When the watchdogs look away: the role of engineers’ ideological commitments in their grappling with tech bias

Abstract Amid breakneck advancements in digital and mechanical technologies, postindustrial societies lean on tech professionals, particularly engineers, to be public welfare watchdogs—to recognize the potential for public welfare threats and to be accountable to intervene. But do engineers recognize public welfare concerns like tech bias as part of their professional responsibilities? Do they acknowledge technology’s role in inequality? Using representative survey data of US engineers, I find that the majority disregarded the recognition, accountability, and remediation of tech bias as part of their professional duties. Arguing that engineers’ grappling with tech bias is not a detached professional assessment but a sensemaking practice entwined with other ideological commitments, I find that politically conservative engineers were far less likely than their more liberal peers to see tech bias concerns as part of their professional duties. Tellingly, engineers who endorsed traditional ideologies in the professional culture of engineering about the defense of epistemic purity of their work were also less likely to see tech bias concerns as part of their responsibilities. These findings have important implications for tech equity and professions literatures: not only can inequality concerns be deeply politicized among professionals, but professionals can interpret the dismissal of these inequality concerns as broadly consistent with integrity and excellence in their field.