What Happened To Syphon Filter

20080813-filters

Whammo! You didn't run across that coming, did you?

Why is it that, despite all our planning, nosotros sometimes get caught by surprise, totally unprepared, with our pants downwardly every bit information technology were? I hateful, we're smart folks, right? How come sometimes we just don't see stuff coming?

The answer is, much of the time, that nosotros 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 nosotros act on the "processed" information, not the world as it is.

Those filters are engrained in us, oftentimes from nascence, and most of the fourth dimension they help us to effectively function in our social and concrete environments. For instance, one very simple filter nosotros have is how to isolate something interesting or of import from a cluttered background – remember finding your keys amongst the mess at the bottom of your purse. Or identifying something good to eat – a ripe fruit, perhaps – amidst the unripe fruits, leaves, and branches of a tree.

That'due south a pretty basic filtering ability (though the physiological mechanisms involved are quite complex) that humans everywhere rely on every day to survive, then information technology's a skilful thing. Only there are many much more than circuitous filters that nosotros selection up every bit part of our thinking repertoire, and as helpful as they might sometimes exist, they tin besides get united states into a lot of problem.

Here are some examples:

Language

Linguistic communication is a powerful strength in shaping our behavior. Just inquire a sanitation engineer! Employers have long recognized the manner that job titles can bear on employee performance – which is why at that place are so few clerks and so many assembly at your local retail mega-outlet.

But language can atomic number 82 us astray, besides. Consider this example fatigued from the annals of linguistics: a tanning factory discharges wastes, generally animal matter, into a pond. The decomposing waste creates flammable gasses. A "pond", though, is not flammable, correct? I mean, right?! A homo is working near the swimming. Non taking whatsoever special precautions – why would you, next to a "pond"? – he ignites a blow-torch. A sheet of flame engulfs the pond and spreads to the nearby factory, destroying it.

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

Gender

Gender is a powerful filter in every culture – although the behaviors it shapes can be very different from culture to civilisation. What is considered men'south 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 astray when it leads us to look at a person's gender equally an index of their abilities. For case, in the US, information technology is common to hear people say things similar "men are stronger than women". This is not true. Some men are stronger than most women, a handful of men are stronger than all women, and most men are stronger than some women. But knowing someone'southward gender does non tell you anything almost how stiff they are!

Assumptions about gender extend far beyond concrete attributes. With few exceptions, women withal are not promoted to tiptop-level corporate positions, despite the number of qualified women in the business earth. Men are assumed to accept "leadership qualities" that women lack – and women'southward 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's race or ethnicity tells us little nearly that particular person – yet nosotros act as if it told u.s.a. a lot. Hither'due south an example: a black educatee of mine was defendant of plagiarism in another class when she handed in an excellent essay. This is a student 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 have any examples of work that the student had allegedly copied from; it was simply "likewise good". Race may not accept been the only gene, only it was clearly a factor; I've never had a white student of similar quality face a like allegation.

Here's some other example: Blackness and other minority athletes, performers, even armed services leaders and politicians are often described as "clear", an describing word rarely applied to their white counterparts. People do not expect clear speech from not-white persons, and are surprised when they hear intelligent dialogue from blackness speakers.

Personal Experience

An onetime joke claims, "All Indians walk single file. At to the lowest degree, the ane I saw did."

Personal feel is a powerful learning tool, merely information technology tin can lead u.s. astray when we make false assumptions based on generalizations from limited experience. Childhood experience can make for especially powerful filters, as they tend to be imbued with strong emotional resonance, just any experience can atomic number 82 us to wrong conclusions.

Examining Your Filters

What is insidious about all of these factors is that well-nigh of the fourth dimension they function without u.s. even noticing them. We don't promote Chad over Wilma considering Chad's a man, but considering he seems more than "leaderly", considering he has that "certain something". And perhaps he does – or maybe our invisible assumptions about gender brand weak signs of "certain somethingness" seem strong, while Wilma'due south powerful "certain somethingness" is filtered out.

It'southward unlikely that yous will catch your filters at work in your day-to-day life, but you can reverberate on the way you accept interacted with other people and how yous've handled diverse situations (maybe in a weekly review?). You may well be surprised to find that, in many cases, you tin can't seem to put your finger on exactly why you acted the manner yous did – a sure sign of a filter at piece of work. Paying attending to those moments will bring you a long way towards replacing the stock of feel and received wisdom with filters that let you to more accurately and effectively deed.

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