Cognitive Errors

Selected Studies:

•  Christine Wennerås, and Agnes Wold: "Nepotism and sexism in peer review," Nature, vol. 347, pp. 341-343 (1997) , http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v387/n6631/pdf/387341a0.pdf
  
  This is a study of the Swedish Medical Research Council's (MRC) evaluation process. The outcome is in short that, compared with the average male applicant, a female scientist has to be 2.6 times more productive if both are to be perceived as equally competent.
   

• Neil Koblitz: "Are student ratings unfair to women?"
  http://www.awm-math.org/newsletter/199009/koblitz.html
  
  Student ratings of instructors by gender are analyzed, and the conclusion is that students often rate the same performance differently for women and men. Women will be rated highly "only if they are especially accessible to the students and spend a lot of time with them, while men can receive equally high ratings while remaining more aloof." Also, "if an instructor feels compelled to put students under pressure [assigning a lot of homework, giving challenging exams], then [...] most students are inclined to 'punish' the instructor [by giving low ratings]. There is considerable evidence that the 'punishment' is more severe if the instructor is female."
   

• Frances Trix, Carolyn Psenka: "Exploring the Color of Glass: Letters of Recommendation for Female and Male Medical Faculty," Discourse & Society, Vol. 14, No. 2, 191-220 (2003),
  http://das.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/2/191
  
  "This study examines over 300 letters of recommendation for medical faculty at a large American medical school in the mid-1990s, using methods from corpus and discourse analysis, with the theoretical perspective of gender schema from cognitive psychology. Letters written for female applicants were found to differ systematically from those written for male applicants in the extremes of length, in the percentages lacking in basic features, in the percentages with doubt raisers (an extended category of negative language, often associated with apparent commendation), and in frequency of mention of status terms. Further, the most common semantically grouped possessive phrases referring to female and male applicants ('her teaching,' 'his research') reinforce gender schema that tend to portray women as teachers and students, and men as researchers and professionals. "
   

• R.E. Steinpreis, K.A. Anders, and D. Ritzke: "The impact of gender on the review of the curricula vitae of job applicants and tenure candidates: A National Empirical Study." Sex Roles, Vol. 41, Nos. 7/8, (1999), 509-528.
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/sers/1999/00000041/F0020007/00292305
  
  "The purpose of this study was to determine some of the factors that influence outside reviewers and search committee members when they are reviewing curricula vitae, particularly with respect to the gender of the name on the vitae. The participants in this study were 238 male and female academic psychologists who listed a university address in the 1997 Directory of the American Psychological Association. They were each sent one of four versions of a curriculum vitae (i.e., female job applicant, male job applicant, female tenure candidate, and male tenure candidate), along with a questionnaire and a self-addressed stamped envelope.  [...] Both men and women were more likely to vote to hire a male job applicant than a female job applicant with an identical record. Similarly, both sexes reported that the male job applicant had done adequate teaching, research, and service experience compared to the female job applicant with an identical record. [...] The results of this study indicate a gender bias for both men and women in preference for male job applicants."
   

• "Not getting the award, grant, or job? Check those references?", AWIS Magazine, vol. 21, no.1, pp. 7-12, Jan-Feb 1992.
  
  This article presents four actual letters of recommendation written by the same professor within the same year, two for men and two for women. Information about the students is provided after the letters. The analytical views of professionals, after reading these letters of recommendation, are presented. Suggests ways for students to obtain more accurate and positive recommendation letters.
   

• Susan Basow: "Student Ratings of Professors are not Gender Blind", AWM Newsletter, Vol. 24, No. 5, Sept.-Oct. 1994.
  http://www.awm-math.org/newsletter/199409/basow.html
  
  "Student ratings of professors may be biased against women in subtle but significant ways. [...] Researchers who consider the gender of the rater find a more complex pattern. The ratings of male professors are unaffected by student gender, but female professors frequently receive lower ratings from their male students and higher ratings from their female students. Female professors also appear to be evaluated according to a heavier set of expectations than are male professors, and these expectations affect student ratings. "
   

• Psychological Studies of Sex differences (a link to WISELI bibliography, scroll down once you get to the page in order to view the bibliography on Studies of Sex difference.)
   

• Project Implicit:
  https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
  
  "Project Implicit represents a collaborative research effort between researchers at Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and University of Washington. While the particular purposes of each study vary considerably, most studies available at Project Implicit examine thoughts and feelings that exist either outside of conscious awareness or outside of conscious control. The primary goals of Project Implicit are to provide a safe, secure, and well-designed virtual environment to investigate psychological issues and, at the same time, provide visitors and participants with an experience that is both educational and engaging."
   

Resources:

• Effective Strategies to Diversify STEM Faculty
  (by Lisa Frehill of CPST (PI) and Elba Serrano, Mary O'Connel of New Mexico State University (co-PI's), NSF-funded project entitled "Effective Strategies to Diversify STEM Faculty."
   

• University of California: "Creating a Family Friendly Department, Chairs and Deans Toolkit" (pdf)
  The UC Faculty Family Friendly Edge is an initiative designed to develop and implement a comprehensive package of innovative work-family policies and programs for ladder-rank faculty in the UC system.
   

• JoAnn Moody:  "Rising above cognitive errors: Guidelines for Search, Tenure Review, and other evaluation committees." (2005). http://www.diversityoncampus.com/id13.html
   

• Virginia Valian: "Women at the top in science - and elsewhere." In S. Ceci and W. Williams (Eds.), Why Aren't More Women in Science? (pp.27-37) Washington, D.C. American Psychological Association Press. (2006)
   

• Initiatives of the Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: http://wiseli.engr.wisc.edu/initiatives.html
   

• "On inevitable bias, and how to compensate", by Richard Donkin, published: August 16 2007, The Financial Times
   

• "Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling", by  Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post, July 30, 2007, page A07
   

• "Bias cut", by Lutz Bornmann, Nature 445, February 2007, page 566.