So to me the fact that rationalizing two dads as a likelier explanation than a female doctor is incredibly telling, and suggests that gender bias is really extreme. Read the following riddle (puzzle) and see if you can think of the answer. . How could this be? He needed immediate surgery. Umyou do understand that the language of the riddle itself is designed to steer ones thoughts toward maleness before asking its pivotal question. 2. Fortunately, my daughter answered it correctly so maybe Im doing something right. What made imagining a surgeon mom so difficult? The father dies instantly, and the son is taken to the nearest hospital. The operator is a female. If it was neutral by using words like parent and child or they then people would be more inclined to choose mother or father. Exactly what I thought when I read that sentence. But when the child arrived at the hospital and was rushed into the operating theatre, the surgeon pulled away and said: "I can't operate on this boy, he's my son". Here is a full list of easy, tricky, challenging, and funny riddles that kids, math students, teens, and adults will enjoy:. This article is talking about gender bias and stereotypes, yours is just critical thinking. . That said, I doubt that a reverse role version would result in anyone having trouble identifying a male surgeon as the father. How could that be? Alternatives to the male/female family model are making in-roads. Oh, what a bigoted intolerant bunch we all are. Theyre not twins, but triplets I presume? Western society has identified the male/female centered family relationship as the norm. The thing is, if asked a direct question, the respondents may have given a more enlightened answer. Moreover, if presented with a choice of actions, I suspect many would have made an enlightened choice. Measuring gender bias is like measuring the water depth at Niagra Falls drop off. - Ryan Howard And yeah the bible belt remark is embarrassing. Instead of surgeon, its used a pessoa mais competente no local or something and even like that people get it wrong. Yes, a control group would be a good idea; however, the study is easily replicated. As to the conclusions, is it really any surprise that the researchers got the results they did? I learned myself that if you give the solution too quickly, even if they could not see it, they will tend to rationalise with comments such as Oh thats obvious, I didnt say the mother because I thought it must be more complicated. Therefore, its necessary to withold the solution and force them to dig themselves into a hole by voicing various wrong answers before giving it, so as to guard against this. It really forces us to think again and again before taking any decision based on our perception about gender which we have build unconsciously over the period. The dead so-called father had been cheated by the mother to this boy who had lied to him that this boy is his. the man was killed, but the son lived and was rushed to a hospital. I was just wondering if at any point in the study anyone decided to reverse that narrative by doing the doctor one but by replacing only the word nurse in the scenario, and the same for the nurse example. Valian argues that schemas are formed very early in life, says Belle, and that when it comes to gender, we fixate on womens reproductive functioning, and we sort of allot competence to men. This riddle has nothing to do with bias and everything to do with framing a desired outcome to prove a point. I assume the parenthetical was added later because many commenters asked whether there was a control group. That bias against women, Wapman believes, shows the significance of schemas, this silly riddle notwithstanding. This is ridiculous! The son is rushed to the hospital; just as hes about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, I cant operatethat boy is my son! Explain. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns. ) at the end, to finally justify the revelation of an already existing situation. **A . But, then, that doesnt fit your narrative, does it? The following question was also set up, but with the occupation being nurse not surgeon. To be fair, in the Spanish language there are clear masculine/feminine appropriations to nouns, like surgeons. Word, Kate. Make it a father dying and a daughter on the operating table and Id be the number of those who say the surgeon is a woman magically improves. In Nigeria and in most African countries where extended family system is the norm the fact that the doctor calls the boy their son is not strange because the doctor may be a member of the boys extended family. Ask a serious of Riddles/questions to your students that may seem tricky but point out double standards, such as these following: A father and son were in a car accident where the father was killed. I have heard such theories as The father was resuscitated, It wasnt his real father, Its a clone of the father and even The surgeon is God. For example, cirujano literally means [male] surgeon, and cirujana means [female] surgeon. Your email address will not be published. In an article about bias the author clearly shows his bias. A cowboy rides into town on Friday. That would maybe change numbers. Guess in a reply to this post. Belle et al . I live in the Bible belt, answered the question correctly, and (surprise!) (maybe Im just weird). Here's a challenge for you. However, they are not twins- neither fraternal nor identical. There is no imminent need for the Sherlock Holmes theatrics. He needed immediate surgery. Im not sure if the story was about Black people that would have change the number of people thinking she was his mother? The father dies on the scene, but the child is rushed to the hospital. The authors of Blindspot show us how to "outsmart the machinery of our own hidden biases.". I love the outcome and determination of the female. Who will save us from ourselves? What you need to do is ask people to name every answer they can think of, both mundane and outlandish. Answer: Noise! BTW, the cognitive processes are relevant to my work, as I am a stage hypnotist, MBPsS with a BSc in Psychology. Yet another variation has the police responding to a tip . 6 saves. We think past the obvious. I can't operate on this boy. My first though was that it was a gay couple who adopted. This article inflames the fight and does not help gender bias at all. 2. Click on 'Show Answer' to solve the riddle: A father and son have a car accident and are both badly hurt. Oh, wait, now I remember: female-surgeon is the female form of surgeon. Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. A dad and his son were riding their bikes and crashed. Errol Morris is one of the most prodigious documentary filmmakers of our time. What We Can Learn from It Today, Bidens Legal Strategy Could Result in Supreme Court Scuttling His Student Loan Cancellation Program, Study Abroad Planning: A BU Student Offers Tips, Tricks, and Insights. But agree that this would be good controls. She thought for a moment, Belle says, and she said, How could this be? Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. The answer in this case is obviously that the surgeon is the father, but Im just wondering if the drastic lack of correct answers that people have given to the question is solely because of the gender roles they have in mind, or if the way the question is set up also primes people to think of the surgeon as having the same sex as the other individuals in the question.. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he's about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, "I can't operatethat boy is my son!" Explain. This riddle has a better chance showing how the media and entertainment masculinize or feminize certain things than it does determining if someone is sexist. You Are Your Own, a curated collection of my feminist poems is available on Amazon & Free via Kindle Select: https://rb.gy/ncz77r. New television shows are showing us the way things will be. Could not think of his mother, but the real father to the boy. Judge folks by their actions, not their unguarded thoughts. ) at the end, to finally justify the revelation of an already existing situation. Maybe what that really reveals is that this riddle isnt really an accurate test of gender bias and is in fact a very childish and simplistic way of approaching a serious issue. Its where the if you want to hide something, put it out in the open truism comes from. "Because he's my son," the doctor responds. The daughter is rushed to the hospital; just as shes about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, I cant operatethat girl is my daughter!. For example, in Portuguese: Well, how would the biological father know that that was his son? I cant imagine the students ran the experimental design by a grad student TA, because we would definitely have pointed this out, like a knee-jerk reaction. 24. Complex Car Riddles. How can he operate for the three people with two pair of surgical gloves? It would be embarrassing to not be able to guess that the surgeon is the mother. They have severe trauma and a SPECIALIST (general neutral word) is called. I am extremely shocked that I did not get it. Activity 1: Riddles. Answer: The doctor is the boy's mother. How is that possible? The daughter is rushed to the hospital; just as shes about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, I cant operatethat girl is my daughter!. Riddle: One of these words does not belong: Brawl, Carrot, Change, Clover, Proper, Sacred, Stone, Seventy, Swing, Travel. The neurosurgeon took one look at the patient and said "I can't operate on the boy. My point being is, the English language, doesnt necessarily do this. As such, this may confound interpretation in terms of gender bias but the riddle nonetheless powerfully illustrates the unconscious operation of either cognitive set, gender stereotypes or other perceptual biases. Ask a subgroup of people the following question and see if they are more likely to solve the riddle: A mother and daughter are in a horrible car crash that kills the mother. this will help to think out of box. school have been at 50% for ten years or more. Then you have both a horrible mother AND doctor, wholl obviously deny accountability in the end anyway. When she and Wapman posed the riddle to kids in the UROP study, some of the answers stretched the bounds of inventiveness: the surgeon was a robot, or a ghost, or the dad laid down and officials thought he was dead, but he was alive.. the fourth son of my father is an obedient servant in the hands of men but when he losses his master he becomes an unmercifully god, the fifth son of my father is the center of our lives, True the woman is connected with reproduction, but that is logical not biased. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. I think my English not really that good in understanding the previous story on this. Read the logic puzzles that we propose and argue the answers. Having people understand that they hold this bias, says Wapman, and when you look at job applicants, keep that in mind., Eternal vigilance, I think, is the only solution, says Belle. It is telling that the results were no different for the gender reversed alternate version of the riddle. Perhaps, when a person is confronted with something confusing, they fall back on not sure what term to use here older knowledge maybe? I had no problem thinking the surgeon was his mother, but equally thought it could have been a second father. He goes to the hospital but the doctor say "I can't operate on you, your my son." It is not his mom. This is my comment on this. Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications. How is this possible? A patient is rushed into the emergency ward of the National Hospital after a horrific road crash, and is in urgent need of an operation to save his life. And indeed to maybe do it even more properly, as mentioned here, https://www.bu.edu/articles/2014/bu-research-riddle-reveals-the-depth-of-gender-bias/#comment-7240542 you need to rephrase to parent and child, to remove the priming. They are rushed to the hospital. Yet, something at the back of my mind says a lack of creativity, not gender bias is the main issue here. The boy could have been adopted by the father in the accident, and surgeon could be the biological father in an open adoption. This is supposed to help people? Curiously, life experiences that might suggest the mom answer had no association with how one performed on the riddle, Wapman says. For example, the boy and his parents are at home, as they leave the Father says to the Mother Have a wonderful day at work. This father could have seen his child (or even just pictures of him)on a regular enough basis to recognize him when he saw him. The specialist arrives, looks at the son and says, I cannot treat him as he is my son.. how can this be? Plus if you do mess up, the guilt would be unbearable. Could this be what those BU students had in mind as well? This month marks the 20th anniversary of Elizabeth's return home and on this week's episode of All In, we speak with Chris Thomas who acted as spokesperson for the Smart Family throughout their entire experience in searching for Elizabeth. Looking at the portrait of a man, Harsh said, "His mother is the wife of my father's son. Show answer. Theres Plenty to Do, Video: The Mystery behind BUs Record-Breaking Indoor Track, BU Opts against Forswearing Investments in Gun Manufacturers, 11 Books to Read in Celebration of Womens History Month, Today I Learned: The Smell of Formaldehyde Makes You Hungry, New Music March 2023: Local Boston Concerts, New Album Releases, Comics Artist Joel Christian Gill Launches BUs New Visual Narrative MFA Degree, POV: Lincoln Struggled with Depression. Let me add this. He can't breathe if he tore a hole in his space suit. I was thinking the crash emotionally killed the father Like a true psychology major. That said, his field trip may be using special tickets with different entitlements. Which is why its the control. . . What are we? Lets see the issue in Portuguese. A: There weren't any stairs, it was a one story house! Thus my own bias against the enlightened elite gets reinforced. ..Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Assumptions are tough to ignore but so frequent in occasion. It may show sexist bias in some instances but in general cannot. I think that as a species we are collectively ignorant and consistently ignorant when it comes to this as we are learning and shaping our language to accommodate all of us. One would (unconsciously) assume that if the mother was a surgeon, they would have called her in the first place rather than waiting for her to appear and state she cant operate because thats her son. It was very interesting. The father was killed and the son was rushed to the hospital. Come on! Its efficacy depends entirely upon how it is presented. (Cue the final Jeopardy! How could this be? In comparison, languages that have derived from Latin, usually have a strong connotation of gender associated to the words, for a more explicit meaning. . It is like people preaching tolerance, but showing no tolerance for those that believe differently than themselves. Gender bias continues even if we become more and more aware about it, because it needs a long time to change own behaviors. The doctor may be the boys uncle from the paternal or maternal side. CRIKEY said: is this what u want. So check your facts before generalizing a whole third of the country you bigot. In an unambiguous gender scenario, people pick the right gender 100% of the time. And back to my original point, the scenario of the riddle is gender-ambiguous. Ignorant, definitely. Exactly. There is no control group condition in this study, one where the answer conforms to the gender schemas; they simply have two conditions where the answer conflicts. In other words, one would expect bias to grow or become more rooted over time but this was not the case. An old riddle: Two siblings are born naturally on the same date, in the same year, to the same mother and father. :D. It didnt cross my mind that it could be the childs mother. I have been playing people with this riddle for about 30 years, since discovering it in Scientific American. We have bias instinctually and its a reality. That means no one is right or good. What I think is the more valuable information gained from this study is that the majority of respondents were more likely to accept that the parents were a same sex couple than break gender norms. I wonder if they do the following control. Black shoes, socks, trousers, jumper, and gloves. Being aware that schemas and biases exist is the first step to untangling them. Thats the whole point of the riddle. You have two ropes that both take exactly 1 hour t. The doctor comes in and exlaims "I can't operate on this boy." "Why not?" the nurse asks. Use "I . It would be interesting for them to add a control group or correct the language and redo the study so we could have a more accurate picture of what is happening here. And when television gets a change in society and shows it, I think this change is more easily accepted in American society, anyway. This riddle, if it is intended to display sexist bias, is severely flawed. Ideally, they should have groups where they pair father and son with nurse, and mother and daughter with surgeon so that the gender schemas are not violatedand then groups where they use father and daugher or mother and son being in the accident, to avoid priming participants one way or the other. If not, youre part of a surprising majority. After reading several of these comments, I can see that people are rather critical of this article, mainly because the structure of this experiment in that it uses a riddle as its main component and doesnt take into consideration influences such as priming, language, creative thinking, control conditions, and alternate versions of the riddle. When they arrived, an old gray surgeon was called in to operate. Notice that you just called the probably-male doctor scenario the control. That proves the bias right there! "I can't operate on this boy: he is my son." How can this be? I have no brothers or sisters"? BE FAIR. How is this possible? Question: A man and his son get into a car accident. I once gave this riddle to my wife and she did not get the answer. He can't send one to jail without sending the other one. Assumptions are tough to ignore but so frequent in occasion. A father and his son are in a car accident. One leads to the castle; the other, to certain death. The best part of various responses were fruit for thought. Answer: To boil the egg in exactly 15 minutes, follow these four steps. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he's about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, "I can't operate - that boy is my son!"'. My problem is more trying to think inside the box, (or locate the drafted box, or figure out why everyone else is thinking inside the box in the first place). ), The genesis of the research was Belles 10-year-old granddaughter, who was given the riddle by her mom. The moment they arrived at the hospital, he was wheeled into an emergency operating room, and the surgeon came in, expecting a routine case. My son now can see both the new and old Xbox's. The issue now is that the new Xbox is in standby mode, and will connect if needed, the old console is "offline" or "online" depending if you go and physically press the power button on the old Xbox. A persons answer doesnt necissarily imply that they are sexist at all. Its not ok to be abusive, profane, self promotional, misleading, incoherent, but it is ok for the author to show a clear liberal bias in an article on gender bias and bash bible believers? I realize Im 8 years late on answering but its the thought that counts. If you'd like to take a guess at some more difficult riddles, have a go at the ones below and see how many you can solve! So No one is stupid; and there is no real need to get angry because it somehow makes the reader feel guilty or confused. We were created equal and that is what I believe. Learning therefore, is that one should not be too quick in arriving at a conclusion in cases like this. Perhaps my gender bias was slow thinking. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! That may explain the result. We know that the elder couple has also a son. Answer: The old surgeon was the boy's . It is important to be okay wit feeling ignorant to such things, to pick up the pace. Who was the doctor? Two fathers and two sons went hunting and shot three ducks. is a senior writer at BU Today andBostoniamagazine. Riddle: A father and son were in a car accident where the father was killed. The man's son was in the operating room and the doctor said, "I can't operate on you. Discrimination = The act of treating others unfairly based on prejudice and stereotypes about their identity (age.race, religion, sex, disability, or any other status). In research conducted by Mikaela Wapman (CAS14) and Deborah Belle, a College of Arts & Sciences psychology professor, even young people and self-described feminists tended to overlook the possibility that the surgeon in the riddle was a she.
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