Understanding Your Unconscious Bias

Most of us like to think of ourselves as fair and open-minded, but we all make snap judgements, use stereotypes and, at times, make unfair assessments about other people.  We all have biases and many of these happen automatically, outside of our conscious awareness, in our unconscious.  Consider for a moment this well-known riddle:

A son and his father are involved in a horrific car accident and the father dies at the scene.  The son has serious injuries and is rushed to hospital.  When in the operating theatre the surgeon, on seeing the injured boy, says ‘I cannot operate, this is my son’.

How can this be?  The answer is at the end of this blog.  It’s useful to reflect on the answer that you gave and how quickly you made your judgement. 

Often, the results of unconscious bias are that we negatively stereotype a person without intending to do so.  Public attitudes and explicit behaviour have shifted in the UK over time with the role of women and the treatment of individuals from ethnic minority groups changing radically in the last fifty years.  Far fewer people are explicitly racist or sexist than was the case a couple of decades ago.  However, what has not changed are our implicit or unconscious biases; those biases that we have which are below the surface of our conscious awareness. 

So, why do we need to worry about bias and its impact, particularly in the world of work?  Looking at the facts is most helpful here.  In the UK, the Boards of our top 150 FTSE companies have 24% women and less than 2% from Black, Asian Minority Ethnic groups.   Within organisations, the culture of the organisation is primarily influenced by those in the most senior positions who act as powerful role models for others.  So, if most of our senior leaders are white males, it is the biases of these individuals which will shape core decisions, strategies and policies on how the organisation is run.  Bias can take many forms from ‘affinity’ bias, where we favour people ‘a bit like us’ or ‘halo’ bias, where we are impressed by a person because they are very good in one area.

Unconscious bias is important to understand in education as this will shape the next generation.  There is evidence of a pattern of behaviour in the UK at present, reported by the Institute of Physics, in which girls opt out of the ‘difficult’ subjects like Physics at ‘A’ level (with only 20% of girls taking Physics), despite doing better than boys in their GCSE Physics results.  In those schools where there are fewer girls studying Physics to ‘A’ level, the girls are to be found in the more traditional ‘female’ Arts subjects.  It is important for schools to consider the way that they, perhaps unconsciously, steer pupils of different genders in their subject choices.  A further example of the potential of unconscious bias is that as white, working-class boys get older they are now seen to be underachieving in some schools.  This may be down to several factors like the social inequalities in their lives ramping up; their own unconscious bias which sets low expectations as they do not see people like them doing well in the world; and, perhaps, their parents or their teachers self-fulfilling prophecies about their potential.  Biases can compound and make a problem seem intractable.  

     

It is not easy to address the issue of unconscious bias.  Indeed, there may be a reluctance for some individuals to talk about what is going on in their head as they might fear being viewed as a stereotype and so their thoughts are suppressed.  However, this is counter-productive as the key to addressing unconscious bias is to talk it through and applying sustained effort in understanding it on an on-going basis.   Each of us has a role to play in unravelling this issue and the best place to start is with ourselves.  It is important to know your own biases and to work with them.  The more that you know, the more you will be able to interrupt your automatic thinking processes and decide how you will work with it.  You can access the Implicit Association Test (IAT) run by Harvard University as part of Project Implicit to check your own implicit or unconscious bias against a range of different types of people: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

With your results, keep in mind that we are complex, and so be cautious about giving too much weight to any one test.  Instead, consider your behaviour in the world and how to raise your awareness of your biases so you are more consciously aware of your own behaviour and decision-making.  My previous blog, ‘Why the most effective way of deepening your self-awareness is to tune into your unconscious’, is a resource to help you understand your unconscious processing and how this impacts on your behaviour and your potential for bias. 

   

Margaret Walsh is a registered member of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy, a Member of the Association of Coaching and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development.  She works with individuals and groups using a mixture of coaching and psychotherapy to help deepen self-awareness from which to bring about change.  She works face-to-face as well as by Skype and telephone and can be contacted on margaretwalshcoach@gmail.com

The answer to the test is: the surgeon is the mother   

Source – Data on women and ethnic minority individuals on Boards – Spencer Stuart UK Board Index 2016