Warren Harding Error

In the Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall For Tall, Dark And Handsome Men the article enlightens us as to why we fall for the "tall. dark and handsome man" almost like those 5 words are one long word.  IT is an attraction that we have in our unconscious as we associate the pairing of good looking with competency.  One might find it interesting that although he was good looking President Harding was one of the worst President's.  "He was vague and ambivalent on matters of poluicy". P. 7e3.  It was fascinating to me that when doing the IAT our minds so quickly decided between pairs of ideas that we are familiar with in the past and have presently grouped them together.  I was intrigues with the statistics  of the tall CEO's in the Fortune 500
companies.  I had no idea there was such an obvious discrimination of shorter people.  The takeaway message was one of quick judgment is not a wise way to base your opinion and the old saying there is more than meets the eye.

A good leader is someone that possesses qualities such as strength, determination, honesty, commitment, the ability to delegate, good communication skills and finally a good sense of humor.  Physical attractiveness is not necessary and shouldn't even be considered  when choosing a leader.  If our unconscious biases is truly based on what we see we should experiment with interviewing people over the phone, or on paper.  A more radical idea would be to interview people behind a screen where the interviewer and the interviewee  could not have visual contact.  We as a society need to be educated with articles such as the Harding article to make us more aware of our unconscious biases.  I have heard it said that admitting we as a society have a problem is the first step to healing and correcting the problem.

After taking the Race IAT the founding stated that I did not have an unconscious racial preference.  I was not too surprised by this finding.  I have contact with African Americans on a regular basis.  One of our close family friends is an African American family and we do many things together.  I also spend a lot of time volunteering to feed the homeless with our church.  The African Americans have been friendly and I don't have some of the natural stereotypes that kids my age might have.