And frankly it was sort of shocking in its slipperiness. To satiate my own need to put a finger on where this article ends up betraying the Enlightenment in a haze of motivated reasoning, I thought I’d engage with the text on a point by point basis, commenting where I felt I needed to flesh out my objections. What started out as a mere exercise in my Gmail drafts grew to what you see below.
a) I’m wrong about anything I’ve said and someone might disabuse me of my ignorance
b) it may prevent the unsuspecting falling prey to the article’s manipulations.
Here’s the Wired article
In fairness to the article, it’s introduction to the bruhaha is pretty solid in my view so for those who aren’t so familiar with the issue, the section before the following quotation gives a pretty good breakdown.
The problem is, the science in Damore’s memo is still very much in play, and his analysis of its implications is at best politically naive and at worst dangerous. The memo is a species of discourse peculiar to politically polarized times: cherry-picking scientific evidence to support a preexisting point of view. It’s an exercise not in rational argument but in rhetorical point scoring. And a careful walk through the science proves it.
Without further ado, the sections in quotations are from the article, the bits beneath, unless otherwise noted, are mine.
Science is hard
Personality traits are nebulous, qualitative things, and psychologists still have a lot of different—often conflicting or contradictory—ways to measure them. In fact, the social sciences are rife with these kinds of disagreements, what sociologist Duncan Watts has called an “incoherency problem.” Very smart people studying the same things collect related, overlapping data and then say that data proves wildly different hypotheses, or fits into divergent theoretical frameworks. The incoherency problem makes it hard to know what social science is valid in a given situation.
Perfectly reasonably point this, with a myriad of interesting implications.
I suppose it is why meta-meta-analyses, like this one, are so useful.
However, I would venture that casting broad aspersions on the social sciences mentioning “[…]data proves wildly different hypotheses, or fits into divergent theoretical frameworks.” without giving an example in the Memo of where this happens to be the case is an inauspicious start. What looks like an example actually turns out not to be-
The first-order criticism here is easy: Damore oversells the difference cited in the paper. As Schmitt tells WIRED via email, “These sex differences in neuroticism are not very large, with biological sex perhaps accounting for only 10 percent of the variance.” The other 90 percent, in other words, are the result of individual variation, environment, and upbringing.
1) I’m not convinced at all that Damore oversells the difference- he couches it in the language of plausibility, not certainty, writing “This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs”. Emphasis mine.
2) He points to the following finding “[as] society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider”.
How much of this is biologically driven appears to be still uncertain but Richard Lippa’s (more from him later) meta analysis leaves us with the sense that a significant part of this population-wide difference can not be the result of just social context- referring to this increased gap in personality traits in gender egalitarian societies as “a finding that contradicts social role theory”. Schmitt’s 10% is hard to assess but even this would still lead us to expect a skewed distribution in some arenas if all else were equal (which should be the case), ie. this argument does nothing to weaken Damore’s position.
Lee Jussim, social psychologist, in criticising this article goes further:
So, yes, that’s the researcher Wired cites disagreeing with Damore, agreeing with Damore…
[Schmitt] doesn’t buy that you can predict the population-level effects of that difference. “It is unclear to me that this sex difference would play a role in success within the Google workplace (in particular, not being able to handle stresses of leadership in the workplace. That’s a huge stretch to me),” writes Schmitt. So, yes, that’s the researcher Damore cites disagreeing with Damore.
This is presented as a major gotchya. A few things strike me-
1) This is but one of the personality differences presented as one of many possible contributors to gender imbalance in tech. It is also the least convincing and least relevant of his claims as it seems to concern leadership representation rather than Goolgers in general.
2) Schmitt here doubts the extent to which this factor (presented as a plausible) contributes towards an imbalance. Presenting this as a major blow to Damore’s thesis is… strange.
3) Crucially, the memo’s position is not what we read Schmitt rejecting ‘in particular’- Damore says neuroticism may be one reason we don’t see as many women in those roles- this is not necessarily because they can’t handle them (Schmitt rejects this clearly), it could also be because on average they may not find them as attractive (Damore focuses on preferences in his memo)- Schmitt does not reject this in the quotes.
“How this [negative emotionality/neuroticism] all fits into the Google workplace is unclear to me. But perhaps it does.” (Emphasis mine)
What features in the article is quote-mining as a fine art.
These four points together justify more than a sense of mild scepticism regarding the authors’ advertised “careful walk through the science”.
People and things
“On average—and I emphasize that, on average—men are more interested in thing-oriented occupations and fields, and that difference is actually quite large,” says Richard Lippa, a psychologist at Cal State Fullerton and another of the researchers who Damore cites.
But trying to use that data to explain gender disparities in the workplace is irrelevant at best. “I would assume that women in technical positions at Google are more thing-oriented than the average woman,” Lippa says. “But then an interesting question is, are they more thing-oriented than the average male Google employee? I don’t know the answer to that.[…] And maybe the most important question: How useful are psychological studies of the general population when you’re talking about Googlers?”
So here we come to the sleights of hand that had me no longer able to accept good faith on the part of the authors.
1) Why is this ‘irrelevant’? Why is it irrelevant ‘at best’? This is probably the core claim of the memo- if women are on average less interested in coding, we should expect fewer female coders. How this can honestly be viewed as irrelevant is utterly beyond me.
2) The Second paragraph is so alarmingly incoherent, it bespeaks either incompetence or maliciousness-
Damore makes no mention of current female Googlers, beyond the implication that there are just fewer of them and fewer in leadership roles at Google. I can’t imagine what question Lippa was asked here but he is quoted discussing the qualities of current female employees! Lippa’s comments only serve to underscore Damore’s point that Google hires individuals- these female Googlers (whether in the general workforce or in leadership roles) are there on their own merits, out of their own interests.
That the authors preface this quote about current employees with “trying to use that data to explain gender disparities in the workplace is irrelevant at best” is crude legerdemain and utterly impossible to explain without accepting that intellectual honesty is not high on the agenda here.
And maybe the most important question: How useful are psychological studies of the general population when you’re talking about Googlers?”
They would explain a lot of the gender difference in hiring. The trends of the general population can’t not influence the make-up of such a large group of people.
“Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.”- Damore
If the authors want to argue that we can’t predict female employees at google exhibiting the same personality traits as the general population (and thus promotion patterns should not follow general patterns absent bias) due to some hidden variable, fair enough. It’s just that positing such an objection, without then wondering about the answer to that empirical question- the personality scores for neuroticism etc. among female Googlers and their correlations with workplace progress- is indicative of the article’s attitude towards science. It doesn’t really want to know. It’s feminism of the gaps.
Semantics aren’t helping here. Is coding a thing- or people-oriented job? What about when you do it in a corporation with 72,000 people?
It’s good to question definitions but those with leanings towards people-oriented careers probably don’t decide to spend years alone on a computer in the hope of being employed by a company with lots of people. This is not empirically tested to my knowledge, but the argument is weak.
Damore, though, is saying that differences in cognitive or personality traits—if they exist at all—have both social and biological origins. And those biological origins, he says, are exactly what scientists would predict from an evolutionary perspective.
Yes. The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is, to date, un-falsified. Every aspect of our natures, including our culture, must be a product of and itself a part of this process. If we could find something in our traits which didn’t fit with Natural Selection, the theory would need revision.
Evolutionary psychology and its forebear, sociobiology, are themselves problematic fields. Two decades ago evo-psych was all the rage. It’s essential argument: Males and females across species have faced different kinds of pressures on their ability to successfully reproduce—the mechanism, simplistically, through which evolution operates. Those pressures lead to different mating strategies for males and females, which in turn show up as biological and psychological differences—distinctions present in men and women today.
The problem with that set of logical inferences is that it provides a convenient excuse to paint a veneer of shaky science onto “me Tarzan, you Jane” stereotypes.
Problematic fields? Ok, if I wasn’t concerned about the integrity of this piece before, I most certainly am now. This is an attempt to smuggle in an unfair stereotype of an entire body of research. Most fields have their share of dodgy scholarship.
Science is only problematic when it is wrong.
Yes, the fields may be ‘problematic’ in another sense because evolution is a horror show and often what it has created is deeply disturbing. Given his genetic influence, it could be said that Ghengis Kahn ‘wins’ evolution, the monster that he was. And yes, it seems there are bad scientists in this field who have resorted to post hoc justifications for present wrongs. But by being a science, its self-correcting nature means these inaccurate ‘just so stories’ are eventually defeated. To tarnish and implicitly stereotype the work of entire fields with an appeal to consequences “The problem with that set of logical inferences is that it provides a convenient excuse to paint a veneer of shaky science onto “me Tarzan, you Jane” stereotypes” is alarming.
In fact, evolutionary biologists today race to point out that the nature-versus-nurture dichotomy is outdated.
Yup, it is true no individual is determined either by nature or nurture. It’s a complex interplay. Nature of course does have influence at the population level (Damore’s focus). The point is an utter non-sequitur and this whole traducement of evo psych possibly harmful.
“[W]e cannot know the influence of environmental versus biological variables, even at very young ages.”
The article quotes Diane Halpbern on discussing differences in intellectual abilities between genders. The point she is quoted here as making does not interrupt Damore’s argument. He makes no claim regarding how much biology or environment determines such qualities. But that biology does influence the differences, Halpbern is convinced-
“At the time I started writing this book it seemed clear to me that any between sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts, and mistakes in the research. After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high, and numerous books and book chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles, I changed my mind. The literature on sex differences in cognitive abilities is filled with inconsistent findings, contradictory theories, and emotional claims that are unsupported by the research. Yet despite all the noise in the data, clear and consistent messages could be heard. There are real and in some cases sizable sex differences with respect to some cognitive abilities. Socialization practices are undoubtedly important, but there is also good evidence that biological sex differences play a role in establishing and maintaining cognitive sex differences, a conclusion I wasn’t prepared to make when I began reviewing the relevant literature.” Steven Pinker quoting Sex Differences in Cognitive Ability by Diane Halpern.
So when Damore does juke from preferences to abilities, it looks a little sneaky. Here’s what he writes: “I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women may differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t have equal representation of women in tech and leadership,” he writes. Making the leap from personality differences to achievement differences would require citing at least some of the well-studied body of work we’ve mentioned here, which Damore ignored.
This is the strongest point in the article. One can only conclude that he imagined Google to recruit at the right tail of the IQ distribution which is slightly more populated by men (though the means of IQ for both groups are the same – meaning there are also more men with learning difficulties). This might be a simplistic assumption on his part, ignoring factors such as rationality, creativity etc. etc. which do not correlate with IQ .
Just ‘cos and effect
With the next pivot, the memo gets more pernicious. Damore switches—again, subtly—from effects to causes. His interpretation of the science around preference and ability is arguable; on causation, though, he’s even rockier. According to Damore (and a lot of research), the biological factor that connects sex to cognitive abilities and personality traits is prenatal exposure to testosterone.
Of all the high-stakes claims in sex-difference research, none is more important or more popular than the idea that hormones in the womb help give people stereotypically masculine or feminine interests.
Presumably referreing to this from the memo-
“These differences aren’t just socially constructed because [they] often have[…] links to prenatal testosterone.”
How is this harmful?
It is also a very plausible explanation. That it is the biological factor is probably impossible to say (I’m not convinced that Damore believes this), but that it is a plausible factor is doubtless. Also, regardless of the biological mechanism that causes the gender differences, be it testosterone or not, the authors must accept that such a difference would influence the make up of the pool of qualified applications to Google.
The most consistent findings linking prenatal testosterone to sex-linked behaviors come from about a dozen studies examining toy preferences among girls with a condition known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which causes the overproduction of sex hormones, including testosterone. CAH-affected girls tend to be less interested in dolls (substituting for people) and more interested in toys like trucks (things).
But children with CAH have other variables. They’re often born with ambiguous genitalia and other grave medical conditions, and therefore have unusual rearing experiences.
Except this objection was controlled for without having to resort to the monkeys and soft toys straw man of the subsequent paragraph-
To get around this socialization issue, researchers from Emory University gave toys to young rhesus monkeys. When they saw that females preferred plush dolls and males preferred trucks, they concluded that these tendencies must be hard-wired into each sex.
Squint hard at this result, because it presumes that juvenile rhesus monkeys see stuffed animals as monkeylike but “wheeled toys” as thinglike.
[P]renatal androgen is the most likely explanation for the results because there was a high correlation between degree of prenatal androgen exposure and occupational interest, and males with CAH did not differ from unaffected males; further, androgen effects on interests have been confirmed in typical samples (Auyeung et al., 2009). Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People
Adriene M. Beltz, Jane L. Swanson, and Sheri A. Berenbaum
It would be more convincing (to say the least) if the authors had approached the strongest version of the opposing view.
Among social psychologists there’s a consensus that prenatal testosterone does affect a lot of personality traits, in particular one’s interest in people versus things,” Damore said in an interview last week with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. He also said it to pro-Trump YouTuber Stefan Molyneux, adding that hormonal exposure “explains a lot of differences in career choice.”
Still, most hormone researchers agree that these differences are real. But that they’re directly linked to prenatal testosterone? Not so much. And to differences in career choice? “There’s 100 percent no consensus on that,” says Justin Carré, a psychologist at Nipissing University in Ontario. “The human literature on early androgen exposure is really very messy.”
1) This wasn’t in the memo. Which is fair enough- it’s just the authors do not include any of the other comments Damore made subsequently which would have rendered some of the authors’ misreadings impossible
“I ’m not saying that any of the female engineers at Google are in any way worse than the average male engineer I’m in fact I’m just saying that this may explain some of the disparity in representation in the population all right so there may not be so many over here but those that are over here are just as good so and or not even good likability wise just preference wise with the personally difference between men and women is just differing interest in people versus things and this has links to prenatal testosterone” Damore interviewed on the Stefan Molyneux show, as quoted above.
2) He didn’t say there was *consensus* on prenatal testosterone’s influence on career choice, though the authors’ wording definitely leads one to believe he did. At this point, I’m not surprised.
“…[I]n a quiet racist dog whistle—IQ, where the evidence is far, far weaker.
‘Racist’? No citation?
Nothing like a consensus?
“There is a strange disconnect between the scientific consensus and the public mind on intelligence testing…Yet the scientific evidence is clear: IQ tests are extraordinarily useful. IQ scores are related to a huge variety of important life outcomes like educational success, income, and even life expectancy, and biological studies have shown they are genetically influenced and linked to measures of the brain. Studies of intelligence and IQ are regularly published in the world’s top scientific journals.”Stuart Ritchie
‘[Google aims to create]…an environment where people feel secure, safe, and empowered to do their best work. It’s good ethics and good business. That’s what Damore seems to see as an overly politically correct culture that stifles dissent.’
[The memo] is an attempt to make permanent a power dynamic that shouldn’t exist in the first place[…it is…]coverage for answering oppression with a shrug
Yes, this is actually being said of a document which contains a whole section entitled “Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap.” It’s just outright lies now.
Climbing to an even higher altitude, though, we might ask another question about Damore’s appeal to science: So what? Which is to say, what are we to do with not just the conclusions of the memo but also its implications? Damore is hardly the first person to use science to justify social norms or political preferences. Science has, too often in human history, been a tool for literal dehumanization as a rationale for oppression. It happened to people of African descent in America; to the poor of the Victorian era; to women in the years leading up to suffrage; and to Jews, people of nonbinary gender, Roma, people with disabilities, and so on in Nazi Germany. Historians try to wall off those ideas now—eugenics, phrenology, social Darwinism—but each, in its day, was just science.
With hindsight you can see that those pursuits weren’t science, and you can aim those 20/20 lenses at Damore too.
Let me climb higher still. The atrocious ideas that the authors refer to in this first paragraph were problems of stereotyping, derived in my view from what Popper referred to as Aristotle’s contribution to ‘barren scholasticism’- Essentialism. “http://dieoff.org/page126.htm”>Two Kinds of Definition” (scroll down)
Damore is arguing for the exact opposite and, in testament to how profound the “despair in reason” goes, the authors not only refuse to recognise this but lazily lump Damore’s position in with a host of atrocities.
I could go on to criticise the naivety of his proposals- but as I said I’m more interested in the reaction to the scientific statements- not the memo per se. I have no opinion about the validity of positive discrimination programmes. I can see both sides.
(I also think the science quoted in the memo should urge employers to re-evaluate their hiring and promoting policies. If candidates (male or female) who are talented but less assertive, better communicators but more focused on a fulfilling life, more sensitive to negative emotions but with stronger personal values are pushed out by more aggressive competitors, then a smart company looks at ways of valuing those overlooked qualities and incorporating them into their assessments.)
However, the core claim here is a group of candidates, self-selected due to interests unequally shared between the sexes will result in skewed employment stats. Sexism is real due to a plethora of horrible idiocies and cruelties, but our incessant habit of conflating individuals with the stereotype of their population’s trends is core.
The memo is a species of discourse peculiar to politically polarized times: cherry-picking scientific evidence to support a preexisting point of view. It’s an exercise not in rational argument but in rhetorical point scoring. And a careful walk through the science proves it.
This Wired article is not only such an inadequate summary that’s there’s very little in it that can be said to be genuine or worthy of anyone’s curiosity, such is its irresponsibility that it’s impossible to feel merely misled. The ease with which the authors defraud their readership by substituting a careful walk through the science with a spin through a gauntlet of bait-and-switch straw men, carefully booby trapping the truth, is a sign of the times and their asymptotic relationship with honesty. Here we have a piece which while advertising the Real science and tarnishing Damore’s intentions with ‘pivoting’, ‘juking’, ‘sneaky’, ‘pernicious’ it indulges in mendacious, uncannily cynical, topsy turvy charlatanry. The nightmare of the alt-right has roots in this genre of phoney enlightenment.
Improper Order 