The Traitors is both racist & ageist?

True, but I think they need half the people to be over 45 to start with so it's less a bunch of 35 year old men and four older people. They probably don't get that many older people applying though.

I think more education is the key to tackling unconscious bias. I did once stumble across a programme about a devout Jewish woman's daily life, which was really interesting. More stuff like that on how different groups of people tend to express themselves, their culture, fashions etc. Can be done really well via drama and comedy - Shameless, Desmonds etc

We really can't know about Ross; he was overcompensating so badly for knowing that other person, I think he sealed his own doom.

Certainly voting out Ross, Netty and Judy early doors did feel like racism. But then minority groups make up almost half of the final 7.

What I meant was that I don’t agree that it’s ageism, it’s just strategy.

I think if anything it disadvantages contestants most markedly based on age. There's not a single player left over the age of 42. And that task last night was far too intense for, say, a healthy 70+ year old - had there been any remaining. A lot of the tasks are quite physically demanding.

I think unconscious bias is present in all reality shows - as it is in real life. What makes Traitors interesting is that we see how our perceptions of others influence our actions towards them. Too quiet/ reserved? Traitor. Too loud/ outgoing? Traitor. It's a master class in the human species being completely unable to solely trust their instincts without evidence. It's absolutely all about unconscious bias, not just on the basis of protected characteristics though. We make our minds up about other people within seconds of meeting them and then fall victim to confirmation bias.

It's fascinating as a study of human flaws.

Plus, they've got to murder or banish somebody! It doesn't have to be a sign of bias.

The sample size is so minute that I don't think we can draw any meaningful conclusions about the presence or absence of bias.

Why does everything have to come down to race and age just when people of these demographics don’t win?

Judging someone on their behaviour is just bias, although I could be unconscious as well I think. But the whole thing about unconscious bias is that you wouldn't necessarily realise you're doing it.
Eg you might unconsciously be drawn to voting off overweight people because your unconscious bias tells you they are lazy and therefore don't deserve to be there.

That's an example BTW, not my unconscious bias !!

Tbh I kind of through that was the point. To make people more aware of unconscious biased. But limited to race.
If you're a white player on the show and you're only suspicious of none white players, people will notice even if you don't notice this yourself and will make people question themselves. Same if you're only suspicious of males, southerners, fat/thin people, bearded people, disabled people etc.

The fact that this year we have 2 white traitors left, one has never has only been voted for maybe once, where as Jade has been suspected every single week... I think contestants will really be looking at why they didn't suspect her

As an aside, does unconscious bias work in other animals? My Jack Russell Terrier always gives other JRT's a friendly greeting and is definitely drawn to other terrier types when playing in the park.

He also dislikes more cockerpoos than any other breed. Not all, but he is definitely more salty with them than other breeds.

Throughout every series I've watched it is behaviour that is picked up and wrestled with, with the odd 'job' given as reasons. Which is why people keep their jobs a secret.

No. Three of the four finalists in the celeb version were non-white

So people are voting off the competition in....competitions? Crikey, what a surprise!

So many people on this thread equate unconscious bias with race but it is so much more.

It's also bias for/against others based on height, weight, age, sex, education or lack of, accent, job, sexuality, political views, appearance, clothes etc etc etc.
Literally anything can mark someone else as 'other'.

IMO it is impossible to remove unconscious bias from the human psyche.

I’ve noticed the same on the Sewing Bee and Bake Off too🤔

At the risk of being lynched, I get very confused by the unconscious bias talk, I noticed it, and I have pointed out to DH, who thought I was talking rubbish.

However, my question is, not that is exists but can be done about it?

Discussing it now, we have the benefit of hindsight and can see it, however it is clearly not obvious at the time given the fact that it isn't just white people who are voting off the people of colour, they're also being voted by other people of colour. Its a gameshow where you have nothing to go on and have to look at everyone else's quirks, behaviours and biases. If someone is a bit different to you, or portrays a behaviour you're not familiar with, isn't it more likely that you're going to vote them off?

If the bias is unconscious, therefore we are not aware of it at the time it's happening, is there anything that can be done about it?

Following all the discussion from this season, I know now, that if I went on the show, I'd be so conscious of unconscious bias that I would purposely not vote any person of colour so I couldn't be accused of racism or UB. I'm sure I'm not the only white person who would think like this.

That would force a change in any unconscious bias (that I'm not currently aware of) to conscious bias in favour of people of colour, is that any better?

It would absolutely defeat the object the game, but is there another solution?

I think it would be fascinating as a one off 🤣
would never happen

I think having more older people would help. There was a huge cohort of 30 something men this time in particular. Probably down to who they get applying who are probably nearly all white and young.

Why? I'd hate that. Or if they were all 25 year old middle class men, or 35 year old working class women - or all the same of any age, class or sex.

We talk about this a lot at the dinner table in our house. We have noticed over the years that people of colour, and often particularly black contestants, are voted off shows very early. There is absolutely unconscious bias. In fact when watching the opening episode of Traitors 4 my DS said straight away that Ross will go out early.

The bit I don’t necessarily agree with is ageism in The Traitors. I think that the older contestants are often the most perceptive ( they watch and listen as opposed to shout their mouths off) and therefore become a threat to the traitors and so are murdered or come across as knowing too much and so are seen as suspicious to the younger faithful.

Perhaps white people can be more 'dull' because they are more comfortable.

As a group, they might be less likely to have historically existed in situations of threat where their nervous systems need to be more highly activated... someone will come back and say not all white people, and of course some working class white people and white women often have not had an easy history. Privilege is complicated like that. But these things are literally in our epigenome over centuries of difference in treatment, and the statistical likelihood of whether our group's reception in the world was positive or negative is written in our bodies and later constructs our cultural norms.

I agree that xenophobia is a part of our hominid nature, that our survival in the past relied upon protecting our gene pool against the other apes next door. But the issue is that we are using race as if it is an inevitable signaller of such difference. It isnt- I would say skin colour is being used as a proxy for assumptions about culture and religion and class and gender.

Also absolutely fascinating about how gay men are encoded culturally. Sarcastic, humorous, iconoclastic, given licence to be 'flamboyant' as long as society's norms don't feel threatened. The tactic of "calling out what you are in a humorous way, so boldly that people think you are joking" is literally the survival tactic against actually being beaten, imprisoned and killed, that is the roots of camp through centuries. All of us, straight and gay, fall automatically into our roles in this cultural play. Alan Carr was saying in actual words "I am a traitor" along with the body language and laughter that allowed everyone else to put it down to comedy. Innuendo and subtext, saying "I love a warm hand on my entrance" or "all those who love not tobacco and boys are fools" and being taken as funny - gay men have done this forever, deliberately making themselves underestimated so they could live authentically.