The Un/Conscious Bias
Recently a friend told me that no matter what, we may have some bias to something. I prefer certain brands over others — it is a bias, or maybe it is a preference. Whether we want to admit it or not, all of us have an unconscious bias, and most of us have some form of conscious bias. While society has advocated against discrimination and laws have been created to enforce this view, we all struggle to escape the underlying influences that shape how we perceive and treat others.
There is a riddle that perfectly sums up bias: “A father and son are driving down the highway when they get into an accident. The father is killed immediately, and the son suffers serious injuries. He is brought into the ICU and whisked into surgery. The doctor arrives, but exclaims ‘I cannot operate on the patient; he is my son’”.
Perhaps, it’s a same-sex couple’s son. Maybe, he has two fathers without being same-sex, as a step-dad. The answer is simple — the doctor was the boy’s mother. In not recognizing that possibility, we confirmed the stereotype that women are not doctors. Only men are doctors effectively, proving that we all have unconscious, or slightly more conscious, bias.
What is Conscious + Unconscious Bias?
Merriam Webster Dictionary states that bias is a specific inclination, idea, or feeling about someone that is preconceived or unreasonable. Often bias is based on physical attributes like skin color, gender, age, etc., which can be recognized easily and almost immediately and have nothing or very little to do with the individual’s personality or professional experiences.
Unfortunately, unconscious bias is often much harder to determine as it exists in our subconscious and usually is triggered automatically, unknowingly, and often without our awareness. Unconscious bias still impacts how we perceive, interact, and engage with others.
What Influences Bias?
Every aspect of our lives influences bias: our childhood and family network, religion, nationality, education, life experiences, social media, friends and family, co-workers and employment, and much more. Every day we process millions of pieces of information — it’s essential for our continued well-being. As we mature and develop, we use our experiences to reconfirm or reveal the errors in our decision-making process.
As recruiters, we all prefer to think of ourselves as fair, unbiased, and open-minded in our decision-making processes. However, our brains are just not biologically wired to work this way. Instead, they have evolved from years of making associations between certain things.
Affecting our Decisions
Conscious and unconscious bias influences how we make decisions from impacting our perception of others to our attitudes and reactions towards certain people. If we entertain unconscious bias, we may not actively listen to what the individual is saying as we’ve already decided that they’re not worth speaking too.
Whether we’re hiring someone for a new job, making friends in the office, or looking to promote someone, bias influences every decision we make about others. Our choices may prevent people from accessing the same life and professional opportunities as others and in a more financial sense, cost businesses billions every year.
Addressing the Elephant
The realization or confirmation that you may not have received specific roles or promotions due to your gender, race, or another utterly unchangeable attribute sucks. How do you stop yourself from becoming the victim of bias? Or, better yet, how do you eliminate bias from your decision-making process?
One way of recognizing unconscious bias is to be aware of the different types including affinity, attribution, beauty, conformity, confirmation, contrast effect, and horns + halo effect
Leaving the Elephant Behind
We must acknowledge your own bias. We all have biases behavior. There are over 150 different types of prejudice, and we cannot merely put those behaviors aside when we are doing our jobs because we are human. Therefore, it’s essential to acknowledge the bias and actively work to counter it.
While eliminating unconscious bias may seem like a difficult task, the reward is worth the effort. A diverse workforce often achieves better results when it comes to productivity, profits, and even other business outcomes. It makes companies a more attractive place to work, helps them recruit and retain top talent, and helps them establish an excellent reputation as an employer and social enterprise. More importantly, it also makes the world a bit fairer and ensures that everyone has the same opportunities regardless of their gender, race, or background.
