Unconscious Bias
Imagine that you are hiring an employee for a position in your workplace. But while reviewing resumes, you find yourself drawn to a candidate who is similar in age and background to your current staff. You remind yourself that it’s important to build a cohesive team, and offer her the job.
Or suppose that you’re planning to vote against a new investment. You have seen this kind of investment before, and you voted no before. A colleague says that conditions have changed and the project would now be profitable, and you should not afford to lose this opportunity. Upon closer examination, you see that his data is convincing and your colleague might be right, but you vote no again.
Have you ever had these kinds of situations where you made a decision and later regret your decision? More than that you missed an very important detail which could have helped you make a better decision — There might be unconscious bias behind it.
Today I am going to write about the unconscious bias which I recently learned at my workplace. When people are less biased, they perform better and take well informed and effective decisions.
Sometime I hear people say, knowing bias is enough to stop being bias but that’s not true. Knowing your bias will not help you stop being bias because it operates automatically without you realizing that’s why it is called unconscious bias. whether you accept or not but our brains are biased. There are science based strategy which can help us to identity and mitigate the bias.
Here is the example which shows why simply knowing isn’t enough.
Source: http://persci.mit.edu/gallery/checkershadow
Proof: http://persci.mit.edu/gallery/checkershadow/proof
Explanation: http://persci.mit.edu/gallery/checkershadow/description
Take a look at square A and B in the first image. Square A is clearly darker. Right. Now look at the second image, look at the two lines which are same shade of gray. Lay them over top of the square board and you can see the two squares are in fact of the same shade of gray.
Since they are the same shade of gray, you should be able to see them as the same, but you can not. In this case your brain is automatically compensating for the shadow created by the tower and making square B look lighter. Now you can realize even though you know the situation, you can not stop it. One fo the perfect example of unconscious bias.
There are many different type of biases. Scientists have broadly categorized them into into 5 categories and it is called the SEEDS model.
1. Similarity: People Similar us are are better than others
Perceiving people similar to you are better than others. Whether you realize it or not, your brain immediately categorizes everyone you encounter in two groups in-group and out-group and your brain works positively when someone seems familiar and similar to yourself. Things like skin color, ethnicity, social status, religion, profession. You trust someone more because he or she is from same country or work in the same organization. On the other hand you perceive someone negatively or trust less because they are different from you.
2. Expedience: Confirming your beliefs and ignoring evidence
Our brain is lazy. It tries to take shortcuts wherever possible. As per Expedience bias, your brain tries to take the shortcuts when making decisions quickly and skipping the details because it takes a lot of brainpower to process the information and take a decision.
For example, if a someone is good at one thing, we assumes they’re also good at other things. if someone’s is attractive you also tend to thing they are also trustworthy. Letting someone positive qualities in one area influence overall perception of that individual . He may not know much about people, but he’s a great engineer and a hard-working guy; let’s put him in charge of the team.
3. Experience: We think our subjective perceptions are objectively true
It’s easy to believe that we see the world exactly as it really is, but that doesn’t make it true. In reality, our perceptions are subjective: our impressions are impacted by our experiences and personal preferences.
Experience bias means that we usually mistake our subjective judgments as objective fact. For example if you don’t like a particular food, you tend to think other will also not like it.
4. Distance: Things closer to us are better than far away
There is hidden process that runs in the background of our brain: it’s called the “proximity network” and it categorizes everything as either close or far from you in time and space. It gives greater value to things that are closer.
We think people and things that are closer are better. Suppose you are interviewing two candidates, one is local who came in the office for the interview and the other candidate is located remotely. There are chances you may end up hiring the candidate who did in-office interview even though other candidate might have been a better hire.
Similarly you may overvalue the things those are going to happen sooner vs. things those are going to happen later. Even though there are more risk but greater rewards in things those will take place later.
5. Safety: We think bad outcomes are much more powerful than good outcomes
Our brains gives more value to bad things that might happen and undervalue good things that might happen because our brain is more afraid of possible losses than excited by the possible gains.
We avoid risk way more than we reasonably should. An example of the safety bias is the sunk cost fallacy: if you’ve invested a lot of money in a project that’s not working out, you’ll avoid cutting your losses and may even throw more into it instead.
Overview of Mitigation Strategy
How to mitigate the similarity bias: Try to find the common things among other people and focus on the goal or agenda of the meeting. Create a sense of us. Rather than focusing on the people properties, think about what value do they bring to the table. When you focus on the objectives and not the subjects, you will realize similarity bias has gone.
How to mitigate the expedience bias: The best way to mitigate the expedience bias is to go slow and think carefully before making a decision. To ensure you’re considering all the information, make a list of all the pros and cons for the situation before and then take the decision. For example when buying a house, don’t just buy the first house that you visit. Tour all the houses and make a list of what all things you like and the things you did not like in every house. Then evaluate which one offers the best value based on the list.
How to mitigate the experience bias: Since experience bias is based on your personal experience, perception and preferences, the best way to mitigate the experience bias is by having diverse opinions. When taking a decision, don’t rush, take a second opinion. Like in my case when I make a design decision, I always make sure to run it by my team so that I can find the gaps which I can not see.
How to mitigate the distance bias: To mitigate the distance bias, level the playing field by putting everyone at the same distance. If you are conducting interviews and some of the candidates are local while others are located remotely, then do all the interview over phone/video instead. Or invite all of them in the office.
How to mitigate the safety bias: Safety bias can be mitigated when you reduce the fear factor. Imagine what we would advise someone else to do in the same situation. Imagine that you’re making the decision on behalf of someone else. Another trick is to project the situation into the past, if you pretend you already made this decision six months ago, would you be happy that you took a chance.
I hope by applying these techniques you can identity the biases and also reduce being biased. Remember by being less bias you can be take effective and informed decisions.
