Unconscious demotions — 10 years later
This month marks the ten-year anniversary of an article I published in Fast Company about a communication blunder I named an “unconscious demotion.”
Here are some excerpts from that article:
“In 2003, a journalist named Katherine Rosman was at a party where she felt awkward and out of place. So she struck up a conversation with someone else who seemed to feel out of place. He was one of the few African Americans there and turned out to be a state senator. Later that evening, Rosman learned that one of the other guests had assumed that the senator was a waiter and had asked him to get a drink from the bar.
This anecdote, which might not seem especially newsworthy, was reported in the Wall Street Journal in November 2008, because that state senator had become president-elect of the United States.
Barack Obama had been on the receiving end of what I call an ‘unconscious demotion,’ the unthinking habit of assuming that somebody holds a position lower in status or expertise than they actually do…
A sociologist isn’t perceived to be a professor by a textbook rep waiting at her door. When she live-tweets this unconscious demotion, one follower translates the rep’s apology of ‘I, uh, didn’t recognize you’ as ‘code’ for ‘I was not expecting you to be black.’”
And here we have the key to unconscious demotions: not being recognized.
The human brain is incredibly good at pattern recognition. From our very first months of life, our brains are working to sort out patterns that let us create meaning from the world around us. By the time we’re 12 months old, for instance, we’ve learned to pay attention to the sounds that are meaningful in our language(s) and to ignore the sounds that aren’t. And our surroundings get sorted into categories that give some things more importance than others.
Think about what comes to mind when you read the words ‘bird,’ ‘furniture,’ and ‘doctor.’ For most of us, a robin is a more prototypical bird than a penguin, a sofa is more prototypical furniture than a bookshelf, and a man is a more prototypical doctor than a woman.
That last prototype is what fuels this old riddle:
A man and his son are in a car crash. When the son is brought to the operating room, the surgeon says, ‘I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son.’ How is this possible?
In a recent study on bias at Boston University that included this very riddle, just 14% of college students guessed that the surgeon was the boy’s mother.”
Doubling down
Over the last ten years, I’ve been asked during workshops and after talks: why do we do this?
We unconsciously demote people because our brains haven’t been given enough good data to form an accurate picture of the world.
Then, when we make snap judgments, these judgments are often based on distorted and unreliable mental models.
What’s more, when we’re faced with cognitive dissonance — like when we encounter someone who doesn’t fit neatly into our mental models — we may double down on our mistaken beliefs.
Like last month, when a doctor responded at the airport gate to the call, “Is anyone here a doctor?” She ran to the jetway, but the gate agent standing there said, “Ma’am, you can’t come in here.”
The doctor replied, “But they called for a doctor?”
Another gate agent said, “Are you a nurse?”
The doctor said, “No, I’m a doctor.”
The agent said, “A medical doctor?”
The doctor said, “Yes, specializing in family medicine.”
The first agent said, “No way. Can we see some documentation that shows you’re actually a doctor?”
This particular doctor does not carry a copy of her medical license with her, but I’ve read about multiple other doctors who do carry a laminated version of their license for exactly these occasions.
Unconscious demotions lead to all kinds of unpleasant and embarrassing outcomes:
It feels bad to have someone not believe you have reached the level you have reached. It is insulting and demeaning.
It can be incredibly embarrassing to realize you have made a mistake and insulted and demeaned someone.
Negative business outcomes include:
Salespeople who lose sales because they assumed someone important was there to make them coffee or take notes.
Vendors who lose contracts because they assumed someone important was lower-ranked and much less important.
Candidates who don’t get the job because they didn’t recognize who in the room held the power.
People at networking events who offend and alienate someone who would be a great connection and possibly further their career.
What’s changed?
Ten years later, what has changed about unconscious demotions?
Based on my research, the answer is: nothing.
In fact, given the rise in uncivil, combative, and antagonistic language, it looks like things have actually gotten worse. Here are just a few examples of unconscious demotions I’ve collected in the last few years:
Doctor mistaken for nurse/orderly/patient’s family member/cleaning staff
Lawyer mistaken for court translator/secretary/criminal defendant
Homeowner mistaken for landscaper/non-resident/burglar
Mistaken for administrative assistant but actually engineer/CEO/VP/head of HR/senior project lead
Mistaken for intruder but actually faculty member/grad student/undergrad/prospective student on tour
What can you do?
There are two ways you can stop yourself from unconsciously demoting someone.
Take some simple preventative steps in the moment.
Train your brain with better data.
In the moment
Ask open ended questions like “So what brings you here?” or “So what do you do?”
Don’t express surprise when someone doesn’t match your mental model.
Avoid the credential check. Even if you’re facing cognitive dissonance because you’ve never met someone who looks or sounds like that and does that job, don’t insist that they prove themselves.
Longer term
Expand the data available to your brain. Let’s say you need to get a more realistic mental model for the category of practicing lawyers.
You can retrain your brain by giving it access to a wider range of people who are lawyers. You can follow people on social media, listen to podcasts, watch videos, read books, and attend events. Just by getting access to this new data, your brain’s pattern recognition ability will activate and improve your mental models.
The result? You’ll be a lot less likely to make an embarrassing mistake.
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By changing a few language habits in the “getting to know you” phase and giving your brain better data over time, you can avoid making the unconscious demotions that insult and alienate people and lead to all kinds of negative outcomes.
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