Examples Of Negative Bias

In today’s society, announcing one’s aversion towards people different from them is the fastest way receive ridicule. In general, society has progressed to a point where being xenophobic, racist, and sexist is socially unacceptable. Despite this progress, society still suffers from the effects of racism, xenophobia, and sexism. Why is that? The answer has to do with the fact that while explicit expressions of these behaviors are seen as unacceptable, implicit associations still permeate our society. These associations lead to implicit bias. Implicit bias is readily becoming the most pervasive form of bias in our society. It contributes to both micro and macro-level inequalities, and raising awareness of implicit bias is crucial in order to suppress its effects on society. This paper will start with a discussion of what implicit bias is. This will be followed by a discussion of the effects of implicit bias. It will conclude with a discussion of how implicit bias can be combatted.

Implicit biases are “‘habits of mind,’ learned over time through repeated personal experiences and cultural socialization, which can be activated unintentionally, often outside of one’s own awareness, and are difficult to control” (Burgess, Beach & Saha, 2017, p. 372). Implicit bias is seen in the medical field partly because of the time pressure of medical visits, and the reliance on stereotypes in situations of high stress. It is difficult to study implicit bias because of social desirability. No doctor wants to admit that they are biased and, as a result, they are going to do their best to demonstrate the socially desirable response of being non-biased. However, research shows that bias and prejudice from health care providers toward patients exists, and leads to poorer care related to the assessment of cardiovascular risk and whether or not a patient is referred for additional treatment (Stepanikova, I., 2012). Even health care providers from one of the best health care organizations in the world, Mayo Clinic, struggle with

Women have expressed their political allegiance long before the dawn of modern era. However, the quest for equality has always been undermined by the male dominance throughout the history. Even in the most developed countries like the United States of America, women were not entitled to the same rights and privileges as men. “In Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Constitution did not grant women the right to vote. The Supreme Court upheld state court decisions in Missouri, in which a registrar had refused to, register a woman as a lawful voter because the state 's laws allowed only men to vote”.

It is reasonable to argue that, over the last century or so, the United States has made great strides in addressing issues of injustice. Feminism, the Civil Rights movement, and activism from gay men and women have transformed laws and greatly changed the ways in which these populations were once perceived as inferior. There are still major conflicts regarding race relations, just as issues remain with other minorities and women's rights. At the same time, there has been remarkable progress, indicating a nation more aware of its ethical obligation to treat all equally. To some extent, this same awareness goes to the disabled. Unfortunately, this is a population still very much victimized by bias, and because

A personal bias of mine would be not being able to completely understand LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, queer, intersex, asexual) community and the issues that they have that comes along with being gay, queer, transexual etc. I think the reason behind this bias is that I am a married heterosexual woman so my sexuality has never been discriminated against, making it difficult to fully comprehend/relate to a potential client. Even though the world is progressing it has been a pretty slow process and by the looks of it, it is apparent that America is very hetero-centric. Johnson (2006) states how simple it is for heterosexuals in the world. For example heterosexuals can watch television or watch a movie and be assured of seeing characters, news reports etc. that reflect the reality of their own lives (Johnson, 2006). Heterosexuals, unlike those of other sexualities, are free and many times pressured to get marry, adopt children or getting a job without being questioned and harassed by society.

Living in the world, we face different kinds of people every day, which means we need to communicate with others and make decisions upon others. Naturally, the attitude and method in dealing with diversity becomes a basic skill for people. It is important to know how to communicate and make decisions in a proper way. Facing diverse people and objects, people usually classify them. The advantage people gain from classification is organizing and making things easier to understand. However, when it comes to communication and decision-making, classification may cause some problems. As the name indicates, the topic of the book goes around stereotype, and it provides the readers a better

Fear is generally classically conditioned; our response to our fear would be in a negative

First, did your team decide to race or not to race? Explain your how your group arrived at that decision.

In modern politics and media, issues are often unnecessarily blown out of proportion and stigmatized through misinformation. Source A details this extensively, citing the prevalence of fear campaigns and misinformation to manipulate viewers. In the past, news was often simply factual and impartial. However, fear and bias are common forces behind coverage today. Recently, a news anchor claimed in a nationally televised interview that “We’re already in World War III,” hyperbolically and without basis, simply to scare viewers into listening. Source D illustrates this issue with a viewer simply turning off hysterical news coverage when asked “What can we do to lessen the grip of fear from terrorism?” This political cartoon implies that the fear striking America from modern issues such as terrorism and immigration is

Some major bias’s I found in myself where mainly just silly ones. These would be things such as me saying to myself, “why is she talking like that, she must be weird.” When in reality she could have been the nicest person I met that day but I automatically made a judgment about her and pushed myself away. Or me saying something to myself like, “ she’s really quite in class, she must be socially award.” These are bias’s that people have in their every day lives. I could go on and on about things that I have automatically judged somebody on when I had no idea if that was even the case. I’m not saying that I judge people all the time but what I am saying is that I am human, and it is what it is, but is that just another bias too? See, what I have learned is that biases will never go away. They are constantly happening. We can remind ourselves to not be so bias but it is in our human nature to do so without even thinking about it.

Being tilted towards on side of thinking. We are all a little biased on one or more subjects. I don’t believe that bias has to do with race. Bias is to lean heavy on one side or another side of an argument.

Fading affect bias is a finding that the intensity of the affect that are associated with negative autobiographical memories tends to fade faster than affect associated with positive autobiographical memories. For example, when someone is initially turned down for a job, the individual may initially experience feelings of distress or sadness, but over time, they may begin to feel relief and decide that not being hired for that position turned out for the better. (Walker & Skowronski, 2009) Dissimilarly, an article by Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, and Vohs published in 2001 hypothesizes that, according to multiple literatures, it is the “negatively valenced” events in our lives that have the most significant emotional and psychological

Bias: Prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair (Oxford dictionaries). Human beings have innate bias. Bias is most often acquired from one’s environment, however there are other factors that may contribute to a person’s unique point of view. Sources also contain bias and it is impossible for a source to be completely free of bias. There are, however, ways one can avoid falling victim to an author’s skewed view of a topic. The most important ways being one’s ability to spot a sources bias along with the researcher choosing to use several sources with different viewpoints. In order to acquire an accurate, non-biased view of a topic, one must use several sources

We have read the stories and heard about the reality of individuals with ethnic names being passed over when it comes to job interviews. The last July, NBC ran a story about Yolanda Spivey and her experiment with name bias. Spivey, an African American female, was finding it hard to get job interviews despite her qualification. She created an identical profile as her own using the name Bianca White. While her phone remained silent, "Bianca White's phone and email account sprang to life. At the end of her experiment, Spivey summarized, "Resumes with ethnic sounding names may go into the wastebasket and never see the light of day. The result is that black women have an unemployment rate of twice the national

Understanding how our brain works can help us understand why all individuals have unconscious biases. Blair (2007) gave an example of the elephant and the blind man story where six blind people, who have never seen an elephant, had different description of an elephant (pillar, rope, thick branch of a tree, big hand fan, huge wall, solid pipe) based on what they touched. On the one hand, they were all right but, on the other, they were all wrong as they just had the chunks of the bigger picture. This gives us an insight of what humans are like and how they see the world based on the lens of their experience.