We Studied Readers’ Biases and Perceptions. This Is What We Found. [REPORT]
Mike Santoro
Every day, our clients appear in news stories, in which they provide their expert point of view. We were curious: Does a source’s sex or title affect their credibility?
We conducted a study to find out.
We presented three real article excerpts from Fast Company to 1,868 people. All participants read the same excerpts, with only one variation – the sources. We changed the names of the people who were quoted to test the effect of job title, sex and place of employment on readers’ perceptions.
Most of us at Walker Sands who designed this study expected there to be at least some statistical evidence of bias, whether it was based on name, title or sex.
Interested in what we found out about reader biases and perceptions?
You can download the report here.