We are in the 1970s, a time when men usually get more seats in orchestras as pro players than women in auditions. So some US symphony orchestras tried something out. They changed one little thing in the audition process. Now musicians have to audition from behind a screen. So the experts who make the decision can only listen to the music and aren’t biased by how the person’s dress, hairstyle or gender.

Research shows that the percentage of women playing in the top five US orchestras went up from 5% in 1970 to 25% by the 1990s. So it seems that the anonymous auditions in the first round improved the chances of a woman moving on to the next round by 50% (1)

This shows that sometimes there is information that we see or ask that, in the end, doesn’t makes us smarter when making decisions.

For example, such stories and research like that have inspired many companies to remove names and photos from CVs before deciding who gets invited to an interview.

(1) More research like this can be found on the topic of “name-blind recruitment”. For more on this topic, I’d recommend you read Stefanie K. Johnson and Jessica F. Kirk (2020). Research: To Reduce Gender Bias, Anonymize Job Applications. Harvard Business Review. Available at https://extra.swissinnovation.academy/M7UF accessed 18 January 2023. If you want to go deeper in the notion of “Noise” in data you should read Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony & Cass Sunstein (2021). Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. Little, Brown Spark; Hachette Book Group. Available at https://extra.swissinnovation.academy/V4Rt accessed 18 January 2023.