Immunity from bias?
Marci Marra
Retired Management Consultant. New chapter: Helping knitters live a life filled with joy through modern and timeless knit designs.
Not likely. We each see the world through the lens of our personal experiences, what we've been told, and what we've been taught throughout the course of our lives. This is the foundation for our unconscious bias.
Unconscious bias is wired into our brains and it's not all bad. We are bombarded with more information we can possibly process, so are brains take processing shortcuts to make sense of what is happening around us. This means we rely on what we already know, we shortcut to categorizing, which essentially is stereotyping.
Sometimes those mental shortcuts are helpful, for example if you are hiking and a large animal runs toward you, you don’t stop to think whether or not is a bear before you decide what to do. You make a snap judgement using information you already have. In the case of the bear, making a snap judgement is good and could save your life, but this type of decision making can be harmful when evaluating people.
Experts at Harvard have developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT), to study our biases.
The results are eye fascinating and encourage you to take the test yourself for personal results. Here are the general findings:
- 76% of participants more readily associate men with career and women with family, regardless of their own gender.
- 75% of participants show a preference for white people over black people, and this is even true for half of black participants.
Yikes! You might even look at this data and try to rationalize that is outdated, but it’s current. You also might think this doesn’t apply to you, but we all have biases. Even using the word bias feels negative, but no one is immune from bias. We all have work to do to understand the common biases women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community face.
Research shows awareness is not enough. We must move to understanding how harmful biases are and learn how to counteract them in real life. Challenge yourself and others around you to slow down and use a framework when making decisions and speaking up when you see biased behavior in others. Be committed to being part of the solution. It’s not only the right thing to do, but it’s also good for your business.
Employees on diverse teams are more engaged, and work harder, and companies with more women in leadership have better business outcomes, and makes it easier to attract talent.