Are you ready to question your first impression?
The Riddle That Reveals More Than You Think
Welcome to The Inclusion Room — a space where literature, science, and storytelling meet to unlock the power of diversity, inspiring both personal and professional growth.
Dear Readers,
I hope this letter finds you well!
Let’s dive directly into the question of the day:
A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad.
The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says:
“I can’t operate - that boy is my son!”
Why the doctor cannot operate?
What was your initial interpretation of the story? Write it down on the comments.
Djurdjica Boskovi Unsplash
If your first answer was that "The kid was kidnapped, and the man in the car wasn’t the real father", you might be watching too many Netflix series.
If you thought, "The surgeon is the boy’s second father," then congratulations on your open-mindedness—perhaps reading Inclusion Room is paying off!
But here’s the possibility you may have missed: The surgeon might be the boy’s mother.
Don’t worry if that wasn’t your first, or even your second, thought. You’re not alone. About 75% of people fail to consider this answer, according to research by Mikaela Wapman (CAS ’14) and Deborah Belle, a psychology professor at Boston University1.
Even self-described feminists and young people, who you might expect to challenge traditional gender norms, often overlook this possibility.
Why is it so hard to see the mother as the surgeon?
To be honest, I didn’t see it either, not at first. Despite being a woman, a feminist, and someone deeply committed to inclusion, my mind first went to the boy’s second father. Why?
Could it be because I work in a male-dominated field where I’m often the only woman in the room? Or perhaps, like many of us, am I influenced by unconscious biases I’ve absorbed throughout my life?
Jamie Street - Unsplash
Gender: A Majority with Minority Dynamics
Among diversity categories, gender isn’t a minority. Yet, we see significant differences in interaction patterns, communication styles, job opportunities, pay, and career trajectories for men and women.
These disparities often stem from societal expectations and cognitive schemas.
Professions, for example, are often unconsciously gendered. Even if we know female doctors personally, our automatic assumption might still be that a doctor is male.
The Roots of Gender Bias
These schemas are formed early in life. When it comes to gender, we often associate women with caregiving and reproductive roles, while attributing to men other kinds of competence like leadership or technical skills.
The impact? These biases can influence everything from personal interactions to systemic structures, like recruitment processes. For instance, a hiring manager (or an AI-driven recruitment program) might unconsciously favor male candidates over equally qualified female ones.
Read in this post about the impacts of bias in AI:
What Can We Do?
Acknowledge Our Biases: Exercises like this one show that even self-described open-minded individuals carry unconscious biases. Recognizing this is the first step to challenging them.
Foster Collaboration: Men and women shouldn’t be adversaries in this effort to change schemas. They can, and should be, allies.
Personal Stories of Bias and Allyship
I will share two personal experiences that not only highlight how these cognitive schemas affect my daily life but also demonstrate my optimism about our collective ability to change them.
1. The Expat Experience
A few years ago, my husband and I moved to the Netherlands, where we lived for five years.
What’s your first thought when you hear that?
For most people — doctors, hairdressers, recruiters, neighbors— the assumption was clear: I had followed my husband for his career.
It’s a logical assumption; my husband is a brilliant guy.
But it’s not our story.
We both had expat experiences before we met, and we decided to embark on this adventure together. I was the one who found a fantastic professional opportunity first, and we seized it as a team.
My husband supported me fully, helping me prepare for the interview and taking risks to embrace this project alongside me
My husband is my first ally.
2. The Meeting Assumption
Some time ago, I was in a managerial role. One day, one of my employees invited a representative from a company to discuss a potential partnership.
When the guest arrived, I greeted him at the entrance, introduced myself by name, and led him to the meeting room, offering him coffee. A few minutes later, my employee joined us and proposed a coffee. The visitor immediately turned to him, saying:
"No, thank you. Your assistant already took great care of me."
Without hesitation, as he had done many times, my colleague replied:
"She’s the manager, and without her support, we wouldn’t be here discussing this today".
We were allies.
The Takeaway
We all carry unconscious biases. Even you, dear reader, who subscribe to Inclusion Room because you’re committed to an inclusive society.
The key is to:
🙈 Be aware of your biases and recognize that others might see you through their own.
🤝 Be an ally and appreciate the allies in your life.
Let’s continue to challenge these schemas together.
If you think these reflections might be useful to someone you know, feel free to share this post.
Thanks for reading The Inclusion Room, subscribe to receive new post. I hope you enjoyed our time together, and I look forward to seeing you in the next post!
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2014/bu-research-riddle-reveals-the-depth-of-gender-bias
Thank you for your observation! You’re absolutely right—our brain often takes shortcuts based on familiar ideas. These shortcuts are incredibly useful for navigating complex environments, but they can also lead to cognitive biases. I aimed to explore how these biases manifest and how these shortcuts influence our judgments. Your perspective adds depth to the discussion—thank you for sharing it!
I remember hearing this riddle back in the 80’s. It plays a clever trick on our brains, exploiting how we process information.
But, it’s more about how the brain is engineered to process data than it is about gender bias.
Here’s why:
It starts by focusing on the father (primacy effect), locking him in as the key figure, and ends with the emotional weight of his death (recency effect), which sticks in your mind.
Then, when the surgeon enters, your brain takes a shortcut—relying on the most familiar idea (i.e., the availability heuristic) that pops up (father).
The way the story is structured intentionally makes it easy to miss the simple answer: The surgeon could be the boy’s mother.
It’s not so much rooted in bias but cognitive neuroscience and is a great example of how our brains are engineered to take shortcuts and UNDERthink situations in order to be able to process situations more quickly for sake of survival of our species.