Implicit Bias

 

If you think you aren't biased, you're mistaken.

Everyone who has personal preferences or a sense of right vs wrong is biased.  Bias isn't always blatantly racist, sexist, political or religious. It can be implicit, that is, a person with an implicit bias may not be aware of it.

Implicit biases shape how we think and act. We--I include myself--choose to read certain types of online authors, publishers and content and avoid others. 

This fall's Full Circle articles spotlight implicit bias and how it's not enough to teach students to recognize bias in what they read, they also need to recognize it in themselves. Undetected bias is a filter that keeps out disagreeable content, letting in only that which is agreeable. The big danger in never being challenged by contrary beliefs is that the things we hold to be true remain uninformed and hard to defend.

Full Circle Fall 2021 Table of Contents

• Feature Article: Unpacking Implicit Bias (no subscription required)
• Curriculum Matters: Creating a Personal Credo
• ActionZone: Amazon Bias
• Assessment: Implicit Bias

Election Year Bias

 

If you are looking for examples of bias, it's hard to beat an election year. The 2020 national election in the United States stands out in this regard. Two sides stand in stark opposition: Republicans and Democrats.

The intent of this article is not to align with one side or the other. Instead, the purpose is to strengthen investigative search skills by engaging in bias detection. The investigative targets are two fund-raising letters, one sent by President Donald Trump and the other by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Both were mailed during the summer of 2020. Both letters are biased in favor of respective party positions and against the other party. This is completely normal. No matter the candidates, bias for and against are intended to get voters to donate money.

To read the full article and help students better understand bias, click here

The Feature Article is available without a subscription. An individual or school subscription is required to access the Curriculum applications and Assessment resources. 

Rosenstein on the "rule of law" and education

Rod Rosenstein
image source: Wikipedia

Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, has been in the news a lot lately. Today he defends himself as a victim of false reporting in connection with a report that he proposed using a wire secretly to tape conversations with Donald Trump (in an effort to impeach him).

He adamantly denies the accusation.

Back in August, another statement--reported in Bloomberg's Big Law Business--has relevance for this unfolding story:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein called on lawyers to “accept a personal duty to keep the republic by teaching” the principles of the rule of law, which he said was critical to American democracy. 

Upholding “the rule of law is not just about litigation in courtrooms,” Rosenstein said. “It is also about education in classrooms and living rooms.”

When anyone is a victim of (dis)information, what are they to do? I guess you do what Rosenstein did today: deny it publicly (he has no trouble being picked up by the press) and hope that lawyers come to your aid by upholding the rule of law, including innocent until proven guilty. Interesting that he calls on lawyers to do the teaching.

Not many lawyers may heed the call to stand before students to impress on them how the law should work, but it's an interesting idea. Imagine a class or library session on evaluation that involves a lawyer. With so many accusations in the news, both justified and unjustified, what is the right approach to take? Rosenstein touches on that in this statement from the same Bloomberg article:

“The term ‘rule of law’ describes the government’s obligation to follow neutral principles,” and “reserve judgment until we have heard from all parties and completed a fair process,” Rosenstein said. 

It requires that we “avoid confirmation bias and remain open to the possibility that the truth may not match our preconceptions,” he said.

In an age of disinformation, this is sage advice for students to practice. It doesn't require a lawyer to teach it--any teacher or adult should be able to make this claim. Investigative searching, to be fair, must do the same: withhold judgment until the facts are checked.

In Rosenstein's recent predicament, the facts may be hard to check, as it may come down to who heard him say what and in what context. What words were used and what did they mean? Until then, it's good not to jump to conclusions, otherwise confirmation bias can play havoc.

Monkey This Up

The interest (reaction) generated by this phrase is worth noting:

“The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state. That is not going to work. That’s not going to be good for Florida.”

The author (speaker) is Ron DeSantis who is competing in the gubernatorial race in Florida this fall. The quote is part of a statement he made about his African American rival, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.

Republican and Democrats have joining in criticizing the use of the term 'monkey'.  The negative (stereotypical) association of 'monkey' with racial overtones has a long history, as the Washington Post points out.

• Scientific theories about the relationship between apes and dark-skinned people were promulgated in the mid-1800's.
• Museum displays depicting the evolution of primates to humans positioned the black adult next to the chimpanzee, according to author and historian W. E. B. Du Bois.
• More recently, Rosanna Barr applied the comparison to a former Obama adviser, comparing her to an ape: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby....”

Whether this term is an indicator of DeSantis' personal bias is unclear. The context might say otherwise as it's applied to the state of Florida, not necessarily his opponent. But based on the reaction, it's a poor choice of word and one that generated a bad press.

The words we use can be triggers. It's useful to know what they are and pay attention. 

A word like 'monkey' (even used as a verb) should pop out when read. That's often the way it is with bias. Instead of that word, what else could the author have used? And why didn't he?

Image source:

Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com is licensed by CC 3.0 BY

Summer Full Circle Resource Kit

Bias Detection is the newest Kit in the Full Circle series.

One of the most popular MicroModules on the Information Fluency site is Bias. Becoming sensitive to bias and knowing that not everything in print or images is neutral or objective is one way to prevent unguarded consumption of fake or distorted news. Bias can be hard to detect, especially when a reader finds it agreeable.

The Feature article examines a front page case where bias was overlooked, resulting in shooting up a pizzeria thought to be a front for pedophile sex abuse in Washington DC.

Curricular Connections provides a helpful checklist for identifying and discussing incidents of bias in non-fiction and images.

Six interactive examples of biased and unbiased articles and one image are packaged in the Assessment section to help students evaluate bias. A score of 80% accuracy indicates fluency in detecting bias.

The Kit requires a subscription, but for a limited time, the feature article is free.

https://21cif.com//fullcircle/summer2018/index.php

Fallacies

Fallacies (mistaken beliefs based on an unsound argument) appear in many forms, as the author of pearls and elephants recently posted:

Straw man – an argument used against a real person, the key is that the straw man does not exist but is fabricated to take attention away from the real person.  Discerning a straw man argument means finding out who the real person is and what he/she stands for – voting records help with this and are available via Freedom of Information Act requests.

Red Herring – a false plank or issue, similar to the straw man in that it is a fabrication meant to take attention away from actuality.

Band Wagon – Apple uses this to great effect, it is otherwise known as the coolness effect.  “Everyone is doing it (or wearing it), come on!”  Parents often confront this argument with, “If everyone jumped off a bridge, or stood on a rooftop to take a selfie, does that make it an intelligent, informed choice?”

Slippery Slope – an argument that asks you to accept a small step that leads to another step until ultimately you have strayed far from the truth.  An example comes from a play titled, A Streetcar Named Desire.  In the play, the female lead wears a slip rather than her dress on stage.  It caused a furor in 1947 – what about today?

More types of fallacies are discussed here

Fallacies are Red Flags. Other red flags include innocent inaccuracies (errors, mistakes), accidental or intended omissions, author bias, prejudice, deliberate misinformation, phishing. Fallacies are a staple of propaganda.

A great student evaluation activity is to provide examples of fallacious information and have students decide what it is.

What would you say these are:

1. Reporter: "It seems to me that if you were elected president, the Congress with which you would have to work would not be very cooperative at all. How could you, as president, bring about any reform or help enact any beneficial legislation with a Congress that was almost totally opposed to your programs?" Ross Perot: "Well, if I were elected, about half the members of Congress would drop dead of heart attacks, and half of my problem would be solved from the outset."  [source/answer]
2. Environmentalist: "Bicycle infrastructure should be expanded because cycling is a sustainable mode of transportation." Opponent: "We should not build bike lanes because cyclists run red lights and endanger pedestrians." [source/answer]
3. Blogger: "I hope the art mural at 34th and Habersham will not be allowed. You open the gate for one, you open it for all and you'll have it all over the city. A person wanting to paint on buildings is nothing more than upscale graffiti. More than likely it will go too far." [source/answer]
4. Son: "Wow, Dad, it's really hard to make a living on my salary." Father: "Consider yourself lucky, son. Why, when I was your age, I only made $40 a week." [source/answer]
5. Voter:  "Everyone in Lemmingtown is behind Jim Duffie for Mayor. Shouldn't you be part of the winning team?" [source/answer]

Feel free to add your own examples by leaving a comment.

Investigate before you pass it along

Thanks to my beautiful spouse, here's an excellent example of the benefits of a little fact-checking.

Unfortunately, the person who "passed along" the email encouraging my wife to consider the views of Harvard Historian David Kaiser didn't fact check it first.

The tag line reads: "By passing this along, perhaps it will help to begin the awakening of Americans to where we are headed." Perhaps you also received this from a friend or relative.

The preface to the article (which can be described as anti-Obama) includes a lot of objective facts:

David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington D.C., Albany, New York , and Dakar , Senegal ... He attended Harvard University, graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976.. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976.

He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College . He has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College and Harvard University. Kaiser's latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by HarvardUniversityPress.

The article is a poster child for bias and doesn't seem to be written by a person with such impeccable credentials. That red flag prompted my wife to do some fact checking. She found the claims about David Kaiser listed above to be accurate. She also found his blog at http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/.

Scanning the prose in the blog didn't seem to match the type of content in the email. But it was the ABOUT ME section that is most revealing:

The email circulating widely attributed to me comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler is a forgery: see snopes.com/politics/soapbox/proportions.asp. 

While the email attempted to provide indisputable authorship information, it was a forgery. Two minutes worth of investigation is all the effort it took. The big step was the motivation to fact check rather than just read, believe and forward it to someone else.

Passing along that email didn't quite have the desired result.

Bias, Power and Authority

By itself, bias is unremarkable. It's a part of being human. Bias doesn't always amount to much, especially if no one pays attention.

Bias with power is a different matter. Without power, Anders Behring Breivik's biases may have come to nothing. But when coupled with power, they proved to be devastating.

Posing as a meaningful authority, Breivik directed his victims to a horrible end. There was no need to object, until he started shooting.

Bias online has some similarities. Most of the time, bias in blogs and articles and images has no meaningful impact on the reader. Biased information with power attracts attention. More accurately, it could be said that individuals empower the information to which they attend. That's when biased information can lead to problems.

For online readers, the question that must be asked is: who is the authority?  In Breivik's case, he was posing as an official and little could be done to investigate his credibility on the spot. Online information is different in that regard. It can and should be investigated. Otherwise you may never know if you are opening yourself to bias that has real, assumed or faked authority. 

It's unfortunate that something bad has to happen to make one more cautious. It happened on a large scale after 9-11 and now security measures will increase in Norway. After you fall prey to deception or bias online, you tend to become more skeptical.  Hence, the need for investigation.

Try this. Here's a challenge that's based on a medical theme. It's not hard to find bias against alternative medicine. But should you be skeptical of these views? Does the author have the appropriate authority? How do you know?  These are good questions for students to grapple with.

Using Google, locate a site with medical authority that is skeptical of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).  Post your answers here.

The Value and Challenge of Unsolicited References

I've been busy developing a new Information Fluency assessment and training program for Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development. As a result, I'm off my pace for posting new challenges.

The approach with the assessment and training is to focus on investigative searching skills. These are the competencies least engaged by Internet users. For one, they take time, although not as much time as you'd suspect. But the biggest reason is that the approaches are not easily "discoverable." They are best learned by training rather than trial and error.

One of the techniques, which I've written about before, is to investigate pages that link to the page or site being evaluated. This is accomplished by using the link: command. When I conduct workshops, very few people (teachers and students) already know about this operator.

Pages returned using the link: command are valuable because they constitute an unsolicited list of references. For the most part, authors of those pages voluntarily added a link to the site/page in question.

Just looking at a list of unsolicited references is not where the value lies. Herein lies the challenge. It requires reading and seeing patterns in the unsolicited references. This becomes difficult for students.

The easiest way to introduce link: to students is to see who links to bogus sites such as Help Save the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, etc.  The pages returned contain keywords such as 'hoax' which are easy to see in the snippets.

If a site/page is credible and a lot of highly respected organizations link to it that is also easy to detect. For example, links to the Institute for Library and Information Literacy Education include lots of libraries, schools and Websites for teachers. By association, if so many reputable sites link to it, it helps to establish credibility. Of course, just looking to see who links is not enough. What they have to say is also important. Plenty of schools link to the Tree Octopus site. What they say about it is what is important.

Querying link: for an organization you do not know may be helpful. By comparison, querying one you already know (like National Geographic) is a waste of time for the purpose of establishing credibility.

Seeing patterns in link: results is the challenge. And it becomes more difficult when the site/page being investigated doesn't lie at the extremes of universal respect or hoax.

The example I am wrestling with is an assessment item to determine if students know how to use the link: command. I'd also like to determine if they know how to make sense of the results. This is harder to do.  How would you intrepret the results for this query:  link:http://www.rense.com/general72/oinvent.htm   (Copy and paste this string into Yahoo).

The content is about suppression of alternative energy innovations. Over 500 pages link to it in Yahoo and many tend to support it. Does this mean it is credible? Who thinks it is credible is critically important. I'd like to hear how you interpret or wrestle with the results.

"My Predicament (I need your help)"

First thing Saturday morning I was confronted with an appeal sent from my daughter-in-law's gmail account. Here is the full text of the message entitled "My predicament (I need your help):"

It is with profound sense of sadness i wrote this email to you. I don't know how you will find this but you just have to forgive me for not telling you before leaving. I traveled down to United Kingdom on Thursday for a short vacation but unfortunately,i got mugged at gun point on my way to the hotel where i lodged.All my money and all other vital documents including my credit cards and my cell phone have been stolen by the muggers.

I've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all,Things are difficult here and i don't know what to do at the moment that why i email to ask if you can lend me £800.00 so i can settle the hotel bills and get a return ticket back home. Please do me this great help and i promise to refund the money as soon as i get back home

I look forward to your positive response,so i can send you the details you need to send the money to me through Western Union.

Maybe you too received a message like this from someone you know. It's an annoying example of what happens when an email account gets hacked; it also challenges you to use your digital investigation skills.

I would use this with grades 6 and up to stimulate critical information literacy skills.  The example provides some interesting clues which immediately caused me to be skeptical. These were the questions that ran through my mind:

1. Do I know where she is now? Not for sure, but having just spent 2 weeks with us for Christmas, I seriously doubted she would take off for a short vacation to the UK. Still, anything is possible. Quickest way to find out?  Call her cell phone. In fact, many of her friends who also received the message did just that. If she answers, the claim about her cell phone being stolen is false.

2. Is this how she writes? This is not how the person I know writes. Too many awkward phrases and grammatical mistakes. Words can be like body language, revealing things the writer intended to cover up. Who would write to a close relative using "I look forward to your positive response..."?  That's pretty formal for family. Other keywords from the context that don't match the style (personality) of the person I know are: 'profound sense of sadness', 'you just have to forgive me', 'traveled down to UK',  'great help' and 'refund'. There are other ways to say these things that would be more characteristic of my daughter-in-law.

3. Can you travel to the US from the UK without a passport? Since all vital documents were stolen, how can she board an airplane?

You may see other things in the email that don't add up. The point is, it always pays to investigate before committing money online. Since this email went out to all her gmail contacts, I'm glad no one that we know of is out the money.

As a teaching example, challenge your students to come up with questions about the content of the message that would prevent someone from being tricked into sending money. Have them develop a profile of the author from the keywords and how they are used. Reading between the lines in this way is an information literacy skill that's also useful for detecting bias.

Bias Literacy: Pick the Low-Lying Fruit

We all grow up in a world of bias. It's so much a part of our everyday experience that it's easy to overlook. The troublesome thing is not to recognize or discern it. The disturbing thing, as some have observed, is that the digital generation treats all information as pretty much equal. When it comes to evaluating online information, it's treated as if it's all good.

Back in the analog age, when I was a kid, things were different. I'm not saying this was preferable, but it was obvious to me that there were points of view that were just plain wrong. With education and experience, one starts to see some good even in opposing points of view. But that's not the same as treating all information as equal.

I believe most educators feel it is important for students to learn to identify an author's point of view. Doing this in the context of teaching digital information fluency is one approach, although I think language arts or social studies is a better context. For me, this is an opportunity to integrate online search experiences within standard courses. Students will learn something about information fluency while focusing on authorship and point of view, instruction that naturally fits in language arts and social studies.

Rather than rely solely on textbooks (e.g., book reports) to have students describe point of view (aka bias), I'd bring in blogs and online editorials. Textbooks and reference books are probably the hardest places to detect bias. Works of non-fiction and fiction are respectfully easier. But the real low-lying fruit is the common daily blog post. It's an unparalleled opportunity to see bias up close.

I'll limit myself to one example for now. Let's say you are studying a current event; something students might find interesting like 'climate change'. To make the point that there are different points of view on this subject, you could select (in advance) several blogs written about climate change. Have the students read them, and from the keywords used, identify the author's bias (single point of view) or objectivity (multiple, even opposing points of view). Compare the views. Are they all the same? How are they different? Are they all correct? What makes one better than another? Should everything be believed as written? Why or why not?

Here are three blogs on climate change. I've started to unpack the first one in terms of the keywords and phrases used. The challenge is to do the same with the other blogs.

1- 56 Chicken Little newspapers on climate change 

Keywords and phrases highlighted from just one paragraph may be used to detect bias: "Today, the eco-herd of papers published a collective editorial whipping up hysteria over the issue in the face of massive data manipulation, suppression, and bullying of dissenters." Whether the author considers herself among the dissenters may take more reading and online searching; she's clearly opposed to the position taken by the newspapers.

2- U.S. Unions Join Climate Change Talks in Copenhagen

3- The Climate-Change Travesty

In addition to differences in specific keywords that take a position, each blog also may be analyzed for its tone. Helping students to pay attention to keywords (and phrases) and tone is a positive step toward information fluency.

This activity may be suitable for upper middle school and high schoolers.

Detecting Bias

Objectivity is a characteristic of information that adds to its credibility. An objective article or posting either avoids taking sides or represents them fairly. An objective author typically has to overcome personal biases to write objectively.

Biases are hard to avoid. We all have them. (Did you catch my bias?)

Biases creep into our writing and into our reading. This latter condition can cause confusion for students who think they see bias in an author who really intended none. The bias occurs in the eyes of the beholder. I've seen this recently in students' response to an article by Carl Sagan, believing his intent was to frighten them. I was actually surprised by their conclusion and believe the words he used could unsettle someone--or make them feel existentially small--but that interpretation is in the mind of the reader.

Using bias or objectivity as the basis for accepting or rejecting information is problematic. Foremost, there's the problem of a skewed personal perspective that changes the way information was intended to be received. How can I tell if the problem is the author or me? Without other points of reference that may be impossible to determine.

That leaves a couple of options. Don't base the worth of information solely on whether it evidences bias or not. Include this in the mix of the author's qualifications, the publisher's reputation, the accuracy of claims and what others say about it.

The last point may be the critical one. If you believe in the "wisdom of the crowd" approach, then what a lot of other people think about an author's writing may come close to the truth. There's always the specter of 'group think' where the majority is wrong, but that tends not to happen in an open exchange of information or when information is volunteered freely. This is where checking to see what pages link to an author's work is extremely valuable.

The link: operator can be used to retrieve pages found in a search engine database (Yahoo's is the most powerful in this regard). Most of the external pages that link to a site don't have to. So why did they go to the trouble to put a link to a particular page on their site? Usually, it's to point to something of value (insight, humor, news, etc.) or to warn (as in the case of hoax sites). The best thing to ask before looking at the list of pages that link to information you want to evaluate is: "if this information is legitimate, who do I expect to find linking to it?" This involves some speculation on your part, but if you expect to find experts in a topic linking to, say, the Northwest Tree Octopus site (marine biologists, etc.) and you find none (which is the case), then you have the benefit of a crowd of witnesses expressing their personal views about the information. In the case of the Tree Octopus, people who link to it tend to find the information funny while others claim it's a fabrication. Based on the consensus of views you can determine there is insufficient support that the octopus has taken to the trees or is endangered.

Evidence of bias can also be found in the words an author uses. Strong language (often adjectives such as 'stupid' or worse) are seeded among biased views. The infamous Martin Luther King Jr. site is an example of this. Teaching students to ask, "why did an author use THAT word?" helps to uncover bias. As a student, I'm not sure I recall any of my teachers addressing how to detect bias, but it would have been valuable.

So I leave you with this challenge. Below is a link to a blog by an author who cannot be identified. Since he's self-published, there's no known publisher to fall back on. Using only the author's words, you can learn a lot about the individual. What would you say are this individual's values or biases? Under what circumstances would you use the information he authors? This could be a good activity for a group of students.

http://shroudedindoubt.typepad.com/

For more on the link: operator and how to use it, visit this tutorial.