Unconscious Bias news and resources

Bias is essentially how our brains streamline our thinking so that we can make sense of the world around us. We can’t process all the information we receive, so our brains categorise things into neat packages to help us make sense of things quickly.  

While these mental shortcuts help enable our brains to conserve energy and process things quickly, they also lie at the root of much of our bad decision-making and unfair treatment of other people. 

Learn more in our blog explaining what unconscious bias is. 

There are several types of unconscious bias, including; affinity bias, confirmation bias, the halo effect, the horn effect, and bias around age, gender, race and sexual orientation.

Psychologists have identified over 150 different types of bias, and they play an important role in determining our behaviour, the decisions we make about other people, and how we assess situations. 

Implicit bias and unconscious bias are often used interchangeably and they refer to the same concept.

Various factors influence unconscious bias and its origins are rooted in the way the brain processes information and makes quick judgments. For example, societal norms, values, and stereotypes prevalent in a culture or community can shape unconscious biases. Other influences include positive or negative personal experiences, the media we consume, and how we are educated. 

Unconscious bias can lead to unfair and discriminatory outcomes in many aspects of our lives, including education, healthcare, and criminal justice, and its impact in the workplace can be profound. 

Unconscious bias can have a negative impact at every stage of the employee lifecycle, from the recruitment process and selection through to promotion and career advancement, training and development, and identification of leadership potential, and even who exits an organisation, for example through redundancy. Left unaddressed, it can mean that organisations struggle to attract and retain talent, make bad hiring decisions, get rid of the wrong people, fail to spot risks or take advantage of business opportunities or lack the agility to adapt to a changing world. 

Yes! Bias is a natural phenomenon and unconscious bias affects us all. Raising awareness of unconscious bias in ourselves is the first step towards eradicating it. 

Unconscious bias is not the same as racism, but they are related. Unconscious or implicit bias refers to the ingrained attitudes or stereotypes that we may hold about certain groups of people without conscious awareness. These biases can often be based on factors such as race, gender, or age.  

On the other hand, racism is a broader societal issue involving the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over another, leading to discriminatory practices and policies. Racism can be expressed through conscious, intentional actions, while unconscious bias operates at a subconscious level and may influence people’s behaviour unintentionally. 

We’re all biased. Recognising the unconscious biases that you’re most at risk of can be challenging, because they operate beneath the surface. 

One way to pinpoint your unconscious biases is to take an implicit association test (IAT) or something similar. The Implicit Association Test unveils the prevalence of our implicit or unconscious biases, highlighting areas where they might influence our judgement, decisions, and behaviour. 

The Kandola+ suite of inclusion assessments gives people clear, non-judgemental feedback on their ability to be inclusive and helps them pinpoint the actions they can take to be inclusive colleagues or leaders.