Unconscious bias, its effects, causes, and testing

Unconscious Bias

If you want to enhance equality, diversity, and inclusion in your workforces, you have probably heard about unconscious bias in the workplace, which is increasingly being viewed as a key reason why different groups of individuals have varied professional experiences.

What is Unconscious Bias?

When we act on subconscious, profoundly rooted biases, preconceptions, and attitudes derived from our innate human cognition, experiences, upbringing, and environment, we are engaging in unconscious bias, also known as implicit bias.

You may be exposing yourself to unconscious bias if you act on your gut instincts, kneejerk reactions, or assumptions. Even if you don't believe in stereotypes, this can mean that those affected by your activities may be unfairly discriminated against or favored without your knowledge.

Causes of Unconscious Bias

According to research, our brains use bias to pursue our goals subconsciously. According to some studies, unconscious biases are the mind's way of automatically generating linkages between two concepts due to our natural social cognition skills.

They are useful mental shortcuts that allow us to digest information more quickly through prediction when viewed in this perspective. This is why we automatically categorize people based on factors like skin color, weight, age, gender, accent, education, sexuality, or social standing.

This categorizing saves our brain time and effort by allowing us to focus on other things instead of absorbing and processing information.

Unfortunately, the same process can have a negative impact on our behavior, stopping us from acting in our own or the group's best interests. People can be classified in ways that lead to false preconceptions, causing us to treat them differently. It can lead to strained relationships and injustices.

There's a compelling incentive for businesses to confront unconscious bias: in addition to the negative consequences listed above, acting on or experiencing unconscious bias in the workplace means we're stopped from acting in the company's best interests.

How to Test Unconscious Bias?

Various instruments are available, but one of the most prominent and well-studied is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT was created to detect unconscious bias based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and national origin, among other criteria.

How does IAT function?

The IAT assesses the relative strength of relationships between concepts. It's a sorting exercise where participants are instructed to arrange images or text on a computer screen into one of two groups. The underlying notion is that people may pair two highly connected concepts more quickly than two not strongly associated concepts. The IAT has been carefully studied for reliability and validity, and it is relatively resistant to social desirability concerns.

How does the IAT measures implicit attitudes and stereotypes?

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) evaluates or stereotypes the strength of links between notions (e.g., black people, gay people) and judgments (e.g., good, terrible) (e.g., athletic, clumsy). The primary premise is that using the same response key for closely related things makes responding easier. When Straight People + Good / Homosexual People + Bad are paired together, they are faster to complete the task than when Gay People + Good / Straight People + Bad are partnered together; we would conclude that one has an implicit preference for straight people over gay people.

What does it indicate if my IAT score is "slight," "moderate," or "strong"?

If you respond faster when Flowers + Good / Insects + Bad are paired together than when Insects + Good / Flowers + Bad are paired together, you will receive feedback indicating that you have an implicit preference for flowers over insects. The labels' slight, "moderate,' and' strong' reflect the strength of the implicit preference based on how quickly you respond to Flowers + Good / Insects + Bad versus Flowers + Good / Insects + Bad.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Mean-Implicit-Association-Test-IAT-latency-results-N-69-as-a-function-of_fig3_247745108