Breaking Bias ~

 Hello dear readers and welcome or welcome back to my blog. In honor of International Women's Day I want to discuss ways we can all help support our local communities and women by educating ourselves around how to create a gender equal world. Free from bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated!. And everyone is unique and different, everyone deserves equality. Together I do believe we can #BreakTheBias

                         Definition 

                                                           bi-as

                                                           /bies/

noun

1. prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. 

verb

1. cause to feel or show inclination or prejudice for or against someone or something.

                               Bias and Stereotyping 

Bias is often characterized as stereotypes about people based on the group to which they belong and/or based on an immutable physical characteristic they possess, such as their gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. This type of bias can have harmful real-world outcomes. People may or may not be aware that they hold these biases. 

The phenomenon of implicit bias refers to societal input that escapes conscious detection. Paying attention to helpful biases- while keeping negative, prejudicial, or accidental biases in check- requires a delicate balance between self-protection and empathy for others. 

What is Bias? 

Bias is a natural inclination for or against an idea, object, group, or individual. It is often learned and is highly dependent on variables like a person's socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, educational background, etc. At the individual level, bias can negatively impact someone's personal and professional relationships; at a societal level, it can lead to unfair persecution of a group, such as the Holocaust and Slavery. 

What causes people to be Biased?

Starting at a young age, people will discriminate between those who are like them, their "ingroup", and those who are not like them, their "outgroup". On the plus side, they can gain a sense of identity and safety. However, taken to the extreme, this categorization can foster an "us-versus-them" mentality and lead to harmful prejudice.

What is an Unconscious or Implicit Bias? 

People are naturally biased - they like certain things and dislike others, often without being fully conscious of their prejudice. Bias is acquired at a young age, often as a result of one's upbringing This unconscious bias becomes problematic when it causes an individual or a group to treat others poorly as a result of their gender, ethnicity, race, or other factors like disabilities. 

Can a person be Unbiased? 

Generally, no. 

Everyone has some degree of bias. It's human nature to assign judgment based on first impressions. Also, most people have a lifetime of conditioning by schools, religious institutions, their families of origin, and of course the media!. However, by reflecting critically on judgments and being aware of blind spots, individuals can avoid stereotyping and acting on harmful prejudice. 

How can you reduce Bias? 

Telling people to "suppress prejudice" or racism often has the opposite effect when people are trained to notice prejudiced or racist thoughts without trying to push them away, they are able to make a deliberate choice as a result. This can lead to less discrimination and reduced bias over time. 

Biases and Cognitive Errors 

A category of biases, known as cognitive biases, are repeated patterns of thinking that can lead to inaccurate or unreasonable conclusions. Cognitive biases may help people make quicker decisions, but those decisions aren't always accurate. Some common reasons why include flawed memory, scarce attention, natural limits on the brain's ability to process information and stress, emotional input, social pressures, and even aging. When assessing research-- or even one's own thoughts and behaviors - it's important to be aware of cognitive biases and attempt to counter their effects whenever possible. 

What is actor-observer Bias?

When you are the actor, you are more likely to see your actions as the result of eternal and situational factors. whereas, when you are observing other people, you are more likely to perceive their actions as based on internal factors (like overall disposition). This can lead to magical thinking and a lack of self-awareness.

What is Anchoring Bias?

People tend to jump at the first available piece of information and unconsciously use it  to "anchor" their decision-making process, even when the information is incorrect or prejudiced. This can lead to skewed judgement and poor decision-making, especially when they don't have the time to research through their options. 

What is Attribution Bias?

Attribution bias occurs when someone tries to attribute reasons or motivations to the actions of others without concrete evidence to support such assumptions. 

What is Confirmation Bias?

Confirmation bias refers to the brain's tendency to search for and focus on information that supports what someone already believes, while ignoring facts that go against those beliefs, despite their relevance. 

What is the curse of knowledge and hindsight Bias? 

People with hindsight bias believe they should have certain outcomes, which might only be obvious now with the benefit of more knowledge and perspective. They may forget that at the time of the event, much of the information needed simply wasn't available. They may also make unfair assumptions that other people share their experiences and expect them to come to the same conclusions. 

What is the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

In the Dunning-Kruger Effect, people lack the self-awareness to accurately assess their skills. They often wind up overestimating their knowledge or ability. For example, it's not uncommon to think you're smarter, kinder, or even better at managing others than the average person, but here's a secret; no one's special.

What is the Fundamental Attribution Error 

People are more likely to attribute someone else's actions to their personality rather than taking into account the situation they are facing, However, they rarely make this Fundamental Attribution Error when analyzing their own behavior. 

What is the Halo Effect? 

The Halo Effect occurs when your positive impression of someone colors your overall perception of them (for example Anna Delvy) A negative impression on the first hand, can lead you to assume the worst about a person, resulting in a "Reverse Halo" or "Horns Effect". 

What is the negativity Bias? 

People like to win, but they hate losing more. So they tend to pay more attention to negative outcomes and weigh them more heavily than positive ones when considering a decision. This negativity bias explains why we focus more on upsetting events, and why the news seems so dire most of the time. 

What are Optimism Bias and Pessimism Bias? 

People tend to overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes when they are in a good mood. Conversely, when they are feeling down, they are more likely to expect negative outcomes. In both instances, powerful emotions are driving irrational thinking. 

What is the Sunk Cost Fallacy? 

Have you ever heard, "Don't throw good money after bad?" That expression is based on the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Basically, when someone is aware of the time, effort and emotional cost that's already gone into an endeavor, they can find it difficult to change their mind or quit a longtime goal- even when it's the healthiest choice for them. 

How are our Biases Reinforced? 

Once learned, stereotypes and prejudices resist change, even when evidence fails to support them or point to the contrary. 

People will embrace anecdotes that reinforce their biases, but disregard experience that contradicts them. the statement "some of my best friends are ___" captures this tendency to allow some exceptions without changing our biases. 

  Bias is perpetuated by conformity with in-group attitudes and socialization by culture at large. The fact that white culture is dominant in America may explain why people of color often do not show a strong bias favoring of their own ethnic group. 

  How do we perpetuate Bias?

Mass media routinely advantage of stereotypes as shorthand to paint a mood, scene or character. The elderly, for example, are routinely portrayed as being frail and forgetful, while younger people are often shown as vibrant and able. 

Stereotypes can also be conveyed by omission in popular culture, as when TV shows present an all-white world. Psychologists theorize bias conveyed by the media helps to explain why children can adopt hidden prejudices even when their family environments explicitly oppose them. 

About hidden Bias

Scientific research has demonstrated that biases thought to be absent or extinguished remain as "mental residue" in most of us. Studies show people can be consciously committed to egalitarianism, and deliberately work to behave without prejudice, yet still possess hidden negative prejudices or stereotypes.

"Implicit Association Tests" (IATs) can tap those hidden, or automatic stereotypes and prejudices that circumvent conscious control. Project Implicit -- is a collaborative research effort between researchers at Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and University of Washington-- offers dozens of such tests. 

Believing the IAT procedure may be useful even beyond the research purposes for which it was originally developed. It may be a tool that can jumpstart our thinking about hidden biases; Where do they come from? How do they influence our actions? What can we do abut them? 

Biases and Behavior 

A growing number of studies shows a link between hidden biases and actual behavior. In other words, hidden biases can reveal themselves in action, especially when a person's efforts to control behavior consciously flags under stress, distraction, relaxation, or competition. 

Unconscious beliefs and attitudes have been found to be associated with language and certain behaviors such as eye contact, blinking rates and smiles. 

Studies have found, for example, that school teachers clearly telegraph prejudices, so much so that some researchers believe children of color and white children in the same classroom effectively receive different educations.

Now classic experiment showed that white interviewers sat further away from Black applicants than from white applicants, made more speech errors, and ended the interviews 25% sooner, Such discrimination has been shown to diminish the performance of anyone treated that way, whether Black, or white.

Experiments are being conducted to determine whether a strong hidden bias in someone results in more discriminatory behavior. But we can learn something from even the first studies:

* Those who showed greater levels of implicit prejudice toward, or stereotypes of, Black, white, or gay people were more unfriendly toward them. 

*Subjects who had a stronger hidden race bias had more activity in a part of the brain known to be responsible for emotional learning when shown Black faces than when shown white faces.

           What YOU can do to help #BREAKTHEBIAS Break The Bias

Integration, by itself has not been shown to produce dramatic changes in attitudes and behaviors. But many studies show when people work together in a structured environment to solve shared problems through community service, their attitudes about diversity can change dramatically over time. 

By including family members of other groups in a task, children begin to think of themselves as part of a larger community in which (THEY ARE) everyone has skills and can contribute. Such experiences have been shown to improve attitudes across racial lines and between people old and young. 

There also is preliminary evidence that unconscious attitudes, contrary to initial  expectations, may be malleable. For example, imagining strong women leaders or seeing positive role models of African Americans has been shown to, at least temporarily, change unconscious biases. 

'Feeling' unconscious Bias

But there is another aspect of the very experience of taking a test of hidden bias that may be helpful. Many test takers can "feel" their hidden prejudices as they perform the test. 

They can feel themselves unable to respond as rapidly to (for example) old + good concepts than young + good concepts. The very act of taking the tests can force hidden biases into the conscious part of the mind. 

I'd like to believe that when a person has a conscious commitment to change, the very act of discovering one's hidden biases can propel one to act to correct for it. It may not be possible be avoid the automatic stereotype or prejudice, but it is certainly possible to consciously rectify it. 

Committing to Change 

If people are aware of their hidden biases, they can monitor and attempt to ameliorate hidden attitudes before they are expressed through behavior. This compensation can include attention to language, body language, and to the stigmatization felt by target groups. 

Common sense and research evidence also suggest that a change in behavior can modify beliefs and attitudes. It would see, logical that a conscious decision to be egalitarian and knowledge of other groups. Such efforts may, over time, reduce the strength of unconscious biases. 

It can be easy to reject the results of the tests as "not me" when you first encounter them. But that's the easy path. To ask where these biases come from, what they mean and what we can do about them is the harder task. 

Interested in the test? check out the link below 

Chttps://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatouchtest.html

Recognizing that the problem is in many others - as well as in ourselves - should motivate us all to try both to understand and to act. 

I am officially on Google now, just in time for Internal Women's Day! 

So, if you guys' ever want to just give me a review, or need to reach out by phone I will leave the link below. Thank you all for the continued support of blog. 

Until next time please, take care of yourselves and each other. 

Cheers, 

Averi.