At an academic conference some years ago, Michèle Belot remembers talking with a participant who was convinced she had authored a research paper that wasn’t hers. He’d confused her with another female scholar, an experience she said is familiar to many colleagues.
Such incidents — plus awareness of her own imperfect memory — inspired Belot, a professor in the Department of Economics at Cornell University, to investigate systemic biases in the way we remember people, since this could influence social networks important to career advancement.
In new research focused on academia, Belot finds that being a woman or racial minority can help someone stand out and be remembered when few others look like them. But they are more likely to be confused in settings where others share the same attributes.
“Minority attributes can help memory, but they also lead to confusion,” said Belot. “There…
