There is no such thing.

What is it?

When I hear people talk about “the” unconscious bias, I start feeling uncomfortable. For many reasons. First, there is the word unconscious. As unconscious bias has a negative impact on others, I should try to do something against it. But if I have to avoid something that I am unconscious about, there is nothing I can do. I simply cannot fight something that I’m not aware of. Stupid argument, you may say, the idea is that you become conscious of it! Now the thing is: if I succeed with this, then it is no longer unconscious. I should then call it the conscious bias. What doesn’t describe anymore what people may want to express by using the original term.

Come on, I hear you say, this is nitpicking! Fair enough. But it’s not about the terminology. Replacing the word “unconscious” with something more meaningful, like “implicit”, does not solve the logical problem either. I believe (and research supports this) that what we call “unconscious” bias is not really inaccessible to us, but that we often just don’t pay attention to it. Just like we don’t recognize our heart beat all the time. But we can if we focus on it. And even influence it if we know how to do so.

Honestly, I would be happy if we could delete the word “unconscious” as this can be taken as an excuse not to do anything about it: “If you tell me that I’m unconsciously discriminating women, then, well, it’s not my fault. As it’s not accessible to me it’s outside of my control. End of discussion”. What would be the worst response we could get.

What I struggle most with is the little word “the”. This implies to me that the unconscious bias is “one” thing, “one” methodically definable entity, one clear, tangible description of a symptom such as “peptic ulcer” or “flu”, like the other biases and thinking errors we discussed so far. But it isn’t.

Unconscious bias is usually referred to as a mixture of stereotyping, racism, sexism, ageism, and many other thinking errors like confirmation bias or in-group/out-group effects. Some researchers even claim that the term comprises up to 150 other biases – many more than we deal with in this newsletter. My personal response to this is: Be precise! I should name the beast which I want to fight as precisely as possible. Only then can I take reasonable action. Like in the medical example above. The treatment against peptic ulcer is different from the one against flu. Mixing things up doesn’t help.

So what can we do about it?

For me the whole debate around unconscious bias is actually a debate about diversity and humanity. About the society we want to live in. If I want to make our world a better place for us to live in by fighting the beasts that sum up behind the expression unconscious bias, I need to be clear about which of the beasts I really mean. If it’s about racism, then my topic must racism in this case. And not gender. Improving on the gender dimension does not help much with racism – if the latter was the biggest problem in my current situation.

And that's my main point here. Instead of vaguely rambling about “the” unconscious bias we all have (like I must be a racist as I am a white male), we should rather name and address the individual issues very specifically. And take appropriate action, bespoke for each bias. Perhaps the umbrella term “unconscious bias” helps to bring attention to our prejudices in the first place. But at the latest, when we try to tackle the thinking errors systematically, we must become as concrete as possible.

This presupposes that we become aware of as many of the biases as possible (which are all unconscious until we become aware) and understand much better how to tackle them. So that in the end we can really make our world a little better. Because we can make better decisions and not fall so easily for manipulations and false conclusions. Or, in other words: because we find ways to better deal with our animal brain, which is the reason for basically all of the biases we have been describing in this newsletter.

What’s your thinking around that?

What's your view on this topic? Any own experiences or stories you would like to share? Please start a conversation in the comments section!

#decisionmaking #bias