r/AutisticAdults • u/GirlBehindTheMask-LW • 1d ago
autistic adult Implicit bias in job interviews
I have a job interview on Monday for a lead position, with having previous experience in this role. I haven’t worked in 3 months or so.
Knowing things like the findings of this research worries me, as do the feelings I’ve been left with after experiencing workplace discrimination. How do you get over feelings of being wrongly judged and feeling inadequate or incompetent as a result of this judgement?
Reference:
Whelpley, C.E., May, C.P. Seeing is Disliking: Evidence of Bias Against Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Traditional Job Interviews. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 1363–1374 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05432-2
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u/Worcsboy 23h ago
Unfortunately, the abstract does not give needed details, and I don't have access to the full article. However, it really would depend on what the job interviews were for! Some jobs require extensive co-working, some are teamwork where objectives are agreed then everyone does their specialist thing, some are well-suited to solitary people, some look for innovators while others look for those who rigidly follow procedure. As a (retired) manager, this is one of the key personality things I'd consider when interviewing ... if the interviews in the study were for "corporate" type jobs, I can understand ASD folk not necessarily being a good fit for most positions. That is not, in itself, necessarily bias, but accurately assessing the likelihood of the appointing any particular person being successful.
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u/GirlBehindTheMask-LW 23h ago
I was almost not hired at a previous job because the manager said I was “so shy”. I think she just picked up on my autism before I was diagnosed
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u/MeanderingDuck 23h ago
Since the person who responded to my comment apparently has such high confidence in their own argument that they blocked me, and prevent me from responding to you, I will do so here instead:
There are multiple studies similar to this that come to the same conclusions
Okay, and how do those studies manage to disentangle actual bias from relevant differences?
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u/ThatDerp1 17h ago
They check what actually affects job performance and if those are being fairly evaluated?
Someone being likable, straightforward, attractive, awkward, confident, enthusiastic, or captivating… these are not relevant to most jobs. If you perform well and are loyal, that’s generally what’s going to be relevant to doing your job and not screwing over your company. If you’re being evaluated on other constructs that are not job relevant, that’s biased and not a relevant difference.
Source: Am a IO Psych PhD student.
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u/MeanderingDuck 16h ago
Do they? Such as which studies? OP specifically mentions other studies evaluating this, as per the quoted text, which is what I was asking about.
As for this study, at least going by the abstract and these figures, they evaluate a bunch of different traits, but do not evaluate to what extent each of those specific traits actually determine how likely someone is to be hired. Moreover, even those did, if eg. attractive people are more likely to be hired even when that shouldn’t be relevant, then the bias would pertain to physical attractiveness rather than autism as such.
Beyond that though, what is relevant for a job general goes well beyond just technical skills and loyalty. Things like your ability to communicate and get along with coworkers and/or members of the public, as well as self-confidence and enjoying and being engaged with the work, those are often going to be quite relevant as well.
So if, say, a company has two candidates of a similar level of technical knowledge and ability, but one comes across as friendly and likable whereas the other seems to be in a perpetually bad mood, then they’re probably going to opt for candidate #1 there. And reasonably so. And indeed, might still do so even if candidate #2 does have somewhat greater technical skill, because that may not actually translate to better performance in practice if they can’t get along with others we enough.
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u/ThatDerp1 16h ago
Ezerins did a review of barriers to employment in which she noted bias in interviews, as well as a recent qualitative study on accommodations for autistic people in interviews. I’d highly recommend both of them.
The overall likelihood of hiring is noted as a separate trait that is not fully tied into trust or competence. Moreover, there exists a bevy of research on job irrelevant traits interviewers may hire on.
In MOST jobs, job performance is best predicted by cognitive ability and conscientiousness and things like OCBs and CWBs are tied into neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. None of those are accurately measured in most interviews, but interviewers still make decisions off of these based on traits that are irrelevant to most jobs. Most jobs are not customer service, most jobs are not tied to attractiveness or confidence, but they’re still treated as relevant which is clear bias.
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u/MeanderingDuck 15h ago
You know, responding to a specific question on how other studies actually deal with a particular issue by vaguely waving in the direction of some author… not nearly as convincing as you seem to think it is.
In any case, you seem to have a very narrow definition of “job performance”. Which traits are pertinent to a job are ultimately decided by the employer, irrespective of your views on whether they are relevant. And for example the ability to work well with others and things like communication and social skill will be included in that for a large proportion of jobs, because most jobs require working with other people in various ways (well beyond “customer service”). Which may put autistic people, on average, at somewhat of a disadvantage, since those are not necessarily are strongest assets, but that doesn’t mean that those shouldn’t be considered, or that doing so constitutes a bias.
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u/ThatDerp1 15h ago
I talked about 2 particular studies by ezerins I didn’t link because I’m on a car trip and google scholar is shitting its pants rn, so I hoped you could just read them yourself after I gave you the author name and the topics. I see I overestimated your abilities, so I’ll link the studies themselves.
As for job performance:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0001879186900138
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-00819-005
The employer should have evidence on what skills are needed by virtue of having done a job analysis, which would be counted in a supervisor’s rating of job performance. And in most jobs… agreeableness is nowhere near as important as cognitive ability and conscientiousness in this rating.
Look, this is a well established field with thousands of studies on both of these predictors. This study effectively demonstrates bias because, for the given job, these other constructs are simply not as predictive as conscientiousness and cognitive ability and an autistic applicant is being unfairly rated for constructs that are generally irrelevant unless you’re doing, say, sales.
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u/MeanderingDuck 8h ago
See, and this is a very good example of the sort of condescending attitude and lack of communication ability that most employers would very much want to weed out. As would their employees, who very much do care about things such as agreeableness. Not wanting to have to deal with your unpleasant demeanor and personality isn’t ‘irrelevant’, nor does it constitute a bias.
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u/Fun_Neighborhood1571 3h ago edited 3h ago
Your lack of self awareness is astounding. You made condescending comments first lol.
Now instead of addressing their point you're deflecting to their snippy response to your condescension as the reason why there is a bias. You never wanted to have an honest conversation.
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u/MeanderingDuck 23h ago
The way that research is presented is quite misleading. It assumes that none of the information and cues not present in the transcript is relevant for making those judgments, which is simply not true. That people come to a different evaluation based on the full interview compared to just the transcript is not, in itself, evidence of bias.
Moreover, for your specific interview, even if a bias would exist there it does no good to dwell on it. Focus on your own strengths and accomplishments, ie. on the things that you do control and can be confident of.
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u/AnAlienUnderATree 23h ago
You can question the conclusions of that study but it doesn't prove that there is no bias.
Interviewers don't recruit people just because they seem competent. It would be such an ideal and fair world if it were the case. It's just unbelievable to me that you would look at this study, find a minor issue with the methodology, and conclude by saying "bias doesn't matter, just focus on what you can control". I'm sorry but it reeks of survivor bias. The diagram in the upper part of the picture is still there and it proves without a doubt that there's bias. The only issue you identified is that there are important information that is lost in transcript - which is possible but also job-dependent (like, why should I need to be convincing in person if my job is to translate written text anyway?).
Good for you if you had success in job interviews, others still struggle and unemployement is a serious problem for ND people, that needs to be tackled as a systemic level.
Imagine saying the same thing if it was about women vs men or black people vs white people. "It does no good to dwell on it, focus on your own strengths".
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u/MeanderingDuck 23h ago
I didn’t claim that it did, so I’m not sure why you’re pointing that out. It is quite possible that there are genuine biases, this study just doesn’t provide actual evidence of that. And more generally, that would be quite difficult to do, since (unlike with, say, skin color) there are plenty of difference between autistic and non-autistic people potentially relevant to a job. Any bias would need to be disentangled from that.
It is also fairly ridiculous to suggest that important information being absent in one of the conditions is “a minor issue”. That is a fundamental problem with the study, and exactly the reason why their interpretation of the results is flawed.
And yes, I would make that same point if this was about sex or ethnicity, it applies just as much to that. This isn’t about some general discussion on societal issues, this is about OP preparing for a specific interview they have scheduled. Two days from now. So exactly how would they be helped in that by dwelling on, and worrying about, possible biases on the part of the interviewers?
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u/GirlBehindTheMask-LW 23h ago
There are multiple studies similar to this that come to the same conclusions
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u/RobotsRadio 1d ago
What exactly is "video condition" and "transcript condition"? I'm assuming that video condition means the person hiring saw or interacted with the candidate on video, like a recording or Zoom type call, and transcript condition means the person hiring only read the transcript, or words, from the call. Is that correct?