Unconscious Biases Series - Article 2

As a reminder, the focus of this series is to tackle biases little by little, week over week, so by the end of the month, we've came to understand 12 different biases, and so we can easily spot them when they happen.

Last week, we talked about 3 unconscious biases that we can often find in the workplace. They happen at all stages of the employee cycle, and without awareness to them, they can easily cloud our judgment and narrow our decision making process. We talked about the affinity bias, the halo/horn effect and the conformity bias.

This week, we're discovering 3 more... buckle up!

Representative Heuristic Bias

This refers to false connections made between two unrelated concepts or assuming two related concepts are more connected than they actually are.

Example 1: You notice someone coming in a coffee shop with ripped jeans, tattooed sleeve and an eccentric beanie on. You assume they must be an art student or something of the sort. You link someone's clothes with their occupation, when those 2 concepts aren't related to begin with!

Authority Bias

This refers to the propensity to rely on the opinions of an individual’s authority rather than their qualifications.

Example: You are the manager of the engineering team. The CEO thinks that Tyrone, one of your team members, is a hard worker. What you don't know, is he thinks that because he knows that Tyrone is training for a marathon (the CEO has a representative heuristic bias - if Tyrone is training for a marathon, surely they he's hard working and dedicated!). Therefore, when comes the performance evaluation, you evaluate highly Tyrone on their work ethics, because of the opinion of the CEO.

Self-serving bias

This happens when we attribute positive events and successes to our own character or actions but blame negative results on external factors unrelated to our character.

Example:

I am a seller who just closed a great deal - that's because of all the efforts I've put on the negotiations and the grooming of the relation with the client!

I am a seller who just lost one of our major clients - it's not my fault, the account manager partnering with me on the account has done a terrible job at supporting the client's needs!

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I hope these biases and examples are helping you get a better grasp at how unconscious biases are everywhere! Knowing they exist makes it easier to actually spot them when they're happening and go ''ah-ha! here's a bias!'' instead of blindly acting on them, not even being aware of their presence. Knowledge is power!

See you next week with 3 new biases ??