When we interact with each other the abundant information available to us is cognitively overwhelming – scientists estimate that we are exposed to as many as 11 million pieces of information at any one time, but our brains can only functionally deal with about 40. So how do we filter out the rest? Information about people and objects is supressed, grouped and placed into easy-to-use categories. Our brains are hardwired to rapidly categorise people instinctively and we use the most obvious and visible categories to do this: age, skin colour, gender, physical attractiveness etc. We also use many other less visible dimensions such as: accent; education; nationality; religion; sexual orientation; background; job title and organisation/work-place. These categories automatically assign a whole suite of unconscious characteristics, good and bad, to anyone categorised as being from that group. This social categorisation enables us to make rapid judgments about new people and situations without having to process in great detail everything about every individual and context.
We are, therefore, hardwired towards bias, whether we like it or not it is how our brains work, and is a highly efficient way of processing information… however it does have disadvantages, our biases cause us to make decisions that are not objective and can result in us making ‘bad calls’ or missing opportunities.
There is an abundance of research showing that interviews are poor predictors of job performance because we tend to hire people we think are similar to us. In her article in Forbes, Ellen Huet, says ‘unconscious bias’ is what makes people who consider themselves champions for women in the workplace rate a man’s resume as more qualified than the same resume with a woman’s name on top’. In her 2014 piece on gender parity on boards, Tang Chu in the Guardian Women in Leadership wonders could the reason behind the slow growth in female membership of FTSE 100 company boards be a result of the unconscious bias of not only men but also of women themselves. She says ‘our aspirations tend to reflect the current norm, and with relatively few women in key roles, women’s unconscious beliefs about career advancement could be holding them back from reaching the top’. Bias comes in many forms from the female leader assuming she needs to take on more ‘masculine’ behaviours to succeed to doubting your abilities and strengths. ‘Whilst biases protect us from the fear of failure they also hold us back from reaching our true potential’.
The most effective tool available for testing one’s own unconscious bias is the Implicit Association Test (IAT), created and maintained by Project Implicit, a consortium made up of researches from Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Washington. To take the IAT, go to https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
In our coaching conversations one of the key things we do is help the client:
- Understand that biases exist, are triggered at great speed and frequently escape our conscious monitoring;
- Be honest about their biases;
- Accept rather than demonise them;
- Be wary of first impressions;
- Become aware of stereotyping;
- Broaden their focus.
Not all unconscious biases are bad, but becoming aware of them will increase the objectivity you bring to your decision making.
References:
Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2014/may/01/unconscious-bias-women-holding-back-work
Unconscious Bias Innovative Research Solutions: Shire Professional Chartered Psychologists
