고등학교 영어Ⅱ (NE능률 오선영) 연계 글

Most of us would like to think that we judge others fairly when we pick a teammate, grade an essay, or hire a new worker. Yet the confidence that we notice only ability may hide the possibility that a name, a face, or a way of speaking quietly sways our judgment. How can anyone tell whether such details truly matter, and what can be done if they do?

American symphony orchestras offered an unusual opportunity to explore these questions. For decades, the players in the nation's most celebrated orchestras had largely been chosen by the music director. In 1970, women held only a tiny share of the seats in the five leading ensembles. During the 1970s and 1980s, most of these orchestras made their auditions more open, advertising positions widely and letting other orchestra members serve on the jury. Many orchestras therefore added a screen, usually a large sheet of heavy cloth or a tall room divider, behind which each candidate performed. Each candidate was also given a number, and only the orchestra's personnel manager knew the name to which that number belonged.

To learn whether the screen changed who was hired, the economists Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse studied audition records that eight major orchestras had kept between the late 1950s and 1995. Because a number of musicians had auditioned more than once, the researchers could compare the same people in rounds in which a screen was used and in rounds in which it was not. By their estimate, the screen increased the chance that a woman would move past certain preliminary rounds by about 50 percent. The switch to blind auditions could also explain part, though far from all, of the growth in women's share of new hires.

The authors acknowledged the limits of their evidence: some estimates were too imprecise to pass standard statistical tests, and one result pointed in the opposite direction. Years later, some critics argued that the study's best-known figures were less certain than popular retellings suggested. Other changes of the era, including a growing pool of trained female candidates, also mattered, so the screen was likely one of several causes.

Even so, the orchestras' experience supports the idea that a well-designed procedure may reduce bias more dependably than a promise to be fair. Rather than asking the jury to ignore what it saw, the orchestras changed the conditions under which it listened.