Post B2lFzrXWrIOL7f2Zu4 by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
(DIR) More posts by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
(DIR) Post #B2lFzL7BPiIsYgT5Oa by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T19:34:30Z
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today i'm back to reading this paper by @grimalkina about contest cultures and brilliance traps in software and I'm going to try to live tweet some notes because reading papers is hardhttps://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/2gej5_v2(1/?)
(DIR) Post #B2lFzMLkp1YMOAIEkK by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T19:39:08Z
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first I'm curious about how "contest culture" might be definedOne of the references is this paper on "Masculinity Contest Culture": https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12280 which has this list of factors"Admitting you don't know the answer looks weak" feels VERY familiar to me, I feel like I've said "I don't know X" on the internet and been weirdly attacked for it so many times ("how could she not know that??? what does that mean about what kind of programmer she is!!!!")(2/)
(DIR) Post #B2lFzNL590brSMzDKy by nobody@mastodon.acm.org
2026-01-28T19:44:30Z
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@b0rk > how could she not know that??Yep. Learning this ^^^ behaviour is what elementary and high schools are for. And the uni is for unlearning it
(DIR) Post #B2lFzUM33oXfDOUaJc by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T19:52:52Z
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next: what does "brilliance trap" mean? they reference this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brilliance-paradox-what-really-keeps-women-and-minorities-from-excelling-in-academia/ which talks about a study they did on a possible explanation for why some academic fields have less women and Black people than others: the belief that you have to be innately "brilliant" to succeed in that field(3/?)
(DIR) Post #B2lFzcTmqvUAPiAsUK by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T19:58:56Z
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I've heard a lot in the past about Carol Dweck's "growth mindsets" (which to me is the idea that having a growth mindset makes you more _effective_ at learning than if you have the attitude that brilliance is fixed)But I don't think I've ever heard that the attitude that "brilliance is fixed" could have an impact on representation before. that's interesting!(4?)
(DIR) Post #B2lFzjjzr3bww0oQE4 by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T20:05:47Z
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okay I'm learning (thanks to Cat's clarification!!) that they uses scales called "measures" to measure things like "contest cultures" or "brilliance belief". Cool! Here are the measures from the paper in the first tweethttps://osf.io/cd874/files/wkch8(5/?)
(DIR) Post #B2lFzrXWrIOL7f2Zu4 by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T20:07:39Z
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this is making me wonder if folks have studied whether "Imposterism" and "Contest Cultures" are connected, it feels like if you're in a culture where "admitting you don't know the answer looks weak" it would be extremely natural to be "afraid others will discover how much knowledge or ability I really lack"(I've been suspicious of "imposter syndrome" conversations that frame imposter syndrome as a personal issue for a long time)(6/?)
(DIR) Post #B2lFzz7weIgEed8G8W by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T20:17:50Z
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i have never thought about how psychology research works and my extremely simplified model now is1) develop surveys ("measures") and look at how responses to one relates to responses to another with stats2) publish them so that other researchers can iterate on the measures you're using to discuss the conceptthis list of measures says "IS has been shown to have good internal consistency, reliability, and construct validity", which I guess are things we wanthttps://osf.io/cd874/files/wkch8(7/?)
(DIR) Post #B2lG07FKSjL9pqeGky by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T20:38:08Z
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afaik this paper's main suggestion for how to combat "contest cultures" (admitting you don't know something is seen as weak) and the "brilliance trap" (there's an attitude that people are either "brilliant" or "not") is to prioritize a"strong culture of shared learning and [emphasize] that all people can belong in software development and should have the chance to succeed"building a culture of shared learning is my literal favourite thing so I'm very into thishttps://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/2gej5_v2(8/?)
(DIR) Post #B2lG0FcfJqlDoXd1F2 by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T20:56:45Z
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this paper talks about workplace culture (which is so important!!) and it's making me very curious about how "contest cultures" affect online communities & spaces for learning, like programming forums (stack overflow, discords, HN, blogs, etc)personally I find it kind of impossible to participate in most public forums (HN, SO, reddit, etc), it just doesn't feel worth it. I have access to lots of other spaces but not everyone does? Feels like it has some kind of cost.(9/?)
(DIR) Post #B2lG0NZlkVCITsKoq0 by b0rk@social.jvns.ca
2026-01-28T21:29:35Z
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one thing I love about this paper is that it talks about "contest cultures" like "you will get attacked if you" as being a real systemic problem_ with actual effectsso often when I hear people talk about issues like this I hear the advice "just ignore those people, they suck" which to me is not helpful at all, because it tries to erase the problem instead of naming it or addressing iti like this quote from this post by @grimalkina https://www.drcathicks.com/post/expecting-success(10/?)
(DIR) Post #B2mItHBzZvB3fzTgx6 by 0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange
2026-01-29T13:04:28Z
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@cliffle @b0rk by pure coincidence, from my Classical Chinese studies today (“the master” is Confucius)