Download - AVOIDING BIASED LANGUAGE
AVOIDING BIASED LANGUAGE
PSY 311
Are people who use biased language evil?
• “When we are not careful, we take mental shortcuts that allow us to describe a group of individuals quickly, but that description could be far from accurate.”
Problem: How do we describe participants?
SOLUTIONIn psychological research:
Concise &
Accurate
OVERLY concise &
Vague
EXAMPLESchizophrenics
Those individuals with paranoid schizophrenic symptoms
“view people as individuals first”
“view people as individuals first”
PEOPLE ARE MORE THAN LABELS
LABELS:
Sexual orientationRacial & ethnic identityDisabilitiesOccupationsGender
EXAMPLE
Diabetics People with diabetes
High self-esteem students Students who report high self-esteem
LABELS:
Sexual orientationSexual orientation vs. sexual behavior
Lesbian, gay man, bisexual man, bisexual woman (APA, 2010)Racial & ethnic identity
Race vs. ethnicity Ethnicity: self-identify (e.g., American Indians, African Americans, Latinos, Chinese,
etc.) Race: ?
Disabilities Individuals with disabilities vs. disabled people
Avoid emotionally charged words (e.g., crippled, handicapped, retarded, physically challenged, stroke victim, etc.)
Occupations Titles often contain gender bias
e.g., fireman, chairman, policeman/policewoman, male nurse, woman doctor, etc.
Gender
GENDER
AVOID
he or she whenever possible
SOLUTIONS:• Drop the pronoun
Biased: The experimenter checked to see if his class points were recorded.Unbiased: The experimenter checked to see if class points were recorded.
• Replace the pronoun with nouns (e.g., person, individual, researcher, participant, etc.)
Biased: We wanted to determine if his or her prior experiences influenced current attitudes.Unbiased: We wanted to determine if the participant’s prior experiences influenced current attitudes.
• Simplify the sentenceBiased: Anyone wanting to sign up for the experiment needs to use his/her student identification number.Unbiased: Student identification numbers are necessary for signing up for the experiment.
Questions?