What Is A Comment Filter

20080813-filters

Whammo! Yous didn't come across that coming, did you?

Why is it that, despite all our planning, we sometimes get defenseless by surprise, totally unprepared, with our pants down every bit it were? I mean, nosotros're smart folks, correct? How come sometimes we merely don't see stuff coming?

The reply is, much of the fourth dimension, that nosotros don't see everything conspicuously 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" information, not the world as it is.

Those filters are engrained in us, often from nascence, and near of the fourth dimension they help us to effectively role in our social and physical environments. For example, one very simple filter we have is how to isolate something interesting or important from a cluttered background – think finding your keys amongst the mess at the lesser of your bag. Or identifying something good to eat – a ripe fruit, perhaps – amid the unripe fruits, leaves, and branches of a tree.

That'due south a pretty basic filtering power (though the physiological mechanisms involved are quite circuitous) that humans everywhere rely on every 24-hour interval to survive, so information technology'southward a adept thing. Just in that location are many much more than complex filters that nosotros pick upwardly as function of our thinking repertoire, and every bit helpful as they might sometimes be, they tin can as well get us into a lot of trouble.

Here are some examples:

Language

Language is a powerful forcefulness in shaping our behavior. Merely ask a sanitation engineer! Employers have long recognized the way that job titles can touch employee performance – which is why at that place are and so few clerks and so many assembly at your local retail mega-outlet.

But language tin can lead us astray, as well. Consider this case fatigued from the annals of linguistics: a tanning factory discharges wastes, mostly creature matter, into a pond. The decomposing waste matter creates flammable gasses. A "pond", though, is not flammable, right? I mean, right?! A man is working almost the swimming. Non taking whatever special precautions – why would you, side by side to a "pond"? – he ignites a blow-torch. A canvass of flame engulfs the pond and spreads to the nearby mill, destroying information technology.

The language we employ to describe people tin strongly influence our behavior towards them. Feminists recognized this when they started insisting on terms like "police force officer" rather than "policeman". Or consider this: numerous studies accept shown that people with "ethnic-sounding" names are less probable to become job interviews every bit similarly-qualified people with "white-sounding" names.

Gender

Gender is a powerful filter in every culture – although the behaviors information technology shapes tin be very different from culture to civilization. What is considered men'southward work in one society – carrying heavy loads of bricks, for example – might be considered women's piece of work in another.

Gender leads united states of america astray when information technology leads usa to look at a person's gender as an index of their abilities. For instance, in the U.s., it is common to hear people say things like "men are stronger than women". This is non true. Some men are stronger than most women, a scattering of men are stronger than all women, and most men are stronger than some women. Merely knowing someone's gender does not tell you annihilation nearly how potent they are!

Assumptions almost gender extend far beyond physical attributes. With few exceptions, women still are not promoted to superlative-level corporate positions, despite the number of qualified women in the business organization world. Men are assumed to have "leadership qualities" that women lack – and women's leadership qualities tend to be dismissed equally signs of "manliness" or "bitchiness".

Race and Ethnicity

What is true of gender is likewise true of race and ethnicity. Knowing someone'southward race or ethnicity tells us little nearly that particular person – yet we act every bit if it told us a lot. Here's an example: a blackness student of mine was defendant of plagiarism in some other class when she handed in an first-class essay. This is a student that added immensely to every classroom discussion she took part in, and who wrote insightfully in every consignment she gave me (including "personal reflection" papers that cannot be plagiarized). The other professor did not have whatsoever examples of work that the educatee had allegedly copied from; it was merely "too good". Race may not have been the only factor, just it was clearly a factor; I've never had a white student of similar quality face a like accusation.

Here's another example: Black and other minority athletes, performers, fifty-fifty military leaders and politicians are often described every bit "articulate", an describing word rarely applied to their white counterparts. People practice non expect articulate speech from non-white persons, and are surprised when they hear intelligent dialogue from blackness speakers.

Personal Experience

An old joke claims, "All Indians walk unmarried file. At least, the one I saw did."

Personal experience is a powerful learning tool, just it can lead us astray when we brand false assumptions based on generalizations from limited experience. Childhood experience tin can brand for especially powerful filters, every bit they tend to be imbued with strong emotional resonance, just whatsoever experience tin lead us to wrong conclusions.

Examining Your Filters

What is insidious about all of these factors is that most of the time they function without us fifty-fifty noticing them. Nosotros don't promote Chad over Wilma because Chad's a man, simply because he seems more "leaderly", because he has that "certain something". And maybe he does – or maybe our invisible assumptions about gender brand weak signs of "certain somethingness" seem strong, while Wilma's powerful "certain somethingness" is filtered out.

It's unlikely that you will catch your filters at piece of work in your day-to-day life, just you can reflect on the way yous accept interacted with other people and how you've handled various situations (peradventure in a weekly review?). Yous may well exist surprised to observe that, in many cases, you can't seem to put your finger on exactly why you lot acted the way you did – a certain sign of a filter at work. Paying attention to those moments will bring you a long mode towards replacing the stock of experience and received wisdom with filters that allow you to more accurately and effectively act.

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