Biased

by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

When we returned to class, I could tell they were excited to get my feedback. I cringed as I thought about giving them papers nearly obliterated by a cover of red ink. Why had I been so harsh? I tried to soften the blow with a rambling explanation about how all my comments were offered in the spirit of making their papers better. They were confused by their professor’s unease. Did my Stanford students have a problem with harsh feedback? they asked. “Sometimes,” I said. “When you have people who are used to getting positive feedback their whole lives and you tell them something different …” I caught vague expressions of amusement on their faces and cut my answer short. I was trying to brace them for something—negative feedback—that had been a fixture in their lives. Criticism was a way of life for them. They couldn’t understand why I felt compelled to shield them from harsh honesty. “Some of us are doing life,” one student reminded me. “I think we can handle a little red-pen criticism.” I handed back the papers. Their heads went down to study my comments. After some time, their heads lifted, and some seemed moved to near tears. “I just can’t even believe it,” one man said. “Somebody sat down and spent all this time on my paper, thinking of what would make it better and how I can improve. That’s never happened to me before.”