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?