Authors’ names have ‘astonishing’ influence on peer reviewers: study
When I was an undergrad in college, I helped design a study on the role of gender perception in expertise.We had a piece of text that the subjects (undergrads) would read and rate the expertise of. We had the same text but we randomized whether the name would be a commonly male name, a commonly female name, or initials.We also randomized if they'd watch a clip of men's sports beforehand (men's basketball), women's sports beforehand (women's basketball), or no sports. And finally we randomized whether the person giving the subjects instructions would be a young woman (one of my classmates) or a young man (me).Our small study showed what you'd expect- students- men and women students rated male writers more highly than female writers, and initials were right in the middle, though they tended to be more like responses for men.The tester's gender made no difference that we found.The sports thing made a measurable difference, but it didn't reverse the skew.My 18/19 year old self was somewhat skeptical we'd find a difference, but I was totally wrong. It taught me a lot about bias and perception, which this study also shows.