The basis of unconscious bias

- In his book, "Beauty Pays," Daniel Hamermesh, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, studied the relationship between personal attributes and economics. Hamermesh confirmed that skinny people make more money than overweight people, tall men are promoted more often than short men, white women are paid more than black women and much more than Latina women, bald men make less money than men with a full head of hair, yet men in general are paid more than women. Differently abled and LGBTQ+ professionals make less than men across the board as well. Why does this type of bias happen? I don't think anyone sets out to do this on purpose, yet it happens consistently enough and on a large enough scale for it to be studied. If someone has an attribute we find favorable, subconsciously we think that person is good, and of course we want to associate with good people. It's this unconscious need to categorize people that leads to the kinds of decisions that favor some and leave others out. According to studies in cognitive science, our brains receive 11 million pieces of information every second, and we can only process 40 of those details consciously. This makes us more than 99% unconscious. The unconscious brain is working to minimize how much energy it uses by automating certain predictions and perspectives. This automation allows us to have more energy and awareness in case we need to respond to threats. Our minds are working with what it is exposed to and stores evidence for, which means it has no inherent idea of right, wrong, good, bad, truth, or lie unless we ascribe it or learn it from others. Sadly, this lack of awareness or attention to our perspectives means we don't realize just how biased we are. Ask anyone if they're biased and very few will admit it. And those who do are unaware of just how deep the bias actually runs. So pinpointing bias is hard, but not impossible. According to the Cognitive Bias Codex created by John Manoogian III and Buster Benson, there are an estimated 180 cognitive biases, and the list is frequently updated. This codex is a useful tool for visually representing all of the known biases that exist to date. You may have heard of the term cognitive bias as a synonym for unconscious bias, but cognitive bias is not a synonym for heuristics. Heuristics are nuanced, and the Cognitive Bias Codex organizes biases in a meaningful way while listing heuristics and biases under the same label. Daniel Kahneman in his book "Thinking Fast and Slow" explains the difference, and I simplify it like this. Heuristics are the shortcuts that humans use to reduce task complexity in judgment and choice, and biases are the assumptions we make based upon those shortcuts. Our assumptions affect our behavior, and our behavior affects everyone around us. By understanding that we're all biased, we can make the decision to work together to be more conscious of our thoughts and actions when relating to others. And while we can't always stop ourselves in the moment, we can think about our actions to see why we chose a particular person for a task or put a specific individual on a team. We can ask what made us act and think in that way towards this person or group. And then if need be, we can remedy that situation. We can put our egos aside and admit we may have made a decision based upon a bias. We can interrupt our biases and acknowledge them. And not only can we address the current situation, we can resolve not to do it again. Over time, it is possible to learn to think and behave differently. By using an objective test to measure our bias and by reflecting on our actions, we can change the way in which we are biased.