Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Jason White wrote:
There is evidence from social psychology (but I don't have references ready to hand) which indicates that there are people who claim, when asked, to be unprejudiced, but who nevertheless behave in a prejudiced manner in their actual decision-making.
Someone told me a story once about a study of (I guess) a large organization's hiring procedures, trying to build an expert system that could automate the first rounds of hiring. Given prospective hires' resumes, and the list of those who had actually been hired, they asked the computer what the highest correlated factor was. It turned out to be skin colour.
That's a very revealing anecdote. this kind of analysis is one of the means used to identify prejudice at work, but of course there are other lines of evidence, both experimental and survey-based. A good general introduction is Kristin J. Anderson, Benign Bigotry: the Psychology of Subtle Prejudcie. (I think the title is supposed to be ironic, because one of the author's conclusions is that it's not benign at all and that it is, in fact, a widespread cause of social injustice.