela Wapman (CAS'14) and Deborah Belle, a College of Arts & Sciences psychology professor, even young people and self-described feminists tended to overlook the possibility that the surgeon in the riddle was a she. The researchers ran the riddle by two groups: 197 BU psychology students and 103 children, ages 7 to 17, from Brookline summer camps. (They did the latter study through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).)
In both groups, only a small minority of subjects—15 percent of the children and 14 percent of the BU students—came up with the mom's-the-surgeon answer. Curiously, life experiences that might suggest the mom answer "had no association with how one performed on the riddle," Wapman says. For example, the BU student cohort, where women outnumbered men two-to-one, typically had mothers who were employed or were doctors—"and yet they had so much difficulty with this riddle," says Belle. Self-described feminists did better, she says, but even so, 78 percent did not say the surgeon was the mother. (The results were no different for an alternate version of the riddle: a mother is killed, her daughter sent to the hospital, and a nurse declines to attend to the patient because "that girl is my daughter"; few people guessed that the nurse might be the child's father.)
The genesis of the research was Belle's 10-year-old granddaughter, who was given the riddle by her mom. "She thought for a moment," Belle says, "and she said, 'How could this be? Well, he could have two fathers.'" The child couldn't muster any other explanation. Nor could several of her friends. "This piqued our interest," Belle says. When she and Wapman posed the riddle to kids in the UROP study, some of the answers stretched the bounds of inventiveness: the surgeon was a robot, or a ghost, or "the dad laid down and officials thought he was dead, but he was alive."
The results are all the more surprising considering that college students and participants in tony Brookline's summer programs likely hail from higher income and educational backgrounds than the general population. "These are two populations that we would expect, if anything, would be in the avant-garde," Belle says. Yet, for example, BU students theorized the "father" in the car referred to a priest, or the surgeon was "horribly confused," or, a la the old Dallas TV show, the whole scenario was a dream.
What made imagining a surgeon mom so difficult? Gender schemas—generalizations that help us explain our complex world and "don't reflect personal values or life experience," says Wapman. (So having a surgeon mother doesn't necessarily mean you'll propose that as the riddle's solution.) "Schemas are very, very powerful," Belle says, adding that the studies' results and the endurance of gender stereotypes would not surprise Virginia Valian, a Hunter College psychologist who has noted how people presented with the same CV for a man and a woman typically assume the man is more competent.
Valian "argues that schemas are formed very early in life," says Belle, "and that when it comes to gender, we fixate on women's reproductive functioning, and we sort of allot competence to men. Experience can have some effect in our schemas, but much less than we might anticipate." Valian has also noted that schemas are identical in our culture for men and for women—which is exactly what the BU survey found.
That bias against women, Wapman believes, shows the significance of schemas, "this silly riddle" notwithstanding. Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Washington state, cited the BU duo's work in a New York Times column on the problems facing mothers in the workplace.
The solution? "Having people understand that they hold this bias," says Wapman, "and when you look at job applicants, keep that in mind."
"Eternal vigilance, I think, is the only solution," says Belle. "These schemas do change over time"—she points to other countries with greater gender equity—"but the pace is glacial."
BU Research: A Riddle Reveals Depth of Gender Bias
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I thought gay Dad, Stepdad orrrrrrrr mother in that order over a minute or two.
My wife shouted "Mother" before I finished the riddle.
She called her sister who shouted "Mother" before my wife finished the riddle.
The article is old but still pertinent.
No politics please
but does anyone see the elephant in the room?
Oh-- now I get it!
There people are not humans. It never said they were. They could be any species-- as long as they were a father and son!
But now you have clarified the issue-- they are not humans! (It didn't say they were-- that's an assumption. A logical assumption-- but an assumption never-the-less!)
But now you let us know another fact about this riddle-- they are Elephants-- an Elephant father and an Elephant son!
a father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he's about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, "I can't operate—that boy is my son!" Explain. (Cue the final Jeopardy! music.)
Another possible explanation: It says a father and son.
A father. And a son.
It does not say that the person who is "a father" is the father of that particular son, merely that he has a child who is a boy (i.e. "a son"). He is someone's father, and the boy is a son..of someone. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the son is a son of that particular father..and being a son means that he is a boy...and has a father.
The way it's written the odds are that the meant to say that father is the father of that son...but not necessarily so the way its worded If that were the case, it should read:
A father and his son.
So it seems like men are argumentative and predisposed to see the riddle as a trick question and they have to come up with irrational
explanations while ignoring the fact the the surgeon could be the son's mother?
It very much reminds me of the white reaction to their own skewed understanding of what they think CRT is.
While of course many people have biases that result in inaccurate perceptions.
Political biases, often racist or sexist biases, religiously caused biases, etc.
IMO these are usually the cause of many inaccuracies (IMO especially common on Social Media sites).
IMO they are a type of one of the two major causes of illogical discussions online-- making assumptions
IMO they are a type of one of the two major causes of illogical discussions online-- making assumptions
The other type of illogical think online being-- over-generalization.
Riddles are trick questions. That is the whole point of riddles. Further, Krishna is spot on. Riddles expose not simply biases but assumptions as well. The way the riddle is written it is assumed that the father in the car is the father of the son in the car, but it is not actually stated. A classic hallmark of a riddle.
Further, I disagree that this particular riddle necessarily exposes bias of any kind. The definition of bias is prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. That isn't necessarily what leads the majority to fail to consider the mother as the doctor. I would guess that the more likely reason than bias is that experience tells us that male doctors are more common than female doctors, not some bias against female doctors. And for the older among us, that ratio gets skewed more in favor of men the farther back you go. So, in my opinion, this riddle is better said to expose assumptions, not bias, since nothing in the article connects it to actual bias.
I did not think of the mother solution, but I am not biased against female doctors. I have had two female doctors as the GP's I saw for everything. I didn't care they were female. I only cared that they knew what they were doing. When I see a doctor, that's what I expect to see, a doctor.
So it seems like men are argumentative and predisposed to see the riddle as a trick question and they have to come up with irrational
Maybe yes-- maybe no!
That may well be a conclusion based on a very small sample size (as the statisticians in the room would say!
)
What are the odds of Elephants being capable of being taught statistics?
Only da Shadow Knows!
Did you ever see the elephant who could paint?
Yes. That was pretty cool.
That was my first conclusion, that the father in the car was not the father of the son in the car, therefore the doctor could still be the son's father.
But getting away from my silly derail for a moment-- 2 thoughts:
1. Its not necessarily some sort of bias against women that would make people assume that the doctor was a man-- because in fact that's the way it had been for many years. Its not indicative of the fact that people whothought the odds are that a doctor was a man was sexist-- its wasn't necessarily the thought that women weren't capable o fbeing doctors or shouldn't be doctors-- rather that that's they way it had been, because in the past most doctors were men.
2. Interestingly, not so long ago I read that currently-- the majority of medical students in the U.S. are in fact women!