Austin Baker (University of Oslo), Postdoctoral Researcher at GoodAttention presents on their recent research.
Abstract: The nonverbal social cues that accompany speech (for example, facial expressions, gestures, and eye gaze) can be as communicatively significant as the content of the speech itself. In this talk, I identify what I argue is a very common—but philosophically unexamined—attentional phenomenon: our tendency to allocate nonverbal cues sensitive to conversational participants’ levels of respective social power such that people with more power receive comparatively more positive and affirming nonverbal cues than people with less power (e.g., women and people of color being looked at less in important meetings). I call this ‘nonverbal marginalization’ and argue it can reflect and reinforce our implicitly held social prejudices. In sections one and two, I introduce and empirically situate nonverbal marginalization and claim that we can understand the harms it creates through the lens of epistemic injustice. In section three, I argue that nonverbal marginalization sheds novel light on two significant bodies of literature from social psychology: imposter syndrome and performance gaps between high and low power social groups. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of how individuals and institutions can go about mitigating the effects of nonverbal marginalization.
If you would like to attend via Zoom, email drew.johnson@ifikk.uio.no