Week One Post 1 Notes: What is Unconscious Bias?

 

Unconscious bias:

When blind testing musicians instead of seeing them upfront, women are more likely to advance from the preliminary rounds by 50%

unconscious bias is the misinterpretations you make of a person based on appearances, mannerisms, or first impressions. It is a surface level judgement of a person based off of past information, fair or unfair, that you have retained or internalized.

 

Humans assess what is safe or not safe, not safe usually falls into what is different, and to increase the speed of thinking our brains often use a previous association        

Previous associations are incredibly powerful and often override after impressions for a long time

Words often mean different things to different people, causing different associations

Anything can influence your brain!

Media influences your brain the most as you come into contact with it all the time!

The amygdala is a structure in the medial temporal lobes, your brain! It gets direct input from its sensory organs, and responds to immediate threats before you have time to really think about it. It is the defensive action and responds to “other”

Camera method, pretend you are taking a picture of the scene in order to disconnect yourself and analyze

Data shows diversity creates the most innovation, however unconscious bias can cause employers to select people like them, causing their workplace to become homogeneous and less efficient.

IAT is a site that checks Implicit vs. Explicit bias; Explicit being stated and Implicit being internal bias. People often have a much smaller explicit bias but much more

Some examples of bias are

Stereotyping,

Bias blind spots

Affinity bias, aka wanting to work with people just like you

Confirmation bias: when you make a hypothesis and ignore information that contradicts it

Group think: when people change their opinions to go along with the group

 

Clinicians may have fewer tests for racial and ethnic minorities if they don’t understand the patients symptom descriptions.

2/5 medical students have an unconscious bias against obese patients

If a doctor is uncomfortable with a persons sexual orientation, they are more likely to miss important tests or screenings which could save a persons life.