Everyday Bias - Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgements - Summary and

What I Learned:

Summary:
I decided to complete this lecture and training on identifying everyday bias in our lives
and what we do about it because this is a topic that I find incredibly important, fascinating, and
something I always strive to improve upon. This lecture correlates with both sub-competency #2
and sub-competency #5 in the cultural competency domain. It is also important to improve your
understanding of bias, how it affects your everyday life, and how to improve. This was an
hour-long lecture given by Howard Ross, a business consultant, who has worked in the areas of
leadership, diversity, inclusion, and organizational management for the past 25 years at the time
of the recording in 2014. In this presentation, Ross went over what bias is, why we as humans
have bias, and what we do with that information and how it affects the small, everyday
interactions in our lives.

What I Learned:
I learned so much from the video and it put a lot of things that I have heard about bias in
the past into a new perspective with studies and scenarios that were actually applicable to
everyday life. I won’t talk about everything I learned and thought was interesting, as that would
take many pages to write about, but I want to touch on a few of the highlights from this lecture
that impacted me and I think are also important for others to hear. Everything that I learned from
this lecture is important for me in learning about bias, diversity, how to handle my own bias
appropriately, and then take this into my field of work when I interact with others.
The first thing that really stuck out to me about this lecture was the idea that, “the
question is not, do we have bias, but what is our bias?” This is so important because in order to
navigate the bias in our everyday lives, we have to first acknowledge and identify what our
personal, community, and societal biases are. Ross talks throughout the lecture about how bias is
a natural function of the human brain and acts as a danger detector. In other words, bias serves a
protective role that helps keep us safe. For instance, we act warmly towards someone who smiles
at us, but if someone came up to you and held up their fist, we would assume they are aggressive
and could cause us harm. In addition to this, we live in a society that has conditioned us to
believe that there is a good person, bad person approach to bias. That if you have bias and you
admit it, that you are a bad person. However, since we know that bias is an innate human
function, it is not beneficial to think about bias in a good/bad paradigm. Instead, we need to view
bias from a non-judgemental standpoint and then evaluate the bias and move forward.
My next big takeaway from this lecture was understanding that our background,
experiences, and culture act as a filter/lens through which we see the world, which shapes both
what we see and what we don’t see.This was so important and impactful for me because not only
is the idea that we all see the world based on our experiences hold weight and implications on its
own, but the visual representation with lenses is super usual for teaching this to others. Ross
talked about how we can view this as seeing the world through different colored lenses. I may
see the world through the blue lens and you may see the world through a green lens. This is not
necessarily a bad thing, but something to be aware of when we are confused about why someone
doesn’t view a situation in the same way you do. In essence, our background is the context for
everything in our lives.
The last thing that I learned from this lecture I want to talk about is the idea that we tend
to think that humans are rational and we pride ourselves on our rationality. Despite this, humans
are naturally emotional creatures. This means that often we make emotional assumptions first,
and then we find information to support our feelings. For instance, if you meet someone and you
have a feeling of liking them, you will look for things in that person you like (ex. Their cheery
personality). However, if you dislike someone upon meeting them, you will look for anything to
substantiate that (ex. They looked at me weird). This is something we all need to be aware of and
need to recognize that our emotions are very hard to override.
Beyond these things I learned from the lecture, Ross also gave a list of things that we can
do to mold our subconscious to become more aware of our bias and work on limiting the effect
of our biases in our everyday lives and interactions. I would like to share these, which include
the following:
1. Recognize and accept that you have biases
a. Take away the guilt and start taking responsibility
2. Develop the capacity to “use a flashlight on yourself”
a. watch yourself in action, your thoughts, feelings, and reactions
3. Practice “constructive uncertainty”
a. Take a moment/pause in your interactions to think about what you are doing
4. Explore awkwardness and discomfort
a. Take time to assess and dive deep into what makes you uncomfortable and why
5. Engage w/ people you consider “others” and expose yourself to exemplare form that
group
a. Take initiative to spend time with people not like yourself and gain perspective
6. Get feedback
a. Take what others say seriously and allow it to shape your future interactions