Thoughts and Observations About Bias

Conscious and unconscious bias impact our decisions and interactions every single day. Some biases might be behavioral, while others might be cognitive, but almost all of our actions and reactions due to some sort of bias contribute to consequences which can be detrimental not only to others, but also to ourselves.

Sharing with you today thoughts and observations about bias.

“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.”?Ludwig Wittgenstein - Austrian-U.K.?philosopher, primarily studied logic, mathematics and language.

“‘Me? Biased?’ Unconscious bias is like jealousy: nobody likes to admit it, and often we’re unaware of it.” Thais Compoint – U.K. writer/consultant specializing in inclusion, diversity, equity and belonging, author of “Succeed as an Inclusive Leader”.

“The most disgusting human trait is bias, because it typically leads to propaganda, hate and violence.”??Lori Goodwin – U.S. author of young adult, fantasy and science fiction novels.

“We are generally convinced that our decisions are “rational,” but in reality most human decisions are made emotionally, and we then collect or generate the facts to justify them. When we see something or someone that “feels” dangerous, we have already launched into action subconsciously before we have even started “thinking.” Our sense of comfort or discomfort has already been engaged.” Howard Ross, U.S. social justice advocate, founding partner of consulting firm Cook Ross, Inc., author of “Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives”.?

“If you want to lead others into a strong future: You need to be keenly aware of how your own inner truths - biases, fears, courage, values and dreams - do or do not impact the daily work of others.” Bill Jensen – U.S. workplace/change/transformation consultant.????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

“Truly great leaders spend as much time collecting and acting upon feedback as they do providing it.” Alexander Lucia – U.S. workplace consultant, author.

“If you can't see that your own culture has its own set of interests, emotions, and biases, how can you expect to deal successfully with someone else's culture?”?Anne Fadiman – U.S. essayist, reporter.?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

“The results of inequity and bias impact everything from suspension rates, to housing access, to health outcomes, to medical interventions, to job opportunity and promotions, to criminal sentencing, and even to the very safety of the water one drinks and air one breathes.”??Abigail Spanberger?- U.S. politician from Virginia.

“We all have inherent biases. All of us. The problem occurs when police officers or community members allow those biases to affect the choices they make as they do their job or have interactions with others.” Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr. – U.S. security expert, law enforcement analyst.?

“Companies increasingly rely on diverse, multidisciplinary teams that combine the collective capabilities of women and men, people of different cultural heritage, and younger and older workers. But simply throwing a mix of people together doesn’t guarantee high performance; it requires inclusive leadership — leadership that assures that all team members feel they are treated respectfully and fairly, are valued and sense that they belong, and are confident and inspired … Teams with inclusive leaders are 17% more likely to report that they are high performing, 20% more likely to say they make high-quality decisions, and 29% more likely to report behaving collaboratively. What’s more, we found that a 10% improvement in perceptions of inclusion increases work attendance by almost 1 day a year per employee, reducing the cost of absenteeism."??Juliet Bourke – Australian adjunct professor in the School of Management and Governance, UNSW Business School, author of “Which Two Heads Are Better Than One: The Extraordinary Power of Diversity of Thinking and Inclusive Leadership” – and Andrea Titus - Human Capital Consultant at Deloitte Australia.

“Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation." Doris Kearns Goodwin – U.S. political historian/writer.

“Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narr.ows one's focus and increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance.” Michael Shermer – U.S. science historian/writer.?

“We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't."? Frank A. Clark – U.S. lawyer, politician.?

“Diversity is about all of us and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.”?Jacqueline Woodson – U.S. author of books for children and adolescents.

“Diversity and inclusion, which are the real grounds for creativity, must remain at the center of what we do.” Marco Bizzarri - Italian business executive, President & CEO of Gucci. previously President & CEO of Stella McCartney & Bottega Veneta, also a member of Kering’s Executive Committee.

“The serious fact is that the bulk of the really important things economics has to teach are things that people would see for themselves if they were willing to see.” Frank Knight – U.S. economist, taught at University of Chicago, students included Milton Friedman, George Stigler and James M. Buchanan.

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” Robertson Davies - Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor.

“People will sometimes put each other in boxes and have biases toward one another because of what they look like or where they come from or who they are. But ultimately, it's up to us to decide who we are.” Rich Moore – U.S.?film & television animation director, screenwriter & voice actor.

“Humans have divided themselves in all possible ways. Country, religion, caste, color, wealth, language, profession, intellect, the list is endless. There are divisions within divisions and the reasons for all these divisions are the same - perceptions. If perceptions can divide, what can unite us?” Sukant Ratnakar – Canadian Management Consultant specializing in Business Reinvention, Evolution Modelling, Strategic Culture Alignment & Conflict Resolution.

“Have you ever wondered why the term “Strong Black Woman” sounds normal to the ear, but the term “Strong white woman” doesn’t? Has anyone ever heard the latter used in general or specific convos (conversation)? Most likely not. You should question why that is.” John Graham Jr. – U.S. Human Resources and Marketing Executive,?VP, Employer Brand, Diversity & Culture VP, Employer Brand, Diversity & Culture - Shaker Recruitment Marketing, Author of book “Plantation Theory: The Black Professional’s Struggle Between Freedom & Security”.

“Stop reacting to the stereotypes and start responding to the individual.” Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr. – U.S. security expert, law enforcement analyst.

“What divides us pales in comparison to what unites us.” Edward Kennedy – U.S. lawyer, politician.

“Let's invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It's not about being perfect. It's not about where you get yourself in the end. There's power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there's grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.” Michelle Obama -U.S. lawyer, author, former first lady.

"What specific actions can leaders take to be more inclusive? To answer this question, we surveyed more than 4,100 employees about inclusion, interviewed those identified by followers as highly inclusive, and reviewed the academic literature on leadership. From this research, we identified 17 discrete sets of behaviors, which we grouped into six categories (or “traits”), all of which are equally important and mutually reinforcing. … (The six traits identified which distinguish inclusive leaders from others): Visible Commitment, Humility, Awareness Of Bias, Curiosity About Others, Cultural Intelligence and Effective Collaboration.” Juliet Bourke – Australian adjunct professor in the School of Management and Governance, UNSW Business School, author of “Which Two Heads Are Better Than One: The Extraordinary Power of Diversity of Thinking and Inclusive Leadership” – and Andrea Titus Human Capital Consultant at Deloitte Australia.

“If you haven’t hired a team of people who are of color, female, and/or LGBT to actively turn over every stone, to scope out every nook and cranny, to pop out of every bush, to find every qualified underrepresented founder in this country, you’re going to miss out on a lot of money when the rest of the investment world gets it.” Arlan Hamilton – U.S. entrepreneur, investor, founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital.

“We have a very diverse environment and a very inclusive culture, and those characteristics got us through the tough times. Diversity generated a better strategy, better risk management, better debates, and better outcomes.” Alan Joyce – Irish/Australian businessman, CEO of Qantas Airways Limited.

“Inclusivity means not ‘just we’re allowed to be there,’ but we are valued. I’ve always said: smart teams will do amazing things, but truly diverse teams will do impossible things.”?Claudia Brind-Woody – U.S. business executive, Vice President and Managing Director of intellectual property at IBM.

To be an inclusive leader, one must ensure that everyone agrees or strongly agrees that they are being treated fairly and respectfully, are valued, and have a sense of belonging and are psychologically safe. (…) inclusive leadership is not about occasional grand gestures, but regular, smaller-scale comments and actions. (…) inclusive leadership is tangible and practiced every day.” Juliet Bourke – Australian adjunct professor in the School of Management and Governance, UNSW Business School, author of “Which Two Heads Are Better Than One: The Extraordinary Power of Diversity of Thinking and Inclusive Leadership” – and Andrea Titus - Human Capital Consultant at Deloitte Australia.

“Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed.” Mary Parker Follett – U.S. social worker, management consultant, philosopher, pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior.?

“A lot of different flowers make a bouquet.” Islamic Proverb

“We should always be suspicious when machine-learning systems are described as free from bias if it's been trained on human-generated data...We need to be vigilant about how we design & train those machine-learning system are described as free from bias if it’s been trained on human-generated data. Our biases are built into that training data.” Kate Crawford?– Australian principal researcher at?Microsoft Research?(Social Media Collective), co-founder and director of research at the?AI Now Institute?at NYU, visiting professor at the?MIT Center for Civic Media, senior fellow at the Information Law Institute at?NYU, associate professor in the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the?University of New South Wales.

“The question, however, is whether we've eliminated human bias or simply camouflaged it with technology.” Cathy O'Neil – U.S. mathematician, data scientist, author. Wrote “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy” & Founder of the blog mathbabe.org.?

“All of us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We typically focus on anything that agrees with the outcome we want.” Noreena Hertz - U.K. academic, economist, author.

“Biases and blind spots exist in big data as much as they do in individual perceptions and experiences. Yet there is a problematic belief that bigger data is always better data and that correlation is as good as causation.” Kate Crawford – Australian principal researcher at?Microsoft Research?(Social Media Collective), co-founder and director of research at the?AI Now Institute?at NYU, visiting professor at the?MIT Center for Civic Media, senior fellow at the Information Law Institute at?NYU, associate professor in the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the?University of New South Wales.?

“Don’t be scared of racist people. Be frightened of ‘racist’ algorithms because they have no conscience and are much more effective.” Murat Durmus – German entrepreneur, CEO & founder of AISOMA, company specialized in AI-based technology development and consulting.

“Concerns about technology and fairness go back a long way, even from a legal perspective. For example, as early as the 1970s it was illegal under French law to make any decisions affecting human beings in a purely algorithmic manner—that is, without any human supervision. (…) Research on bias, fairness, transparency, and the myriad dimensions of safety now forms a substantial portion of all of the work presented at major AI and machine-learning conferences.”?Aileen Nielsen – Swiss academic, Fellow in Law & Tech at ETH Zurich Center For Law and Economics.

“It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible. When this happens, the most well-informed men become blinded by their prejudices and are unable to see what lies directly ahead of them.”?Arthur C. Clarke – U.K science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer. Author of “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard Feynman?- U.S. theoretical physicist, involved in formulation of quantum mechanics, theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and particle physics for which he proposed the parton model.

“Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.” Linus Pauling - U.S. chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, educator.

“And anytime a programmer makes a decision about how to deal with data, how to average it or clean it, you're imparting more of your own bias on it.” Hannah Fry - U.K. mathematician, author, professor in the Mathematics of Cities at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis.

“By recognizing the negativity effect and overriding our innate responses, we can break destructive patterns, think more effectively about the future, and exploit the remarkable benefits of this bias.” John Tierney – U.S. journalist, contributing editor to City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's quarterly publication.

“Wherever you look at human judgements, you are likely to find noise. To improve the quality of our judgements, we need to overcome noise as well as bias.” Dolly Chugh – U.S. psychologist, associate professor of management and organizations at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

“Science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; between ambition and passion; and between arrogance and conviction - in short, between an old today and a new tomorrow.” Heinrich Rohrer – Swiss physicist.

“Storytelling can be the most potent way to celebrate progress, inspire change, and bring about a more diverse world. If stories shape our perceptions, then perhaps the stories we never hear shape our biases through the lack of awareness they enable.” Rohit Bhargava – U.S. businessman, previously marketing strategist at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, teaches marketing and storytelling as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, author of a number of books including “Beyond Diversity”.

“[O]ur attitudes towards things like race or gender operate on two levels. First of all, we have our conscious attitudes. This is what we choose to believe. These are our stated values, which we use to direct our behavior deliberately . . . But the IAT [Implicit Association Test] measures something else. It measures our second level of attitude, our racial attitude on an unconscious level - the immediate, automatic associations that tumble out before we've even had time to think. We don't deliberately choose our unconscious attitudes. And . . . we may not even be aware of them. The giant computer that is our unconscious silently crunches all the data it can from the experiences we've had, the people we've met, the lessons we've learned, the books we've read, the movies we've seen, and so on, and it forms an opinion.” Malcolm Gladwell – U.K.-born/Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. Is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” Martin Luther King, Jr. – U.S. minister, activist.

“Implicit biases come from culture. I think of them as the thumbprint of the culture on our minds. Human beings have the ability to learn to associate two things together very quickly - that is innate. What we teach ourselves, what we choose to associate is up to us.” Mahzarin R. Banaji – Indian born/U.S. American psychologist at Harvard University, known for her work regarding implicit bias related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and other factors.

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.” Fyodor Dostoevsky - Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist.

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.” Bertrand Russell – U.K. philosopher, mathematician, logician, social critic.

“Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – German poet German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic.

“Recognizing that you have a bias and blind spots is essential to personal growth. It's long overdue that we expose this behavior and create environments where everyone feels safe and can be productive at work. (…) Remember, it takes courage, vulnerability, and humility to admit what you don’t know and experiment with new behaviors.” ?Mikaela Kiner – U.S. Human Resources Management executive/consultant, author of “Female Firebrands: Stories and Techniques to Ignite Change, Take Control, and Succeed in the Workplace”.?

“Unconscious behavior is not just individual; it influences organizational culture as well. This explains why so often our best attempts at creating corporate culture change with diversity efforts seem to fall frustratingly short; to not deliver on the promise they intended. Organizational culture is more or less an enduring collection of basic assumptions and ways of interpreting things that a given organization has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its internal and external influences. Unconscious organizational patterns, or “norms” of behavior, exert an enormous influence over organizational decisions, choices, and behaviors. These deep-seated company characteristics often are the reason that our efforts to change organizational behavior fail. Despite our best conscious efforts, the “organizational unconscious” perpetuates the status quo and keeps old patterns, values, and behavioral norms firmly rooted.” Howard Ross – U.S. social justice advocate. founding partner of diversity consulting firm Cook Ross, Inc.

Subtle words and acts of exclusion by leaders, or overlooking the exclusive behaviors of others, easily reinforces the status quo. It takes energy and deliberate effort to create an inclusive culture, and that starts with leaders paying much more attention to what they say and do on a daily basis and making adjustments as necessary. (…) Seek feedback on whether you are perceived as inclusive, especially from people who are different from you. This will help you to see your blind spots, strengths, and development areas. It will also signal that diversity and inclusion are important to you. Scheduling regular check-ins with members of your team to ask how you can make them feel more included also sends the message. (…) Tell a compelling and explicit narrative about why being inclusive is important to you personally and the business more broadly. (…)?Give people on the periphery of your network the chance to speak up, invite different people to the table, and catch up with a broader network. For example, seek out opportunities to work with cross-functional or multi-disciplinary teams to leverage diverse strengths. (…) Look for signals that you are having a positive impact. Are people copying your role modeling? Is a more diverse group of people sharing ideas with you? Are people working together more collaboratively?”Juliet Bourke – Australian adjunct professor in the School of Management and Governance, UNSW Business School, author of “Which Two Heads Are Better Than One: The Extraordinary Power of Diversity of Thinking and Inclusive Leadership” – and Andrea Titus Human Capital Consultant at Deloitte Australia.

“There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.” Aesop - Greek fabulist/storyteller, considered to be the author of Aesop's Fables.

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