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What Is Unconscious Bias (And How to Reduce It for Good)
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Cognitive Bias
Cognitive Bias is a predictable pattern of mental errors where we misperceive reality and move away from the most likely way of reaching our goals.
These mental blind spots...
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Unconscious Bias
Unconscious bias refers to unconscious forms of discrimination and stereotyping. Unconscious bias often leads to discrimination, be it deliberate or unintentional.
Unc...
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How to Reduce Unconscious Bias
- Recognise that the unconscious bias is a systemic issue. Internal cultures need to be checked and addressed first.
- There is no shame or guilt in unconscious bias...
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The negativity bias
The negativity bias happens when a person dwells on a negative event for a long period of time.
We tend to register negative stimuli every time we go through displeasing situations. This is because negative events have a bigger impact than those of positive ones on our mental and emotional state and this affects our behavior, thoughts, and relationships – often unconsciously.
Signs of the negativity bias
- Negative experiences constantly cross your mind more than positive ones.
- You tend to relive insults more than praise.
- You're able to recall traumatic situations better than positive events.
What evolution shows about the negativity bias
Paying attention to your surroundings is a typical human behavior exhibiting the will to survive. Being wary about the environment that you are in will make you more likely to survive and pass on your genes.
However, in the current era having negativity bias actually inhibits us to think rationally and make the right decisions.
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Prejudice is inside us all
Prejudice stems in part from cultural learning, our parents, our schools, and social messages in the media. Prejudice is also deeply embedded in our thought networks.
The good news is that we can combat it.
Negative stereotypes are lodged in our cognitive network
They pop up to do mischief, even when you're not conscious of it.
We can learn to recognize bias in ourselves and reduce the harmful impact of that part of ourselves by applying acceptance and commitment therapy. It focuses on developing psychological flexibility. When we investigate our implicit biases, we become more aware of them and can bring our actions in line with our conscious beliefs.
Authoritarian distancing
All forms of prejudice can be explained by what’s called authoritarian distancing - the belief that we are different from some group. Because they are different, they represent a threat we need to control.
When people adopt authoritarian distancing, they display three characteristics:
- The inability to take the perspective of other people.
- The inability to feel the pain of other people when you take their perspective.
- The inability to be emotionally open to the pain of others when you do feel it.
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The egocentric bias
It is a cognitive bias that causes people to rely too much on their own point of view when they examine or remember events in their life.
This means that people tend to either underestimate how different other people’s viewpoint is from their own, or to ignore other people’s viewpoint entirely.
Examples of the egocentric bias
- When you are giving a public talk, you assume that your nervousness is more apparent to others than is actually the case.
- You overestimate the amount of work that you contributed to a group project.
- You might believe that your colleagues all share your political beliefs and social values.
- You might remember yourself as having been the key player in a past event, despite the fact that you only played a relatively minor role in it.
What causes the egocentric bias
It occurs primarily due to the fact that we tend to naturally examine and remember events primarily through our personal point of view.
Even when we realize that we should adjust our perspective to see things through other people’s eyes, we tend to anchor this new perspective to our own, and we often fail to adjust from our original viewpoint enough to properly assess how other people feel.