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bias

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5
Towards academic reading

Bias can be very tricky and we often don't realize that we are biased.

Read and answer the following riddle.

A boy named George lived in a small town. After high school, he moved away. For ten years, George did not get any news or information from anyone in the town.

Finally, George went home for a visit. He took a train to the small town. In the train station, George met an old friend of his from high school.

While George and his friend talked in the train station, the friend said, "Six years ago I met someone you never knew, and we got married."

Then the friend said, "Meet my daughter. She is five years old and named after her mother." Right away, George said to the little girl, "Hello Nancy."

How did George know the little girl's name?

 

I don't know, I will look at the answer.

This is a question that plays on assumptions about gender and relationships. The answer is that George's old friend is a woman.
Here's why it works: When we read "he moved away" and "his friend," we naturally assume George is male and our bias towards men having 'friends' who are men and 'girlfriends' who are women makes us think George's friend is also a man. But the riddle never actually states the friend's gender - it only uses "friend" without pronouns.
But the friend is a woman who:

Married a man George never knew (6 years ago)
Had a daughter named after herself (5 years old)
Is named Nancy

So when the friend says "meet my daughter, named after her mother," George immediately knows to call the little girl "Nancy" because that's his woman friend's name.
The riddle cleverly misdirects us through our own bias about gender, making us think it's impossible for George to know the daughter's name when the solution is actually quite straightforward.