Considering Bias – A healthy discusission

We encounter bias daily, whether we are actively aware of it or not. Be it from selecting a provider for our morning coffee to the companies we use. Decisions may be experientially led or come from a colleague, friend or relative. You can apply the same to an individual’s set of beliefs. Is there as much weight in them as we believe? Do they help us progress by giving us the best possible outcome or even help us achieve anything with long-term value? The sad truth here is that, yes, they can help you as an individual, but is that individual benefit the same as societal benefit?

There are a million and one analogies that could be used, imagine going to watch your favourite football team, knowing they have had a bad run. Do you expect the match to be a wash out, just because it has been all season? Perhaps the woman walking home in the dark with a set of keys between her knuckles. That feeling of uncertainty passing half lit figures, wondering what they may or may not be capable of. The prejudgement of the situation, knowing that things have happened in the past and what are the chances of it happening again tonight? Best be prepared to respond to the odds.

Keeping it on a national scale, take a low-class housing estate renowned for high crime rates (a bias in itself), how many people would assume that a Doctor might have been brought up in such an estate and gone on to do well? That is skipping forward significantly through someone’s life, but the expectations of the individual based on their background, schooling, and potential immediate influences create a series of nuances and negative implications which work against the odds and reinforcing inequalities from an early age (Durante and Fiske 2017). Does this make the candidate more or less likely to admit this, in an overcoming all odds type way or do they remain quiet not wanting to be judged on their past and be accepted for their own merits? It could in some way be brought down to individual traits and character, but their bias is still linked in some way to the way they are perceived by all the interact with from strangers, customers, colleges, even family.

There are certain scenarios which without doubt people would find acceptable, without question, the women walking home, it’s entirely reasonable to expect a lone figure to be nervous walking home in the dark, it could also be a man in that situation however when we start to talk official figures and services, even race, gender, ethnicity it doesn’t become so clear cut. It is vital for us all to be aware of our bias and to be prepared to (when appropriate) stop, think, and challenge our internal urges. We would never say the woman walking down the street with her keys pressed through her knuckles should stop and consider if the man walking towards her is actually friendly, however if tomorrow she was interviewing for a job then she should endeavour to ensure that the best candidate gets the job and not someone who looks like her or moves in the same social circle.

The dark truth about bias is that it is everywhere, and it is how we all as human beings gets through our days. The often touted view of the moment that “Bias is bad” is a fallacy, it is something that we must all be aware of to ensure we minimise the impact of our bias on our wider decisions, but no doubt you’ll all still go and get your coffee at your favourite vendor tomorrow or you’ll try to prove us wrong by selecting an alternative, proving that you had a favourite. Applied to business processes, you can see how we become stuck in what could be deemed quite cyclical patterns that are detrimental to not only a company, but society too.

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