Personal Bias: Response

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 bias plays a significant role in today’s society, whether the members realize it or not. The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says,” ‘Implicit bias’ is a term of art referring to a relatively unconscious and relatively automatic features of prejudiced judgement and social behavior” (Brownstein 2015). Implicit biases are often based on stereotypes. Stereotypes, as defined by OpenStax, are “oversimplified ideas about groups of people” (OpenStax College 2015:248). Implicit biases can be problematic for many reasons. One way implicit biases are troublesome is due to the fact that it is unconscious, so it is usually out of a person’s control. People are often unaware of their own and how they use it. A very common way implicit biases are seen in society is through discrimination. Discrimination is defined as “prejudiced action against a group of people” (OpenStax College 2015:248). If a man and a woman are considered as potentials for being hired, the employer may have an implicit bias either towards or against men or women influencing them to hire one over the other based on their gender. This exemplifies a modern concern of gender discrimination as well. Implicit biases can come in many forms from gender, race, weight, sexuality, and many more. These factors can influence an individual’s treatment of others if they have significant bias. In society, these implicit biases can negatively influence minority and other groups and lead to inequality.

In essence, explicit biases are based on general knowledge and ‘common sense’ that an individual can identify and expound on. Naturally, having an explanation does not make these judgments, or their premises, accurate. An example of an explicit bias would be assigning gender roles to different tasks. For instance, at the extreme, women were not seen fit to join the labor force in the developed countries until well into the 19th century; the explanation for this was that women were supposed to stay home and take care of the household, and were less able than men to do most of other types of work. However, no scientific evidence exists to date that identifies any significant differences between genders on their performance on work-related tasks (for more information on the history of gender roles in the working environment in the United States, see e.g. Kessler-Harris,

The Implicit Association Test or IAT is a valuable tool that those in the criminal justice system use; often times during the hiring process candidates will be required to complete the IAT so that hiring officials can see if they have any unconscious bias. The IAT is still relatively new in terms of psychological research only being created in the 1990’s by psychologist Anthony Greenwald (Kaufman, 2011). Individuals who take the race portion of the test are shown pictures of Caucasian and African-American males or females, then are given positive or negative words that they associate with each race as fast as possible. After taking the test it measures the unconscious bias that everyone has deep down (Kaufman, 2011).

The ease of modern technology that lets people communicate globally, the access to extraordinary mobility, and the well roundedness of people today has produced the biggest population in history that prides itself in being egalitarian and fair-minded. Psychologists have found evidence in recent studies that, although people are not as outwardly racist and discriminatory as they were in the past centuries, there is an underlying bias that can lead people to act in ways opposing their beliefs. In their book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good people, psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald explore the ideas of unconscious identity, the judgment and treatment of others based on stereotypes and the phenomenon of association, and our inability to simply stop being biased as opposed to outsmarting it.

Research centers for the study of racial bias have developed experimental studies to help understand how race can, for instance, influence a police officer to shoot an unarmed suspect. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one of the most commonly used tests for this study. IAT was developed by three scientists, Tony Greenwald (University of Washington), Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia) (“ProjectImplicit”). Their “Project Implicit” program was designed to identify our societal biases through the association of faces (black and white) with words (good and bad). This program uses a scoring algorithm that can identify those who are faking the test with approximately 75% accuracy (Cvencek et al.).

When I started thinking critically about this assignment, I realized that I was stuck. I couldn’t think of a single bias that I could possibly have against someone but then it donned on me that I would have to go deeper and understand that biases can come in many different forms. And since I am not a professional therefore have never provided therapy to someone on a professional level, I am virtually unaware of what my potential biases are. So to solve this problem, I decided to think about my personal experiences and document the ones that caused me to have any sort of negative emotions about.

One such scenario is the candidate hiring process where candidates with white sounding names received up to 50% more callbacks than candidates with black sounding names. The paper goes on to explain how the Implicit Association Test, IAT, demonstrates the subtle racial biases that many people have. Since individuals are often unaware of their implicit biases, the paper suggests that self-awareness is necessary to correct for the hidden factors in one’s own environment. One way they suggest fixing this problem is by simply being aware that one has these racial biases, also known as self-awareness. They provide an example where a person had read a psychology paper reporting that people in their profession are subject to certain kinds of racially biased behavior. The person was then inserted in the same scenario a few days later, and adjusted their behavior or actions to compensate for the racial bias they read about. When the person corrects his or her actions to incorporate the racial bias, he or she is more likely to give a more accurate assessment of the situation. This is because they are now self-aware of hidden biases that could negatively influence their

Knowing, understanding, and being aware of personal biases is the first step in the development of plans or strategies overcoming biases. As nurses we must recognize and be more sensitive to the care provided to patients and understand that differences do exist in and between the differing races, cultures, and ethnic groups (Giger, 2013, p. 3). The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is used to identify and provide an awareness to biases that are consciously or unconsciously present in an individuals actions and beliefs (Project Implicit, 2011). After completing the Race IAT, Gender-Career IAT and Religion IAT, I will discuss the prejudices, biases, and stereotypical thinking present in my life and share what steps can be taken to reduce or eliminate

“You are a racist!” is a phrase that produces anxiety and triggers defensive mindsets, especially in work environments. Are you racist? Are you sexist? Are you bias? The answers to these questions might not be as stress-free to answer as you believe. Is it possible to be biased without the intent to be biased? Yes. There are two different types of biases; explicit bias and implicit bias. Explicit bias is when you consciously believe that certain races, genders, or religions are inferior. Implicit bias is when you think that you are unbiased but actually perform unconscious bias actions. Recognizing implicit bias is no easy undertaking which is why there have been theoretical attempts to avert implicit bias before it materializes. In the modern business world, unintentional prejudiced actions happen every day. In his paper “Context and the Ethics of Implicit Bias,” Michael Brownstein attempts to find a solution to these critical issues. In this essay, I will attempt to explain the theories behind the three ‘ethics of implicit bias’ and what problems arise in each situation according to Brownstein. I will then describe the advanced contextualist approach of Brownstein’s and why I consider his strategy to be the most effective in business settings through my own personal experiences.

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.

There has been decades of research examining what it referred to as “automatic categorization” (Nelson, 2005. p. 207). Researchers describe this as an essential trait in humans that is a primal response to physical characteristics, such as race, gender, and age, that automatically prompts emotional responses and prejudices. This type of categorization sets the

What does Bias means? Bias is the prejudice in favor of or against one thing. It’s also can be a person or group comparing with another usually in a way considering to be unfair. There are different type you would never though it would be Bias or would offend someone still you think about. Example are like genders, cultures, and races. Some people celebrate their holidays different times and do different activities.

This paper will discuss how we as human beings use self-serving bias within our daily lives, and explain why we tend to identify, or focus on our successes, and refuse to acknowledge or own up to our failures. The question here is why do we as individuals tend to avoid, blame, or ignore the inadequacies within our lives. Many researchers “believed that our emotions played a role in self-serving bias”, and many studies were conducted to “determine how emotions, judgement, and attributions”, can strongly influence us into self-serving bias. Attribution bias is a part of self-serving bias, and leads “people to make more stable, internal, and global attributions” when it comes to the positive things in their lives, rather than the negative things he or she may encounter throughout his or her life. So we will examine, analyze, validate, and link the two research studies chosen on this concept, and provide examples of how we as individuals use self-serving, and attribution bias daily, and that both intertwine with one another. After reading this paper we will be aware of how often we tend to use this concept without even realizing we do it, and hopefully gain insight on how to improve ourselves when it comes handling failure.

Reading Jane Austen has never appealed to me. The combination of dated prose, a general aversion to plots I deemed to be “too romantic”, and my viewing of the film adaptations were enough to keep me away from her novels. When I was asked to read Persuasion for a class, I was hesitant and unwilling to fully engage with the material. This prevented me from enjoying the book fully. I didn’t quite know what was holding me back from enjoying the book, but I knew that it was something more than my explicit biases against Austen. After a little reflection, I realized that my implicit biases were shaping my reading of Austen. My implicit bias against a novel and author that I perceived as overly feminine was coloring how I was interacting with and what messages I was taking from Persuasion (Austen).