Dealing with Biases
The elevator door opened to reveal a colleague who was on his way down as well.“Hi Mark,” I said. My colleague fixed his eyes on me and, otherwise motionless, said, “I’m not Mark. I’m Will.” I had confused one colleague for another, a small social mistake. Except that both Mark and Will are racially Asian. Thus began what may have been the most uncomfortable elevator ride of my life. In that moment I had a choice. A large part of me wanted to act like nothing had happened. After all, what’s the big deal? I had only confused one person for another. But standing there, in that moment, I wasn’t ok leaving it as it was. “Yes,” I said, a bit ironically. “You ARE Will.” And then more seriously: “And you’re Asian. And Mark is Asian. That just happened. I just did that. I’m sorry.” “Thanks for saying that,” he replied. “People confuse me for him all the time and they never admit that it’s because we’re both Asian. They say it’s because we’re in the same department. We’re not. We’re Asian and we work here. That’s it.”
The next few times I saw Will I felt a bit awkward, but because we had had a frank conversation and I had apologized, that passed. Of course, it would have been better if I had never made that mistake, but having done so and accepting and admitting it to Will, I was one person he did not have to pretend with.
The Fast Brain/Slow Brain paradigm of the human mind, as popularized in Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” is a powerful tool to understand how we can act in ways we’re not aware of. It is one way that many of us understand the workings of unconscious bias and how, without realizing it, we can hold biased thoughts and feelings about others without being aware of it, even ones that contradict our earnest beliefs. This is a powerful brain process evolved to keep us moving and safe in the physical world, helping us take action quickly and smoothly enough to be get around, and activating the fight/flight response in physically dangerous moments. Unfortunately, we have the habit of using this process to make social decisions when more thought and consideration would often be a more successful approach. In this case, my fast brain made a quick association between my two Asian colleagues.
Understanding that the brain works this way is an important step in the process of changing the way we react to people who are different from us. And while understanding is a great start, most of us still need more tools to make a change. We need a blueprint for action.
The approach that is offered here is meant to address both mental systems. They are 1) DEAL, a tool designed to address the four most common obstacles to developing an inclusive mindset; and 2) The ABC’s, a tool from the technique of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
DEAL is a tool that can be used in “Slow-Brain” mode to plan and build the experience and skills that will help us be more inclusive. It stands for “Discomfort, Exposure, Acceptance, and Listening.”
Discomfort means that we change our relationship with the experience of being uncomfortable around questions of bias and people who are different from us. Of course we don’t like to be uncomfortable, but when we avoid people and situations that make us uncomfortable we could be acting on our biases. Some of us may be better at staying with uncomfortable feelings than others, but certainly all of us can improve our skill at this in some way, and in that improvement is the ability to experience greater and greater diversity,
Exposure means that we go out of our way to experience people, perspectives, and situations that are different from the ones we would naturally be drawn to. Research shows that relationships with people who are different from us create greater acceptance of those differences. Many of us share the experience of how that friend who was of a different race or ethnicity, a different sexual orientation, a different gender identity, etc. changed our experience of that group. We can go out of our way to be exposed to more differences in our lives. The more we are touched by people in their differences, the more our fast brains will integrate those differences into our memory bank and not activate our emotional fight/flight response. Experiencing cultural events that are owned and curated by members of those groups is one great way to form new experiences without imposing on members of those groups. Being aware of the assumptions we make about members of those groups who are already in our social circles is another.
Since this involves connecting with people who are different from us, it’s important to remember that they are not responsible for our learning. It’s important to approach them on their own terms and not our own. Also, some exposure is great, but that doesn’t make us either experts on that group or “honorary members” of that group. It’s very important to remember our own identities when we’re connecting with people who are different.
Acceptance means that we are both aware of our biases and that we respect that they are the unavoidable product of our brains. It means that we learn to understand how our own experience impacts the way we understand the world around us. No one is exempt from the bias process, and no one has all their biases under control. It is when we remove the judgement of ourselves for having biases that we can actually gather enough information about ourselves to avoid acting on our biases. It’s ironic, but staying unaware of our biases makes us more likely to act in a biased way without realizing it; in a very real way, the need to see ourselves as moral people can lead us to act in ways that harm others.
Listening means that we are open to feedback about our biases, and we credit the experience of people who are different from us, even if their experience does not match our existing beliefs or experience. And we can seek out both feedback and others’ experience. When receiving feedback from someone that they are experiencing us as being biased, it’s natural to feel defensive (i.e., “Discomfort”). Rather than convince ourselves that we are not defensive, we can remind ourselves that bias is human nature (i.e., “Acceptance”). When we allow ourselves to feel defensive and then walk through those feelings, we are more likely to see the underlying assumption behind our behavior and be able to do something about it. When we listen to others’ experiences (hopefully without intruding) we can choose to trust that they know their experience better than we do rather than reject it when it doesn’t reflect our own.
The ABC’s of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a research-validated method of managing irrational beliefs, and what are biases other than irrational beliefs? The ABC’s can be used when we realize we’re working in “Fast-Brain” to interrupt biased thoughts and hopefully stop us from acting on biased behaviors. The ABC’s can also be used to improve our ability to work through discomfort as we learn and grow. They can help us separate from our discomfort long enough to let in new information. Of course, there’s also the benefit of being a bit more comfortable in the process. Sometimes this kind of growth can feel like torture, In fact, some folks pride themselves on the level of pain they put themselves through because of their biases. This work done well is painful and rewarding. Seeking out extra suffering does no one any good and may serve to make it too emotionally difficult to continue.
The ABC’s are:
A: Activating Event (something happens to or around us)
B: Belief (the event causes us to have a belief, either rational or irrational)
C: Consequence (the belief leads to a consequence, with rational beliefs leading to healthy consequences and irrational beliefs leading to unhealthy consequences)
D: Disputation (if one has held an irrational belief which has caused unhealthy consequences, they must dispute that belief and turn it into a rational belief)
E: New Effect (the disputation has turned the irrational belief into a rational belief, and we now have healthier consequences of our belief as a result)
We can use The ABC’s to intervene on our biases, especially if we’re aware that a situation may leave us vulnerable to acting on them. It usually begins at the “consequences” stage. If we see that we are feeling or acting in a certain way, we can answer the questions that the ABC’s generate and those answers may help lead us out of a bias behavior.
Here’s an example of using DEAL and The ABC’s to intervene on a bias:
I was searching the web for a video on a certain topic to use as a teaching aid for a program I was designing. I found one that included all the learning points I wanted to make. The only problem was that the video’s presenter seemed like a snooty, annoying person and I was concerned my audience would reject the ideas if they were presented by such an arrogant person. As I was getting ready to start searching for a different video to use, I stopped myself. I noticed that the person I found so annoying was a woman. This is the moment when the impact of my use of DEAL became valuable. Right away, discomfort arose in me that I knew to sit with rather than avoid. I was afraid that I was being biased and I didn’t want that to be true. I’ve listened to enough women reporting that they are often judged negatively for enacting the same kinds of behaviors that are seen as positive when men do them. In fact, I’ve been lucky enough to have been exposed to much discussion of this phenomenon, and this has helped my ability to accept that I too may tend to do this as well.
And so I turned to The ABC’s. I was able to see my specific reaction to the woman in this video as a consequence of some beliefs about the different ways men and women are supposed to behave. Because of those beliefs, this person speaking knowledgeably and confidently became and activating event for me. I decided to dispute this belief. In this instance, I asked woman friend to view a few minutes of the video and asked her what kind of impression the presenter made on her. Her response was, “She sounds smart.” The effect of this was that I decided to use the video.So who was right about the presenter?
My friend or me? Both men and women can be arrogant. Am I asking myself to be so openminded that my brain falls out? Will I suddenly have no standards at all? This is a natural question to ask. My response is this: most of us think that we assess information based on its merits. If this is the case, does is matter if the messenger is arrogant, completely lacks confidence, or is the perfect blend of warmth and competence that automatically has me on her side? The information is the information. Anything else is all about me.
