I know I have biases I’d rather not to admit to. The ones I know about are ok, I can take some action. It’s the unconscious ones that do for us.
Most of us are familiar with the term ‘unconscious bias’ but are not sure quite how to ‘manage’ it in ourselves. I found this helpful video from The Royal Society which gives a pretty good explanation and some helpful suggestions.
Quick Judgements
We all use a form of brain shorthand. We make assumptions about people based on what they look like, how they speak, how they move, how they are dressed. Sometimes it’s helpful to us, and speeds things up.
However, sometimes it blinds us to people’s qualities, leads to inequality and unfairness, especially if we exclude whole swathes of people because somewhere in our subconscious we don’t think they are as good as us. We know from plenty of research that this happens to women in every walk of life. It happens to people of colour, people with disability, people with working class accents, the list goes on.
Diversity is Good for Us
So, check out your own unconscious biases regularly. Do listen to the video, it is helpful and quite short. Particularly the bit about people paying more attention to a male voice… (Speak Up is my riposte to this)
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Posted on August 10th, 2016 by Jane
