"Kind of Wrong Off the Bat": Undergraduate Students Expressing Implicit Bias Against Nonbinary Persons

• In Event: Negotiating and Constructing Identities Across Learning Contexts

Abstract

In what ways does gender bias exist in the academy and how is it manifested? This pilot study of a curriculum to be fully tested with over 200 students reveals likely bias that is non-verbalized and possibly implicit. Undergraduate students worked in groups and were asked to rank with justification four fictional job applicants. Each group received the same applications, with one difference: the genders of the applicants were changed from female to male to nonbinary. The students ranked the nonbinary candidates lower, and discourse analysis of their justifications illustrated how bias might be expressed in code rather than explicitly justified. With greater expression of gender diversity, this line of work contributes to understanding bias more generally in the academy.

Authors

• Skylar Hoffman, University of Maryland

• J. Nicole Miller, University of Maryland

• Philip Piety, University of Maryland