Computer Vision News - August 2017

32 / 56

Your impression is that you expect to
find some differences?
Maybe! At least for facial attractiveness,
in general females are perceived as
more attractive than males so… sorry
about that guys [laughs].
Don’t be sorry! We are very happy that
females are more attractive than males!
[ we both laugh]
Someone asked me recently: “Why
should we even take gender into
consideration? We should judge other
people as a human being and for what
they do. We should forget about
gender.” Do you think it is possible for
people to completely ignore the
gender of the person in front of them?
I think that would be very hard because
it is our biological nature to quickly
make a lot of inferences about the
other person's gender, age, or ethnicity.
It’s a program embedded in our brain.
Even if you don’t want to do that, your
brain may still subconsciously do that
for you.
Your rational brain will try to ignore that
or try to delete the bias. Maybe females
are more suitable for certain jobs. You
can try to delete the bias from you
brain.
How did it become embedded in the
human brain?
This is a very interesting question. You
may find some evolutionary answers.
For example, if you narrow it down, a
lot of first impressions come to two key
factors. One factor is about the
intentions of the other person such as
friendliness or trustworthiness. They all
try to judge the other person's
intentions. The other dimension is the
other person's capacity to carry out the
intentions. The first thing you need to
know is if the other person is a friend or
an enemy. If he's a friend, will he be
able to help me? If he’s an enemy, will
he be able to harm me?
There are two dimensions:
intention and capacity to carry
out the intention. You need to
quickly judge that in order to
survive in the ancient world.
Does this study suggest the
changes people should make to
their behavior?
Our future studies will try to
answer the questions like to
what extent do people associate,
let’s say, females, senior people,
certain ethnic groups, etc with
competence, confidence, or
trustworthiness. If we observe
people having implicit bias, we
will reveal it, and call for actions
to fight against it. It remains to
be seen.
Does it change how you look at
people and their behaviors? Do
your studies affect your judgement
32 Amanda Song