Hailey Dansie

Period: 4
Political Science 1100
Project 1 Evaluation
Bias is everywhere. Just because America no longer discriminates against anyone, that
does not mean that people do not. People naturally are biased towards something or someone,
though they claim they are not to make it sound like they are not an awful person. For Project
One, our class tested this bias without our test subjects actually knowing it.
Our group had the topic of different genders. Our question to our test subjects was
would this man/woman be a good Senator? To conduct this research, we split our group in
half, where three people surveyed others on the male senator and the other three surveyed on the
female senator. They both have the exact same qualities; the only difference is their gender. We
asked people to read about their experiences and they filled out a survey asking if they thought
that the person was qualified to be a Senator or not.
There was also an experiment conducted based on race. One candidate was African
American, and the other candidate was Caucasian. Both also have the same qualities and the
same name, the only difference is their race. This was an experiment that our group did not
conduct.
The third possible experiment was on sexual orientation. Both possible candidates have
had the same education and experience. Their only difference was that one man was gay and the
other is straight. This was another experiment that our group did not have, as it was not assigned
to us.

Our hypothesis for this experiment was that if we survey people on whether someone
would be a good Senator based on gender, then the people would prefer the man as a Senator
because America has had male leaders for a much longer time than woman leaders. The
outcomes of having a male Senator are more predictable than having a female Senator. People
like to face their future with a surety. Having a woman as a Senator, people would not totally
have that surety because there have not been many political leaders that are female. To go along
with that reason, women tend to have less experience in politics, so our group thought that the
general public would prefer a male senator because they have more experience in general.
We also created this hypothesis because women are gentler than men are. The reason this
is significant is our group thought that since women are gentler, people would think that a
woman senator would avoid problems more. If there was a problem with a foreign country, a
woman would deal with it differently than a male would. A male would take more action
whereas a female would try to avoid taking action and resolve it in a verbal way instead. Our
group did not think that people would like that.
A third reason why we thought that people would prefer a male senator over a female
senator is the fact that women are more considerate of others feelings. A woman senator would
say, I do not know about that, what if it hurts someones feelings? whereas a man would not
care so much about peoples feelings and just carry out the plan.
Our group thought that people would want a male more than a woman for a senator
because women in politics tend to have extreme ideas. They seem to stick to one extreme or the
other; they do not really have a balance. Men mostly have that balance; they know what the
lines are.

To conduct our surveys, each group member went to a different place and asked random
people passing by to fill out the survey. I went to the South Towne mall, where I was able to find
people with skewed ages. I surveyed four males and four females to make the experiment more
accurate.
The questions on this survey all had the columns, strongly agree, agree, neutral,
disagree, and strongly disagree, where the test subjects could put their answers. The questions
asked go as follows: He/she has a sufficient education to be a U.S. Senator from Utah, He/she
has a sufficient work experience to be a U.S. Senator from Utah, He/she demonstrates strong
leadership skills, He/she has the kinds of life experiences that will help him/her understand
average Utahans, and I support more of his/her policies than I oppose. One member of our
group also decided to add the question, What is the most important issue? just to get some
more opinions from the test subjects. That question got some interesting answers, which will be
explained later with the results.
During my surveying process, I asked one man probably in his late twenties or early
thirties to participate in this survey. He looked like he had some experience in either business or
politics, as he was dressed in a business casual way. After he read the information on Patrick, he
asked, where is the female? as if he has seen this survey before. I just politely told him to put
his opinions down. After he finished, I explained to him that other members of our group were
surveying people on Patricia Sorenson, who had the exact same qualities as Patrick, and their
only difference is their gender. I told him that we were testing bias, and he said, yes,
unfortunately it is out there, then he walked away. It was interesting to see that someone knew
the survey. I assumed that he must have done this survey himself.