Where To Get Starkey Filters

20080813-filters

Whammo! You didn't encounter that coming, did you lot?

Why is it that, despite all our planning, we sometimes get defenseless past surprise, totally unprepared, with our pants downwards as it were? I mean, we're smart folks, right? How come sometimes we only don't see stuff coming?

The respond is, much of the time, that we don't see everything clearly because we don't see a lot of things at all. We process the raw stuff of experience through a variety of filters – and we act on the "processed" data, not the globe as it is.

Those filters are engrained in us, ofttimes from birth, and near of the fourth dimension they help us to finer function in our social and physical environments. For case, one very unproblematic filter we have is how to isolate something interesting or important from a cluttered background – think finding your keys among the mess at the bottom of your pocketbook. Or identifying something practiced to swallow – a ripe fruit, perhaps – among the unripe fruits, leaves, and branches of a tree.

That'due south a pretty basic filtering ability (though the physiological mechanisms involved are quite circuitous) that humans everywhere rely on every day to survive, then it's a good thing. But there are many much more complex filters that nosotros pick up every bit part of our thinking repertoire, and as helpful equally they might sometimes be, they can besides get u.s.a. into a lot of problem.

Here are some examples:

Language

Language is a powerful force in shaping our beliefs. Only inquire a sanitation engineer! Employers have long recognized the way that job titles tin affect employee performance – which is why in that location are so few clerks and so many associates at your local retail mega-outlet.

But language tin can lead usa astray, as well. Consider this instance drawn from the annals of linguistics: a tanning factory discharges wastes, mostly animal matter, into a pond. The decomposing waste creates combustible gasses. A "pond", though, is not flammable, right? I mean, right?! A human being is working near the swimming. Non taking whatsoever special precautions – why would you lot, adjacent to a "pond"? – he ignites a accident-torch. A sheet of flame engulfs the pond and spreads to the nearby factory, destroying it.

The language we use to depict people can strongly influence our behavior towards them. Feminists recognized this when they started insisting on terms similar "police officer" rather than "policeman". Or consider this: numerous studies take shown that people with "ethnic-sounding" names are less probable to get job interviews as similarly-qualified people with "white-sounding" names.

Gender

Gender is a powerful filter in every civilisation – although the behaviors information technology shapes can be very unlike from culture to culture. What is considered men'south work in one society – conveying heavy loads of bricks, for instance – might exist considered women'due south work in another.

Gender leads us astray when it leads us to look at a person'southward gender equally an alphabetize of their abilities. For instance, in the United states, it is common to hear people say things similar "men are stronger than women". This is not true. Some men are stronger than near women, a handful of men are stronger than all women, and most men are stronger than some women. But knowing someone'due south gender does not tell you annihilation about how potent they are!

Assumptions nigh gender extend far beyond physical attributes. With few exceptions, women still are not promoted to top-level corporate positions, despite the number of qualified women in the business world. Men are assumed to accept "leadership qualities" that women lack – and women'due south leadership qualities tend to be dismissed as signs of "manliness" or "bitchiness".

Race and Ethnicity

What is true of gender is also true of race and ethnicity. Knowing someone'southward race or ethnicity tells us little near that detail person – yet we human action as if it told u.s. a lot. Here'south an example: a blackness student of mine was defendant of plagiarism in some other grade when she handed in an excellent essay. This is a pupil that added immensely to every classroom discussion she took part in, and who wrote insightfully in every assignment she gave me (including "personal reflection" papers that cannot be plagiarized). The other professor did non accept any examples of piece of work that the pupil had allegedly copied from; it was simply "besides proficient". Race may non have been the only factor, simply it was clearly a factor; I've never had a white student of similar quality confront a like allegation.

Here's another instance: Black and other minority athletes, performers, even military leaders and politicians are often described equally "articulate", an describing word rarely applied to their white counterparts. People do not await articulate voice communication from non-white persons, and are surprised when they hear intelligent dialogue from black speakers.

Personal Experience

An sometime joke claims, "All Indians walk unmarried file. At to the lowest degree, the one I saw did."

Personal experience is a powerful learning tool, but it can lead us astray when nosotros brand false assumptions based on generalizations from limited feel. Babyhood experience tin can make for specially powerful filters, as they tend to be imbued with stiff emotional resonance, but any experience can atomic number 82 usa to incorrect conclusions.

Examining Your Filters

What is insidious nearly all of these factors is that near of the time they office without us even noticing them. We don't promote Republic of chad over Wilma because Republic of chad'southward a man, but considering he seems more than "leaderly", because he has that "certain something". And maybe he does – or maybe our invisible assumptions nigh gender make weak signs of "certain somethingness" seem potent, while Wilma's powerful "sure somethingness" is filtered out.

It's unlikely that you lot will catch your filters at work in your day-to-day life, but you can reflect on the way you lot take interacted with other people and how you've handled various situations (perhaps in a weekly review?). You may well be surprised to discover that, in many cases, you can't seem to put your finger on exactly why y'all acted the fashion you did – a sure sign of a filter at work. Paying attention to those moments will bring yous a long way towards replacing the stock of experience and received wisdom with filters that allow you lot to more than accurately and effectively human action.

I've listed but a handful of obvious filters here. What are your filters? How could you deal with them?