The fiction of Impartial Judgement

There was a study (in Israel as I recall) a few years ago that looked at criminal judges and found that whether a criminal got a lenient sentence or harsh sentence correlated strongly with what time of day the accused appeared before the court.  Appearances early in the day had a much higher incidence of lenient sentences, the later in the day the accused got sentenced, the harsher the sentence.

Now comes a study that finds similar unconscious bias in college admissions.  The study looked at 9,323 admission interviews.  Admissions officers interviewed an average of 4.5 persons per day to assess background qualifications.  The study found that the interviewee's score predictably related to the score of  the prior interviewee.  On average if the score of the previous interviewee was .075% or more higher than the one before, then the score for the next interviewee would drop by an average of .075%.