Can Unconscious Bias Training improves Diversity? We are talking a lot more about unconscious biases or hidden biases today, one of the reasons being the focus on diversity & building inclusive cultures within organisations. For a long time we believed that discriminatory behaviour is conscious, and people who are educated and know more, would make the “right” choices compared to people who are not. So the belief was that more evolved people may not cause biases. The general belief is that biased choices are made due to underlying negative feelings towards people or groups. These conversations did make people start to become more mindful of the choices they were making. Today most leadership development training would address prejudice & bias as detrimental to engagement. However the story on bias does not end there… we have something deeper! Let us look at situation where more often than not, people make choices that discriminate against one group and in favour of another. They are doing it without realizing it, and, perhaps even more strikingly, they feel that they have taken a conscious and unbiased approach in their decision-making? Do you know that these kind of biased decisions are being made by us umpteen times in a day… these biases are called unconscious biases. Unconscious biases are created and reinforced by our environments and experiences. Our mind is constantly processing information, oftentimes without our conscious awareness. When we are moving fast or lack all the data, our unconscious biases fill in the gaps, influencing everything from product decisions to our interactions with co-workers. Some very typical play out of unconscious biases at the workplace: Both male and female participants were more likely to hire the male applicant than the female applicant and were more likely to report that the male applicant had adequate experience in research, teaching, and service. Participants were four times more likely to write comments of concern in the margins of their questionnaires for female tenure candidates than for male tenure candidates. Female managers are likely to be rated as less likeable, more interpersonally hostile, less competent, and less desirable as bosses than were male managers Letters of recommendations are likely to be shorter for women and would have comments like, in spite of being a lady/ intelligent young lady The challenge is to train ourselves to become more aware of how our unconscious biases are impacting our decision making. This will happen only when we are willing to have
honest conversations with each other. Only when we move towards these kind of work spaces, can the seeding for inclusive culture take place