Recognizing Bias

People are often unable to recognize their biases. Religious or tribal.

Whereas, if you desire a life of understanding, you must learn to recognize your bias, and make room for objectivity.

Bias prevents objectivity.

If you are objective, you can compare like with like. You can compare apples and apples, or compare a tech business Vs another tech business, or one governor Vs another governor during the same period using the same indices.

Tribal bias is living healthily among us Nigerians, and the more we are unable to recognize this bias, the harder it is to be objective.

You will be unable to treat people based on merit if you do not recognize your tribal bias and account for it. Your filter will be tribal first, everything else second. The only way to see the harm that tribal bias does to people is to put yourself on the receiving end of this bias.

Learning to recognize your bias and learning to be objective is not only good for your personal development, it is also good for the development of your own tribe. It means you can recognize the bad stuff in your tribe and call them out, as well as seek solutions to age old cultural problems.

Remaining biased means lack of personal growth, no matter how old you are. It means you will make emotional decisions and not logical ones.

An emotional decision might allow you to let your mum/dad put tribal marks (no pun intended) on your child's face. A logical decision will ask why they want to inflict pain and permanent marks on the body.

A logical decision will come from weighing pros and cons objectively, an emotional decision relies on feelings.

Finally, recognizing your tribal bias does not remove your tribe. In fact, it makes you a useful participant of your tribe, capable of raising your tribe to better standards as opposed to just being a dull member of your tribe, unable to differentiate the way forward from the way downward.