Overcoming Unconscious Bias
Sasha Scott
&
Damian Jenkins
You can change your filters
• A change in your own circumstances, or new
experiences, can realign what your brain pays
attention to
• They can also alter the way it responds to
different cues
Steps to take
• Be alert to bias – AWARENESS
• Practice retraining your brain – MINDFULNESS
• Bring about practices that prevent bias
affecting an outcome – RESOURCEFULNESS
Acknowledge your biases
• Starts by understanding that we all have biases
• Actively look for biases in your decision making process
• Questions where the biases came from
– Learned from experience?
– Does the bias apply to all people of that group?
– What can you do to move beyond the bias?
• This is a slow process but gets quicker
Awareness
• Take an implicit bias test (Harvard Implicit Bias
Test)
• Identify how you learned your biases
• Individual workbook questions up to and
including page 4.
[5 minutes. Go!]
• Beware your defensive nature
• Now recall situations in which you will have
sought out your kinship group (Page 5)
How might you respond to someone
from a different kinship group?
• Attempt question on Pg 6
• The outcome of interviews and appraisals can
be highly influenced by biases
Mindfulness
• This means dissecting your decision making
CONSCIOUSLY
• Try question on page 7 about people who are
overweight
• What did you come up with?
Ask yourself
• Take any one of the adjectives that you listed
• Does that word apply to all overweight
people?
• If no, why do you hold that bias?
• Would it be better to see the individual rather
than the characteristic?
• If you do this in your daily life it will allow you
to pause and be objective
Question yourself
• How many people do I know that conform to
this bias?
• How many people do I know that do not
conform to this bias?
Finally for this booklet
• Look at the last page
• In groups of four allocate the words in the box
to the faces
• What do you notice?
Most people notice
• That, within their groups, people wanted to
attach words to different faces
• For certain words you were more certain
about which face to attach them to
• This demonstrates several of the concepts we
previously learned about
These concepts are:
1. Ambiguity exists when you have no
experience of a particular group of people.
When this is the case you resort to schemas to
make their decisions. These may be wildly
wrong.
2. Some biases are very strong, because of hard
wiring. The old, but fast, brain is making these
decisions for you.
• Unconscious brain links trustworthiness to uparching eyebrows and neutral or smiling lips
• If you exaggerate these features you get a happy
face
• If you invert these features you get an angry face
Resourcefulness
See the individual
• Study participants viewed photos of
unfamiliar black and white faces
• Brain response measured
• Shown faces again. This time given some
personal information about individual
Resourcefulness – be positive
• When you come to think critically of some one
STOP.
• Are you critical because of the way they look or
their behaviour?
• Could you be misreading that person?
• If you had to say something positive what might it
be?
Endorse Micro-affirmations
• Provide little acknowledgments of people’s
contributions and accomplishments
• Give public recognition: commend people on
the spot
• Provide an ear or a shoulder when needed
Individual betterment
Tell the truth
to yourself
Stimulate
your curiosity
about others
Stretch your
comfort zone
Notice what
influences
your decision
Gather data
about
yourself
Making changes at the
organisational level
Changes to your organisation
• Encourage others to take an implicit bias test
• Discuss your results
• Have a frank conversation about they way you
currently view people based on their age,
gender, colour, religion, sexuality. As a team
decide which views are reasonable and which
you should challenge
Reframe the conversation
• Don’t do this because of some legal necessity
• Don’t talk in terms of discrimination
• Instead get your message out in terms of fair treatment
and respect
• Do it because it is the right thing to do
• When people get angry/revolt ask them to stop and
question why that is their response
Challenge
• Other people’s treatment of people from
minority groups
• Negative language and stereotypes: if you
don’t know a lesbian how can you know if the
stereotype you talk about is real or not?
• Language really does matter – don’t diminish
the effect you have on others
Create
• A culture of acceptance
• If there is one bisexual man in your unit his
fitting in depends on how open to diversity
your unit is. It is NOT based on how hard he
tries to fit in.
• Opportunities for people of different kinship
groups to interact and debunk myths
Celebrate
• Your unit’s diversity and the Army’s diversity
• Advertise these groups proudly. Don’t leave promoting
diversity groups to the one of two ‘diverse’ individuals
• Acknowledge people’s work in inclusivity and diversity
when writing their reports: make it something you take
seriously when reviewing who should go forward for
promotion
• Get messages from the CO that are positive and welcoming
– not legal speak.
Scrutinise
• How you perform your MPARs and reports
• How you decide who goes forward for courses
• Does your unit use the same formula each time?
• The language used in performance reviews
(perky, flamboyant, nice, aggressive, loud etc.)
• Yourself for biases when performing appraisals
Commission services
• Get in house training
• Address stereotypes
• Promote an understanding of unconscious
bias
• Provide tools for relearning biases
Gauge your successes
• Anonymous, in house surveys
– Are you treated differently based on..?
– Have you had negative experiences because of..?
– Do colleagues interrupt bad behaviours?
– Does the CoC actively promote diversity?
• Don’t rely on complaints or lack of them
Enacting policy alone is a key element
of failure
Risk
management
approach
Gay male soldier receives positive
feedback because people worry about
having frank discussion about
shortcomings. Lack of opportunity to
grow reflects in average grades. He
approaches his OC to ask what he can do
to promote.
OC document interactions. May seek
advice from RCMO/RAO because of
fear ‘gay card’ may be played. Average
grades used to explain lack of
promotion. No obvious growth areas
identified. Soldier stalls.
Problem
solving
approach
OC reflects on unconscious biases.
Realises previous appraisals have not
highlighted areas for betterment.
Realises this was from fear of ‘being
hard’ on soldier. Distributes new
assignments and helps guide him
through. Grade improvement and
potential for promotion gained.
Unconscious Bias Tool Kit
• Eliminate your own biases
• Provide a work environment that is welcoming
• Do not put onus of diversity onto the few individuals who are
different
• Offer meaningful work and honest feedback to everyone
• Provide mentors
• Be mentored
• Foster cultural awareness: ensure staff interact with people from
minority groups
• Change ‘necessary diversity training’ (MATT 6) to interactive training
that allows between-group mixing/interaction
• Ensure those who manage careers are truly on board with E&D
• Reward people who make a commitment to E&D
Help people be themselves
10 things you can say to someone who comes out:
1. Nothing - It’s fine to take a moment and take it in before you respond, so you
don’t blurt out something you don’t mean. But eventually you will have to say
something
2. Thanks for trusting me enough to tell me
3. I’m listening and here if you want to talk
4. It’s really great that you’re being true to who you are
5. I don’t know many gay people, please let me know if I do or say anything that
offends you. I wouldn’t want to say anything that upsets you
6. I’m not sure what the right thing is to say, but I want to be here and supportive
for you
7. How can I support you?
8. Are you comfortable with other people knowing, or do you want to be the one
to tell people?
9. Have you come out to anyone else? How’s that been?
10. Cool. This doesn’t change how I feel about you. Hope we’re still going for that
drink on Friday night?
Top 10 Things Not to Say to Someone Who Comes Out to You
1. You’re one of them?
2. That’s immoral
3. But you’ve got children
4. You’re just confused
5. You can’t be gay, you used to have a boyfriend/girlfriend
6. Have you tried talking to a professional about this?, maybe they
can help you
7. It’s probably just a phase
8. But you’re so pretty, lots of men here like you, you don’t have to
be a lesbian
9. What? You’re gay, but we go to the gym together. Does that mean
you’ve been looking at me ‘that way’ all the time?
10. How long have you known you were … you know?
Your challenge, should you choose to
accept it..
• Within the next two weeks, identify personal
behaviors that are consistent with bias and
commit to deliberately changing at least one
of those behaviors.
• Pursue strategies in your work setting that will
encourage others to undertake behaviors that
are inconsistent with bias.
• Display counter-bias material at work.
There is a massive pool of
diversity. Dive on in!