Correlation Is Not Causation

We’ve been trained to respond to statistics with curiosity about more statistics.

For reasons probably stemming from tech & business culture’s love of truth and fact and science and numerical proof, it is a natural step to express interest in a statistic in terms of correlations between more numbers and behaviors. But there are other ways to express curiosity. In the particular case of sexual harassment in Silicon Valley, I’d look for data that reveals the patterns of inner thinking and guiding principles of the individuals perpetrating the violations.

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of studies that gather this inner thinking. About any topic. The rare team does this kind of research. It’s still uncommon.

So, even though everyone knows that a demographic like the size of a company isn’t going to cause a person to perpetrate sexual harassment, demographics are still the way most people express curiosity about it. Even if there is a correlation between size of company and sexual harassment, it’s not a cause. It might be precipitated by those around them at work, but the roots usually started growing in a perpetrator’s mind much earlier.

The reason that I’m more interested in understanding the inner reasoning, reactions, and guiding principles associated with behavior, even icky behavior, is that it reveals real reasons for behavior. These foundational reasons are what we can use to build things that can support or change the way a person acts. For example, are there patterns of thinking that we can identify and try to speak to, in order to build awareness about sexual harassment and other issues? Can awareness of one’s own style of thinking help to change that thinking and prevent incidents?

With awareness of this tendency, and with deeper understanding of people’s inner thinking forged through qualitative research, I hope the future brings support to many different behaviors with different solutions. And I hope the product teams take the time to forge a valid understanding of the inner thinking of these audiences.

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