Unconscious bias is a hypothesis to explain observed phenomena - that (among many others) white men who express no obvious sexism or racism are statistically less likely to hire people of colour or women. Unconscious bias provides a plausible mechanism for why this occurs. The alternate plausible explanation is that the bias is conscious and lied about. Do you, @PuddleglumsWager , have a different hypothesis?
It also ties in with general notions of the unconscious; in fact, it would amaze me if unconscious bias didn't exist, since many phenomena like this can be demonstrated. I've noticed that right wing wing people tend to dismiss it, they probably see it as woke, or maybe claim that racism and misogyny are exaggerated, or have been "weaponized".
All it is really about is finding ways for the best people for a job to get a job. That's a clear social benefit and a good reason for doing blind recruitment where practicable.
I can beat myself up about this stuff. I need to resist the impulse for my own wellbeing. But I also dislike getting this wrong. I want to remember that posters here are not necessarily from my own milieu.
Whether the concept is valid or logical or worth studying is beside the point if I find it useful in reflecting upon my own reactions. Everything is provisional to me in my inner life. Tomorrow I might decide its misleading in damaging ways.
I am convinced that knowing myself is not only worthwhile, but necessary. Its a project of a lifetime.
It’s interesting that this thread has thus far been all about the unconscious biases of white men. Are we the only demographic group that has them?
Not at all - everybody has them, but given that societal power is largely held by white men, then the biases held by white men tend to have more effect. It's really the same discussion of "can a black person be racist" which is really an argument about nomenclature.
(Yes, of course a black person can be prejudiced against people with particular racial backgrounds, whether that be against white people, or against black people with a different ethnic origin, or Arabs, or anyone else. But because of the way that power is structured in Western societies, racial prejudice by black people doesn't have the same cumulative, systematic effect. Plenty of people are able to agree on this, but then argue vehemently about what labels to use to describe which things.)
What percentage of our biases can be reliably detected? What about all the really sneaky ones? What percentage are effectively reformed by enduring a Bias Training Seminar one long, wet and weary Wednesday afternoon? We haven't got a clue, but my guess is close to Zero.
You don't eliminate the effects of bias by sitting through a training course. As you are well aware, the fact that your body was present in a room whilst a training course was happening has no effect on anything. The purpose of such training courses is both to inform well-meaning people that unconscious biases exist, and how they might manifest, and to give those people tools to help overcome them.
If somebody wants to be a racist, or a sexist, or whatever other kind of bigot they are, then unconscious bias training won't help them. Such a training course presupposes that your people don't want to be bigots.
It's not just about getting jobs. If you can show racism and misogyny in the media, education, health, etc., eventually people will be treated better.
Will they, though? And how long is "eventually"?
I don't doubt that unconscious bias is real. However, my understanding is that there are genuine doubts about many of the approaches that have been used to try to deal with it. For example I understand that there is now research suggesting that a lot of the sort of awareness training that companies go for is ineffective or even counterproductive.
So it's not only about showing these things, it's about identifying truly effective strategies for addressing them.
I was recently struck by a podcast interview where a black American businessman was extremely cogent in explaining why he was specifically looking to invest in black-owned start-ups. His explanations stretched back generations, because he demonstrated how the effects of previous overt discrimination were ongoing several generations later.
There do seem to be points where social change happens relatively rapidly. But then there are other issues where people are looking and saying "how long do we have to keep dealing with the same stuff over and over"? Which leads me to think that showing the problem isn't sufficient, given the examples of where people have been showing the problem for a very long time. We need smart people to understand which solutions actually work.
Stay near the campfire, be wary of the people in the next valley, they may hurt or kill you. I suspect we're all descended from people who instilled such attitudes for hundreds of generations, and those who did not listen have left few descendants themselves.
On a local FB page, a man was asking if someone could come to his property quickly as he had two roof tiles dislodged and rain was pouring in . A roofer replied and said that she had just had a cancellation and could visit straight away . His reply `”What - a woman?”
“Yes she replied , and consider my offer null and void” - good for her.
I think the reason why this suddenly grew in importance for me is that I attach a high value to my, or anyone else's, quality of decision making. And those who find that unimportant, are, in my not-so-humble opinion, just thick.
But I agree it is not going to be so easy to identify and cure the problem. My verdict on behavioural, as opposed to technical training courses, based on attending about twenty in my career in IT is low. And I don't find it hard to believe that Unconscious Bias training is generally poor.
So many training organisations remind me of Perfect Curve*, and just spout trendy bullshit. But knowing there's a problem is a start.
*Do try and watch either 2012 or W1A, two of the best comedies done by the BBC.
My verdict on behavioural, as opposed to technical training courses, based on attending about twenty in my career in IT is low. And I don't find it hard to believe that Unconscious Bias training is generally poor.
My employer purchases a number of behavioural training courses from outside training agencies (on the grounds that it's very expensive to develop that kind of thing in-house).
They all, without exception, contain a number of statements, graphics and the like that are rather startlingly innumerate, illogical, or in some other way really stupid. Sometimes it's hard to get past the stupidity in order to get at the underlying point. In many of the cases, it seems as though the producers of the training material have taken Darrell Huff's charming little booklet "How to Lie with Statistics", and used it as a guidebook. Which means that my colleagues and I get distracted by pointing out all the misleading features of their diagrams.
(A hint for anyone offering such training: if you have a diagram that tries to give the impression of illustrating some kind of truth whilst in fact being made up by some graphic artist drawing lines that look attractive to them, don't open the discussion by asking "what does this diagram say to you?" Because you'll get a series of very honest answers.)
I have some doubts, to be honest, about how much most training can do to reform the human heart. I mean, there's basic awareness, which is good and useful if they don't have it already. But you always hear in the news about a company promising "sensitivity training" or what have you after a spectacularly ugly act of racism that was clearly done by someone who knew exactly what they were doing and didn't give a shit. I doubt any training will help with that--unless it's the 10 minute kind that says "Behavior of type X will get you fired so fast you'll smell something burning."
My employer purchases a number of behavioural training courses from outside training agencies (on the grounds that it's very expensive to develop that kind of thing in-house).
They all, without exception, contain a number of statements, graphics and the like that are rather startlingly innumerate, illogical, or in some other way really stupid.
I think sadly what often happens is that these things go from executive edict through to the cheapest possible way to run a tick box exercise.
My employer purchases a number of behavioural training courses from outside training agencies (on the grounds that it's very expensive to develop that kind of thing in-house).
They all, without exception, contain a number of statements, graphics and the like that are rather startlingly innumerate, illogical, or in some other way really stupid.
I think sadly what often happens is that these things go from executive edict through to the cheapest possible way to run a tick box exercise.
I'm not sure if it's better or worse that sometimes organisations throw a lot of money at it and still end up with worthless crap.
PuddleglumsWager do you think you are so uncomfortable that you cannot face dealing with the subject seriously? So you feel you have to joke about it and make it impossible for anyone else to address seriously? And how do you think that is helpful to a serious conversation about a serious issue?
Everyone has unconscious biases. Some will be genetically hardwired. Some will be deeply imprinted. Good luck changing those.
Some biases will benefit one group of people but not another. Some will harm one group, but not another. Some won't make a tap of different to anyone today, but a lot of different next year. Good luck sorting that out (without causing some very nasty unintended consequences.)
What percentage of our decisions are determined by unconscious biases? Does it vary between persons? Between cultures? Is it stress related? How can anyone possibly know?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important are the decisions which are allegedly determined by bias? Is the effect of bias inversely proportional to the importance of a decision. If not, what is the relationship? We have no idea.
What percentage of our biases can be reliably detected? What about all the really sneaky ones? What percentage are effectively reformed by enduring a Bias Training Seminar one long, wet and weary Wednesday afternoon? We haven't got a clue, but my guess is close to Zero.
Do you want serious conversations about serious issues?
Political corruption and organised crime. That's a serious issue.
Totalitarian Chinese power. Another serious issue.
Big Tech. Mass surveillance. Social engineering. Identity politics. Covid. Hyperinflation. Cyberwar, bio-war, nuclear war. Mass extinctions. Climate change...
These are serious issues. Unconscious bias? Not so much.
So none of these serious issues is affected by, driven by unconscious bias? Like yours?
Well, we don't have to ask the question and guess, we can point to some of the studies that show that it exists and has real effects:
Are you quite sure those studies aren't... biased?
Perhaps this will make my position clear.
I met my wife-to-be when I was 19. Unconscious bias made me find her attractive. Bias is bad. By choosing her, I unfairly excluded everyone else.
In the name of equity, I should have struggled against my bias and married someone I found instinctively unattractive in every way.
Studies have shown that people show enormous bias in their choice of partners. That has to be bad. It's tremendously unfair. We need to do something about it.
Clearly, the state (or their boss) should force people to struggle against their sexual biases and make the world a better place. I suggest re-education camps. We could call them "Bias Awareness Seminars."
I don't see any arguments in your posts, and the only observations I see are highly personalised.
Let me summarise.
1) We are biased in a thousand different ways.
2) Biases that are hard-wired or deeply imprinted cannot be modified.
3) We don't know which biases are hard-wired or deeply imprinted.
4) We cannot say which biases are good and which are bad, or if on balance they cancel out.
5) The factors that determine a decision are complex beyond comprehension. Therefore, we cannot know if a decision was in fact determined by bias. We also cannot know if bias training improves the quality of a decision. And we cannot know if (and how) bias relates to the importance of a decision.
Unconscious bias is a gift of evolution. In itself, it's neutral. In the environments of early humans, it was life-saving. Nowadays, it's often - but not always - harmful.
One study I heard about in a conference (from a gentleman from the Haas Institute at UC Berkeley) showed participants a fuzzy image that was very gradually becoming clearer. The subjects were to indicate as soon as they could make out what it was. During that process, they was a very quick, single-frame image of either a Black or a white man's face, so quick that the conscious mind doesn't recognize it (although when they showed it to us, before telling us about it, I could tell it was a man's face - just not what race). The image that was slowly coming into focus was a gun. The study showed, across all demographics, that Americans were generally quicker to recognize the gun if they'd been shown a Black man's face than if they were shown a white man's face.
And the theory is that it has nothing to do with personal prejudices. This is about the unconscious, or better, pre-conscious, part(s) of our brain. We all know that our conscious mind only picks up on a tiny percentage of what our brain as a whole perceives. Our conscious mind filters out so much - for example, the echoes we'd normally hear because of the tiny difference in when sounds reach each of our ears, or the weight of the air on our skin - things that would bog us down if we noticed them all the time. At the same time, our preconscious brain - the more "primitive" (evolutionarily older) parts, like the amygdala, process information before it gets to our conscious mind - or even if it never does - and produces emotional responses like fear. That would help us in a situation, for example, where we encounter a venomous snake. We might catch a movement and run before we realize what we saw, and that fraction of an instant could save our lives.
Our culture feeds us "scripts," and these get internalized and effect how our brains respond to stimuli. Sadly, in our culture, thanks largely to movies and television (ever since The Birth of a Nation), Black men and other people of color have been associated so frequently with threats that we've all internalized it. This might be part of the reason police are so quick to assume anything a Black man is holding is a gun. Or so said the folks at the Haas Institute. Apparently, they contacted that TV show 24, which was about counter-terrorism, because after their first season (which debuted in September, 2001, and featured Eastern European terrorists), they always portrayed the terrorists as Arabic. I never watched the show past the first season - I was only interested in the real-time premise of the show, but didn't care for the violence and the script that a "hero" saves the day using violence at his own whim. I think that's dangerous.
One of the things I've noticed living in my multiracial-and-conflicted-about-it city is that pitches and volume of speech causes problems. There will be one group speaking at a particular pitch and loudness, which to them means playful banter--and then along comes another group and you can just see their shoulders hunch up, because that precise register means violence to them. And if the first group had been of their ethnicity, they would have been right.
Case in point--when my husband and I were newly married, we could hear what sounded like angry shouting through the very thin apartment walls. We knew and liked the people next door, who were fellow students from Cuba, and we were frightened because we thought they were having a dangerous marital fight. And this went on for days.
We finally got the courage to ask them about it, and they burst into laughter. They had been on the phone with family in Cuba. That voice register didn't mean to them what it meant to us.
My dad and his dad used to work themselves into a certain pitch when discussing electronics or computers, something that interested them both. Someone who didn't understand English would probably have wondered why they were fighting so angrily with each other. Judging from an admittedly small sample (people I've known and news clips I've seen), I suspect it was part of my grandfather's culture of origin.
I was also just listening to a recent episode of the podcast Hidden Brain, where they were talking with a linguist who's studied the way everything from tone to the pace of speech and all kinds of other factors can differ so widely from one micro-culture to another - e.g., the city you live in, your class, your ethnicity, your native language, etc. - that people often draw very wrong conclusions. I notice that my own ability to keep up with a conversation (or ability to not overwhelm a conversation) varies with my mood swings (I'm bipolar 2). When I'm depressed, even if others can't tell I am, I usually can't get a word in during a conversation, because I need even longer pauses than I normally do as a Midwesterner (US). And we draw conclusions about people based on that - assuming people are snobs, or disinterested, or angry, or stupid, or rude.
Unconscious bias is a gift of evolution. In itself, it's neutral. In the environments of early humans, it was life-saving. Nowadays, it's often - but not always - harmful.
One study I heard about in a conference (from a gentleman from the Haas Institute at UC Berkeley) showed participants a fuzzy image that was very gradually becoming clearer. The subjects were to indicate as soon as they could make out what it was. During that process, they was a very quick, single-frame image of either a Black or a white man's face, so quick that the conscious mind doesn't recognize it (although when they showed it to us, before telling us about it, I could tell it was a man's face - just not what race). The image that was slowly coming into focus was a gun. The study showed, across all demographics, that Americans were generally quicker to recognize the gun if they'd been shown a Black man's face than if they were shown a white man's face.
And the theory is that it has nothing to do with personal prejudices. This is about the unconscious, or better, pre-conscious, part(s) of our brain. We all know that our conscious mind only picks up on a tiny percentage of what our brain as a whole perceives. Our conscious mind filters out so much - for example, the echoes we'd normally hear because of the tiny difference in when sounds reach each of our ears, or the weight of the air on our skin - things that would bog us down if we noticed them all the time. At the same time, our preconscious brain - the more "primitive" (evolutionarily older) parts, like the amygdala, process information before it gets to our conscious mind - or even if it never does - and produces emotional responses like fear. That would help us in a situation, for example, where we encounter a venomous snake. We might catch a movement and run before we realize what we saw, and that fraction of an instant could save our lives.
Our culture feeds us "scripts," and these get internalized and effect how our brains respond to stimuli. Sadly, in our culture, thanks largely to movies and television (ever since The Birth of a Nation), Black men and other people of color have been associated so frequently with threats that we've all internalized it. This might be part of the reason police are so quick to assume anything a Black man is holding is a gun. Or so said the folks at the Haas Institute. Apparently, they contacted that TV show 24, which was about counter-terrorism, because after their first season (which debuted in September, 2001, and featured Eastern European terrorists), they always portrayed the terrorists as Arabic. I never watched the show past the first season - I was only interested in the real-time premise of the show, but didn't care for the violence and the script that a "hero" saves the day using violence at his own whim. I think that's dangerous.
ETA: Sorry...the point was that these scripts affect how our pre-conscious mind processes incoming data from our senses to recognize potential threats. Those scripts grease the skids, so to speak, just like lived experience would - because our brains didn't evolve in a situation where some stimuli might be real and some televised. If we see the same visual or other cue associated with a threat often enough in whatever media we're consuming, our brains just learn the association.
I suspect, although they didn't address it, that hearing stories from others, and hearing prejudices expressed by others, as well as making our way in a world that has physically structured itself to map onto our social castes and other hierarchies - these things probably also serve as "scripts" in similar ways.
Are you quite sure those studies aren't... biased?
That looked to me like a jumble of non-sequiturs, with a side of straw man, followed by an after of teenage know-it-all skepticism.
Babbling about how we can't know which biases are good or bad or whether everything is biased in this context is like the defence lawyer arguing whether we can know we're not brains in a vat at the murder trial.
I can recognise the source of thinking that the claim is simply that all bias is bad or all discrimination is bad.
However it’s a bit of a straw man. Admittedly a straw man that you do encounter from time to time (I’ve encountered it at least twice in relation to dating, where people don’t seem to understand that it’s arguing that we all need to be polyamorous bisexuals).
But in the main, when people are talking about discrimination or bias they really do mean the kinds that cause harm and which are at odds with the principles society generally articulated. We don’t think the race of a job applicant should be a factor in job prospects, so it pays to investigate the data that shows it DOES have an effect.
Yes. Everyone knows that big geographical barriers promote speciation. Fewer people know that small physical and behavioural barriers do so too. If a bird's plumage isn't quite right, it can't find a mate. If its song or dance aren't quite right, it can't find a mate.
My guess is all living things act on unconscious biases, and this has been one of the main drivers of evolution. In other words, it's a good and creative force.
White people are biased toward white people, and black toward black? Welcome to Biology 101. Assuming international travel breaks down, and given a few hundred thousand years, we'll end up with at least three distinct species of human. Diversity is good, right?
Unconscious bias is a good thing on a small scale too. Our choice of spouse is informed by bias. (Bob is attracted to Sally, but can't quite say why.) Bias helps inform our choice of friends, career, politics, religion, and leisure activities.
Unconscious bias means we know far more than we know we know.
And now we have all these do-good interferers who want to fiddle with this ancient and universal mechanism, to make the world a better place.
Meanwhile, here in the real world, the chances of everyone going “back to where they came from” are zero (who in England or Ireland is going to put my family up?) so we have to actually deal with the fact that Europeans went and developed means of mixing everybody up.
If you want to complain about mucking about with ancient evolutionary systems, that’s your starting point. It’s also why Queensland has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.
As to sexist unconscious bias, it ain’t ancient and evolutionary. It’s cultural. The whole notion that men go out and do certain work and women stay at home doing domestic stuff is a pretty recent invention. The way labour was shared used to be quite different.
Australian news has a fairly spectacular case of assumptions today, with a Greens politician assuming that the author of a policy she doesn’t agree with must be a white male.
In fact both the Greens politician and her rival are indigenous women.
Are you quite sure those studies aren't... biased?
That looked to me like a jumble of non-sequiturs, with a side of straw man, followed by an after of teenage know-it-all skepticism.
Babbling about how we can't know which biases are good or bad or whether everything is biased in this context is like the defence lawyer arguing whether we can know we're not brains in a vat at the murder trial.
Of course the studies were biased. Your post was biased also. And mine.
As for adolescent and and humorous errors, three of my five points were borrowed from an article written (if I rightly recall) by an Oxford professor of psychology.
You've demeaned my wits and made bold assertions, but do you actually have anything useful to say? You could begin by explaining the nature of consciousness and its role in human decision making. Once that's cleared up, we can begin to speculate on the effects of unconscious bias.
Convincing certain groups that they are victims, and that society owes them compensation (money, affirmative action etc), does enormous harm. Resentment is a powerful motivator.
Convincing other groups that they are oppressors (who must self-flagellate) does enormous harm as well. Self-loathing is a powerful de-motivator.
Unconscious bias bollocks achieves both these odious outcomes.
The peddlers of this nonsense believe they're doing the right thing. They interfere in order to make the world a better place.
On a local FB page, a man was asking if someone could come to his property quickly as he had two roof tiles dislodged and rain was pouring in . A roofer replied and said that she had just had a cancellation and could visit straight away . His reply `”What - a woman?”
“Yes she replied, and consider my offer null and void” - good for her.
That roofer was biased and unprofessional. Given three words, she concluded the man was sexist and therefore unworthy. It seems a belief in Total Depravity lives on.
But was he unworthy? What else might be said about this man? Perhaps he'd spent the last ten years nursing his sick wife. Perhaps the rain was leaking onto her bed. God only knows who this man really was.
Doctors do not refuse to treat unworthy patients. Teachers endure unworthy children.
Unconscious bias is a gift of evolution. In itself, it's neutral. In the environments of early humans, it was life-saving. Nowadays, it's often - but not always - harmful.
One study I heard about in a conference (from a gentleman from the Haas Institute at UC Berkeley) showed participants a fuzzy image that was very gradually becoming clearer. The subjects were to indicate as soon as they could make out what it was. During that process, they was a very quick, single-frame image of either a Black or a white man's face, so quick that the conscious mind doesn't recognize it (although when they showed it to us, before telling us about it, I could tell it was a man's face - just not what race). The image that was slowly coming into focus was a gun. The study showed, across all demographics, that Americans were generally quicker to recognize the gun if they'd been shown a Black man's face than if they were shown a white man's face.
And the theory is that it has nothing to do with personal prejudices. This is about the unconscious, or better, pre-conscious, part(s) of our brain. We all know that our conscious mind only picks up on a tiny percentage of what our brain as a whole perceives. Our conscious mind filters out so much - for example, the echoes we'd normally hear because of the tiny difference in when sounds reach each of our ears, or the weight of the air on our skin - things that would bog us down if we noticed them all the time. At the same time, our preconscious brain - the more "primitive" (evolutionarily older) parts, like the amygdala, process information before it gets to our conscious mind - or even if it never does - and produces emotional responses like fear. That would help us in a situation, for example, where we encounter a venomous snake. We might catch a movement and run before we realize what we saw, and that fraction of an instant could save our lives.
Our culture feeds us "scripts," and these get internalized and effect how our brains respond to stimuli. Sadly, in our culture, thanks largely to movies and television (ever since The Birth of a Nation), Black men and other people of color have been associated so frequently with threats that we've all internalized it. This might be part of the reason police are so quick to assume anything a Black man is holding is a gun. Or so said the folks at the Haas Institute. Apparently, they contacted that TV show 24, which was about counter-terrorism, because after their first season (which debuted in September, 2001, and featured Eastern European terrorists), they always portrayed the terrorists as Arabic. I never watched the show past the first season - I was only interested in the real-time premise of the show, but didn't care for the violence and the script that a "hero" saves the day using violence at his own whim. I think that's dangerous.
One of the things I've noticed living in my multiracial-and-conflicted-about-it city is that pitches and volume of speech causes problems. There will be one group speaking at a particular pitch and loudness, which to them means playful banter--and then along comes another group and you can just see their shoulders hunch up, because that precise register means violence to them. And if the first group had been of their ethnicity, they would have been right.
I was also just listening to a recent episode of the podcast Hidden Brain, where they were talking with a linguist who's studied the way everything from tone to the pace of speech and all kinds of other factors can differ so widely from one micro-culture to another - e.g., the city you live in, your class, your ethnicity, your native language, etc. - that people often draw very wrong conclusions. I notice that my own ability to keep up with a conversation (or ability to not overwhelm a conversation) varies with my mood swings (I'm bipolar 2). When I'm depressed, even if others can't tell I am, I usually can't get a word in during a conversation, because I need even longer pauses than I normally do as a Midwesterner (US). And we draw conclusions about people based on that - assuming people are snobs, or disinterested, or angry, or stupid, or rude.
@churchgeek, one point raised in your insightful post opened up a new understanding for me. This has to do with pinpointing the moment when what is 'unconscious' becomes known and can't be unseen.
Long before Freud, it was known that some of our deepest motivations and desires are repressed and hence not available to us consciously. Those mechanisms of repression may have to do with atavistic cultural fears or taboos that manifest only as irrational phobias, nightmares or somatism. Where the repression has been a response to deep-seated trauma, it may be quite literally 'unspeakable' so that the suffering person has no language to name or express what causes such anguish. Could those repressed memories or desires be made conscious and what would happen when the analysand acknowledged them?
There's a poignant moment described in one of Jacques Lacan's therapy sessions when he is speaking with a Frenchwoman who lived through the Nazi occupation and who, years later, can't understand a troubling dream. She pauses in distress after recounting this dream. Instead of speaking or offering an interpretation, Lacan leans over and touches the side of her face, what in French would be a geste à peau, a 'touching the skin'. What the woman 'hears' in her mind though is not geste à peau but the similar sounding word 'Gestapo' and immediately she understands the dream as relating to the war. She feels huge relief and as if a locked door has opened in her psyche.
The internalised 'scripts' you mention are what narrative therapy calls 'thin scripts' because they are unexamined and often serve only as oppressive stories we have been fed since early childhood, limited and inadequate to account for the 'thicker' or layered realities within and around us. If the unconscious bias or 'thin script' is challenged, it offers us a chance to re-author our own lives differently and hear the alternative narratives of those around us without needing to frame them according to learned bias.
Are you quite sure those studies aren't... biased?
That looked to me like a jumble of non-sequiturs, with a side of straw man, followed by an after of teenage know-it-all skepticism.
Babbling about how we can't know which biases are good or bad or whether everything is biased in this context is like the defence lawyer arguing whether we can know we're not brains in a vat at the murder trial.
Of course the studies were biased. Your post was biased also. And mine.
As for adolescent and and humorous errors, three of my five points were borrowed from an article written (if I rightly recall) by an Oxford professor of psychology.
Oh look, an appeal to authority. Haven't seen one of those in a while.
Unconscious bias may well be natural and a product of evolution. It may even have benefits in specific situations. You could say the same of the genes that cause sickle cell (which are linked to malaria resistance). It makes little sense to ignore the ill effects or just shrug and assume they can't be addressed.
Convincing certain groups that they are victims, and that society owes them compensation (money, affirmative action etc), does enormous harm. Resentment is a powerful motivator.
Convincing other groups that they are oppressors (who must self-flagellate) does enormous harm as well. Self-loathing is a powerful de-motivator.
Unconscious bias bollocks achieves both these odious outcomes.
The peddlers of this nonsense believe they're doing the right thing. They interfere in order to make the world a better place.
Beware unintended consequences.
I’m not sure you’re aware that it’s perfectly possible to agree that there are cases of manufactured concern without concluding, as you seem to, that all cases of concern are manufactured.
@PuddleglumsWager - I find it difficult to respond to your five posts on this thread between 2am and 5:43am BST (GMT +1) this morning when your response yesterday to my query as to whether you were attempting to deal the thread was this:
So because you don't want to discuss this you have to mock it and derail the thread?
What if unconscious bias theorists believe their stuff only because they're unconsciously biased toward it? What if, like everyone else on the planet, they're not being objective or reasonable? But if that is indeed the case, why should any rational person believe their biased conclusions?
That was the point of my first post.
My second post contains arguments, observations and questions that place unconscious bias theory somewhere between pseudoscience and psychobabble.
It's not a serious subject. The sooner it's derailed the better.
To me it feels as if you are spamming the thread to derail it rather than wishing to discuss the topic seriously. If that is the case, I suspect you may not be posting in good faith or to promote a discussion about unconscious bias and how we might address our unhelpful unconscious biases, but rather trying to prevent that discussion. Which brings me to the conclusion that I cannot see a good reason to respond to you in good faith either.
It's a fascist troll, sorry, it's fascist trolling.
Your use of apophasis, @Martin54, does not save your post from being a personal attack. If you need to do it, take it to Hell. Host hat off
BroJames, Purgatory Host
It's not a serious subject. The sooner it's derailed the better.
A conscious attempt to derail a thread is jerkish behaviour. It's the sort of thing trolls and flamebaiters do. So it's covered by our Commandment 1. (stupid autocorrect re trolls now corrected - B62)
Take the advice already given by a Shipmate to scroll past any thread you don't think is serious. You can always start a new thread on any topic which interests you which isn't already a thread topic.
If you persist in disparaging the seriousness of this thread you will be referred to Admin as a potential Commandment 1 offender.
To me it feels as if you are spamming the thread to derail it rather than wishing to discuss the topic seriously. If that is the case, I suspect you may not be posting in good faith or to promote a discussion about unconscious bias and how we might address our unhelpful unconscious biases, but rather trying to prevent that discussion. Which brings me to the conclusion that I cannot see a good reason to respond to you in good faith either.
I'm acting in good faith. I think unconscious bias is nonsense. I give my reasons and I reckon the logic holds.
Suppose I said, "It's clear you disagree because you have an unexplored and unhelpful unconscious bias against people like me."
Could you prove me wrong? Not a chance in hell. Instead, you would simply declare that that particular accusation of bias was nonsense.
Now extend the scenario. Suppose I employ Sally but not Marge. Marge angrily accuses me of unconscious bias, and of course, no one can prove her wrong. Then all her woke friends on facebook target my business. I'm forced to apologise. I fire Sally, hire Marge, and double her pay.
Bad luck Sally.
A useful little trick, don't you think, if you want to get your own way.
(Treated as a crosspost after my warning and therefore not an ignoring of that warning - B62)
To me it feels as if you are spamming the thread to derail it rather than wishing to discuss the topic seriously. If that is the case, I suspect you may not be posting in good faith or to promote a discussion about unconscious bias and how we might address our unhelpful unconscious biases, but rather trying to prevent that discussion. Which brings me to the conclusion that I cannot see a good reason to respond to you in good faith either.
A useful little trick, don't you think, if you want to get your own way.
Has anything like that ever actually happened outside of Rush Limbaugh's drug-induced hallucinations?
ISTM that the existence or otherwise of unconscious bias is being mixed up with value judgements regarding specific biases.
To my mind the existence of unconscious bias is pretty obvious: a fact of life, part of being human. Some of these biases derive from nature, others from cultural nurture, and some from the interaction between the two. I fail to see why this proposition seems to be generating so much heat, even to the point of denial in certain quarters, though I am open to the idea that the concept might be replaced by a better analytical tool.
Then there is the second set of issues regarding the values that are placed on various unconscious biases and unconscious assumptions and their identification. It is here there are likely to be significant differences of opinion and sensitivity to others suggesting our own opinions are less objective than we thought they were. PuddleglumsWager is perfectly justified in arguing that a particular action of his arises from a rational ethical decision on his part rather than unconscious bias and to be irritated by the sanctimonious judgements of his critics: the fashionable conscience, but that does not deny the existence of unconscious bias. Indeed, his beef with the left arises from their unwillingness to acknowledge the source their own unexamined values.
To me it feels as if you are spamming the thread to derail it rather than wishing to discuss the topic seriously. If that is the case, I suspect you may not be posting in good faith or to promote a discussion about unconscious bias and how we might address our unhelpful unconscious biases, but rather trying to prevent that discussion. Which brings me to the conclusion that I cannot see a good reason to respond to you in good faith either.
I'm acting in good faith. I think unconscious bias is nonsense. I give my reasons and I reckon the logic holds.
Suppose I said, "It's clear you disagree because you have an unexplored and unhelpful unconscious bias against people like me."
Could you prove me wrong? Not a chance in hell. Instead, you would simply declare that that particular accusation of bias was nonsense.
Now extend the scenario. Suppose I employ Sally but not Marge. Marge angrily accuses me of unconscious bias, and of course, no one can prove her wrong. Then all her woke friends on facebook target my business. I'm forced to apologise. I fire Sally, hire Marge, and double her pay.
Bad luck Sally.
A useful little trick, don't you think, if you want to get your own way.
That's your unconscious bias. Logic has nothing to do with it except in the negative of the Humean sense.
@Kwesi - I would suggest that we all should be aware that we have unconscious biases that affect our dealing with other people. Unless we accept that premise in the first place, we are unlikely to attempt to identify and address those biases, whatever political hue our opinions.
Curiosity killed:@Kwesi - I would suggest that we all should be aware that we have unconscious biases that affect our dealing with other people. Unless we accept that premise in the first place, we are unlikely to attempt to identify and address those biases, whatever political hue our opinions.
Couldn't agree more. Of course, further examination may confirm the virtue of the bias, if you get my drift!
To me it feels as if you are spamming the thread to derail it rather than wishing to discuss the topic seriously. If that is the case, I suspect you may not be posting in good faith or to promote a discussion about unconscious bias and how we might address our unhelpful unconscious biases, but rather trying to prevent that discussion. Which brings me to the conclusion that I cannot see a good reason to respond to you in good faith either.
I'm acting in good faith. I think unconscious bias is nonsense. I give my reasons and I reckon the logic holds.
Suppose I said, "It's clear you disagree because you have an unexplored and unhelpful unconscious bias against people like me."
Could you prove me wrong? Not a chance in hell. Instead, you would simply declare that that particular accusation of bias was nonsense.
Now extend the scenario. Suppose I employ Sally but not Marge. Marge angrily accuses me of unconscious bias, and of course, no one can prove her wrong. Then all her woke friends on facebook target my business. I'm forced to apologise. I fire Sally, hire Marge, and double her pay.
Bad luck Sally.
A useful little trick, don't you think, if you want to get your own way.
Way to use sophistry to avoid engaging!
It's like the argument about denial in alcoholism.
1. Denial is a feature of alcoholism
2. Therefore I will claim your denial of an alcohol problem is further evidence of a your alcoholism.
Now, of course, you don't actually have an alcohol problem so you'll deny that you do.
Thus the spurious argument that we can ignore denial as a feature of alcoholism.
So, again, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that people who do not profess sexist or racist views treat sexes and races differently.
Hence the suggestion that one of two hypotheses offer the best explanation:
1. People are lying
2. People have biases of which they are not (/ not fully) aware
That's not to pretend that it's easy to work out always but you haven't offered an alternative explanation or accepted that people are arseholes, thus you have in no way refuted the argument.
Moreover, unconscious biases are obvious in all sorts of trivial situations with but a moment's reflection. For example; if you told me a story that involved someone driving their car I would picture them sitting on the right hand side of the car. I live in the UK. That is normal. So what? Well it gets slightly less trivial if you're describing a traffic incident that involved a car turning left. In the UK that would not involve crossing traffic... in much of the world it would!
Or how about, it's 10pm, I would expect it to be night. If you live in Scandinavian or even Northern Scotland, it might not be.
Or, I'm using a keyboard to type, I expect the @ sign to be on the right not above the 2...
And on and on. Unconscious biases are easily demonstrated in trivial things so where is the evidence they don't exist in non-trivial?
You want to argue that people use the notion of unconscious biases to make fallacious arguments about discrimination? Fine. Do so. But make the argument. Don't expect us to simply accept your assertion. And start by explaining why the observations above are wrong or don't apply.
Babbling about how we can't know which biases are good or bad or whether everything is biased in this context is like the defence lawyer arguing whether we can know we're not brains in a vat at the murder trial.
You've demeaned my wits and made bold assertions, but do you actually have anything useful to say? You could begin by explaining the nature of consciousness and its role in human decision making.
You mean my reference to 'babbling' didn't give you a warm homey feeling? You said on the other thread that you were fond of the phrase 'babbling about'. That your 'family and friends use words like babble, bollocks and bullshit all the time, with perfect cheerfulness and no malice aforethought'. It seems my gesture wasn't appreciated.
If you're not complaining about the style of argument, then why bring it up?
If you are complaining about me using your style of argument back against you, if you find it different coming from a stranger on the internet than from family and friends, then don't do it yourself.
I haven't demeaned your wits. The forum has strict rules against ad hominems, and I've been posting long enough to know not to do it. I've dismissed your arguments, and said why I think they deserve to be dismissed.
Anyway, is my post making bold assertions or is it saying nothing? It can't be both. If I'm making bold assertions then address them. I note that you do not actually mention my analogy about brains in vats.
You're trying to run two arguments:
one, that studies showing the existence of unconscious bias may themselves be biased (on a priori grounds) and can therefore be dismissed - that's a universal skeptical solvent argument;
two, that bias is natural and evolved and therefore biased judgements are perfectly proper.
Those lines of argument are incompatible.
I often joke that my academic research in women's history is ridiculously easy, because unconscious bias has caused others to overlook facts which are easy to find in primary sources. I don't need to ferret out new and unexamined sources I just use what's always been readily available and easily accessible.
Over twenty years ago, as a mum with a history degree, I offered to write a centenary history of my children's primary school. It's a bog standard state primary, originally serving a catchment area dominated by railway workers.
The first surprise was that in 1900, one of the teachers took leave of absence to attend the International Socialist Congress in Paris, possibly as a delegate on the education committee. I tried to research her in secondary sources. She appeared only as a footnote to her husband, who became an M.P. in 1921. Apparently her own political efforts were purely as "helpmeet" to her husband, despite the fact that she had been politically active for a decade prior to their marriage.
She died in 1917 - had she lived I assume she would have stood for Parliament. There are no shortage of primary sources - newspaper reports, School Board records, census returns, etc. but somehow she had elided notice.
(I'm reluctant to name her here because googling her will throw up my RL name but PM me if you are interested.)
The second surprise was that the retirement presentation to the first headmaster was chaired by someone described as one of Aberdeen's most senior headteachers - Mrs X. Checked the secondary sources which all said that married women didn't have significant teaching careers in Victorian times. Checked the census returns - definitely married. Headteacher of a 1,000 pupil mixed sex school. Author of a series of textbooks. Fellow of the E.I.S. and a member of the E.I.S. General Committee. Noted public speaker. Highly paid. Literally dozens of mentions in the newspapers of the day, sometimes quoting her speeches in full. Literally hundreds of primary sources available.
And yet perfectly competent historians (*cough* Tom Devine *cough*) had used the same resources and failed to spot her, or any other woman like her and wrote that women didn't have significant teaching careers and could not become head teachers in Victorian Scotland. (He's since amended that statement).
If a secondary source states that something didn't happen, it doesn't encourage research into the primary sources. I was just lucky that I started with primary sources.
The problem for women in the C20th was that this deprived them of role models. I have seen many C20th women described as "ground breaking" who had no doubt fought the challenges associated with being "ground-breaking" without knowing that women had already been there and successfully done that. Women have had to continually "re-invent the wheel."
Including more women in e.g. school history syllabuses isn't a "politically correct" thing to do, it's just making the syllabus more historically accurate. It's just removing the unconscious bias which has caused researchers to fail to see the obvious.
@Kwesi - I would suggest that we all should be aware that we have unconscious biases that affect our dealing with other people. Unless we accept that premise in the first place, we are unlikely to attempt to identify and address those biases, whatever political hue our opinions.
Yes. I have (had?) a fear of young men with hoodies. I learned about this bias when, as I parked up at home, a young man with a hoodie ran up to my car and went to open the door. I quickly locked it and reached for my phone.
Comments
It also ties in with general notions of the unconscious; in fact, it would amaze me if unconscious bias didn't exist, since many phenomena like this can be demonstrated. I've noticed that right wing wing people tend to dismiss it, they probably see it as woke, or maybe claim that racism and misogyny are exaggerated, or have been "weaponized".
I can beat myself up about this stuff. I need to resist the impulse for my own wellbeing. But I also dislike getting this wrong. I want to remember that posters here are not necessarily from my own milieu.
Whether the concept is valid or logical or worth studying is beside the point if I find it useful in reflecting upon my own reactions. Everything is provisional to me in my inner life. Tomorrow I might decide its misleading in damaging ways.
I am convinced that knowing myself is not only worthwhile, but necessary. Its a project of a lifetime.
Not at all - everybody has them, but given that societal power is largely held by white men, then the biases held by white men tend to have more effect. It's really the same discussion of "can a black person be racist" which is really an argument about nomenclature.
(Yes, of course a black person can be prejudiced against people with particular racial backgrounds, whether that be against white people, or against black people with a different ethnic origin, or Arabs, or anyone else. But because of the way that power is structured in Western societies, racial prejudice by black people doesn't have the same cumulative, systematic effect. Plenty of people are able to agree on this, but then argue vehemently about what labels to use to describe which things.)
You don't eliminate the effects of bias by sitting through a training course. As you are well aware, the fact that your body was present in a room whilst a training course was happening has no effect on anything. The purpose of such training courses is both to inform well-meaning people that unconscious biases exist, and how they might manifest, and to give those people tools to help overcome them.
If somebody wants to be a racist, or a sexist, or whatever other kind of bigot they are, then unconscious bias training won't help them. Such a training course presupposes that your people don't want to be bigots.
Will they, though? And how long is "eventually"?
I don't doubt that unconscious bias is real. However, my understanding is that there are genuine doubts about many of the approaches that have been used to try to deal with it. For example I understand that there is now research suggesting that a lot of the sort of awareness training that companies go for is ineffective or even counterproductive.
So it's not only about showing these things, it's about identifying truly effective strategies for addressing them.
I was recently struck by a podcast interview where a black American businessman was extremely cogent in explaining why he was specifically looking to invest in black-owned start-ups. His explanations stretched back generations, because he demonstrated how the effects of previous overt discrimination were ongoing several generations later.
There do seem to be points where social change happens relatively rapidly. But then there are other issues where people are looking and saying "how long do we have to keep dealing with the same stuff over and over"? Which leads me to think that showing the problem isn't sufficient, given the examples of where people have been showing the problem for a very long time. We need smart people to understand which solutions actually work.
On a local FB page, a man was asking if someone could come to his property quickly as he had two roof tiles dislodged and rain was pouring in . A roofer replied and said that she had just had a cancellation and could visit straight away . His reply `”What - a woman?”
“Yes she replied , and consider my offer null and void” - good for her.
But I agree it is not going to be so easy to identify and cure the problem. My verdict on behavioural, as opposed to technical training courses, based on attending about twenty in my career in IT is low. And I don't find it hard to believe that Unconscious Bias training is generally poor.
So many training organisations remind me of Perfect Curve*, and just spout trendy bullshit. But knowing there's a problem is a start.
*Do try and watch either 2012 or W1A, two of the best comedies done by the BBC.
Sorry: some sort of hemming? penis angles?
Fixed broken quoting code. BroJames, Purgatory Host
My employer purchases a number of behavioural training courses from outside training agencies (on the grounds that it's very expensive to develop that kind of thing in-house).
They all, without exception, contain a number of statements, graphics and the like that are rather startlingly innumerate, illogical, or in some other way really stupid. Sometimes it's hard to get past the stupidity in order to get at the underlying point. In many of the cases, it seems as though the producers of the training material have taken Darrell Huff's charming little booklet "How to Lie with Statistics", and used it as a guidebook. Which means that my colleagues and I get distracted by pointing out all the misleading features of their diagrams.
(A hint for anyone offering such training: if you have a diagram that tries to give the impression of illustrating some kind of truth whilst in fact being made up by some graphic artist drawing lines that look attractive to them, don't open the discussion by asking "what does this diagram say to you?" Because you'll get a series of very honest answers.)
I think sadly what often happens is that these things go from executive edict through to the cheapest possible way to run a tick box exercise.
I'm not sure if it's better or worse that sometimes organisations throw a lot of money at it and still end up with worthless crap.
So none of these serious issues is affected by, driven by unconscious bias? Like yours?
It would just be bias
Are you quite sure those studies aren't... biased?
Perhaps this will make my position clear.
I met my wife-to-be when I was 19. Unconscious bias made me find her attractive. Bias is bad. By choosing her, I unfairly excluded everyone else.
In the name of equity, I should have struggled against my bias and married someone I found instinctively unattractive in every way.
Studies have shown that people show enormous bias in their choice of partners. That has to be bad. It's tremendously unfair. We need to do something about it.
Clearly, the state (or their boss) should force people to struggle against their sexual biases and make the world a better place. I suggest re-education camps. We could call them "Bias Awareness Seminars."
Let me summarise.
1) We are biased in a thousand different ways.
2) Biases that are hard-wired or deeply imprinted cannot be modified.
3) We don't know which biases are hard-wired or deeply imprinted.
4) We cannot say which biases are good and which are bad, or if on balance they cancel out.
5) The factors that determine a decision are complex beyond comprehension. Therefore, we cannot know if a decision was in fact determined by bias. We also cannot know if bias training improves the quality of a decision. And we cannot know if (and how) bias relates to the importance of a decision.
One study I heard about in a conference (from a gentleman from the Haas Institute at UC Berkeley) showed participants a fuzzy image that was very gradually becoming clearer. The subjects were to indicate as soon as they could make out what it was. During that process, they was a very quick, single-frame image of either a Black or a white man's face, so quick that the conscious mind doesn't recognize it (although when they showed it to us, before telling us about it, I could tell it was a man's face - just not what race). The image that was slowly coming into focus was a gun. The study showed, across all demographics, that Americans were generally quicker to recognize the gun if they'd been shown a Black man's face than if they were shown a white man's face.
And the theory is that it has nothing to do with personal prejudices. This is about the unconscious, or better, pre-conscious, part(s) of our brain. We all know that our conscious mind only picks up on a tiny percentage of what our brain as a whole perceives. Our conscious mind filters out so much - for example, the echoes we'd normally hear because of the tiny difference in when sounds reach each of our ears, or the weight of the air on our skin - things that would bog us down if we noticed them all the time. At the same time, our preconscious brain - the more "primitive" (evolutionarily older) parts, like the amygdala, process information before it gets to our conscious mind - or even if it never does - and produces emotional responses like fear. That would help us in a situation, for example, where we encounter a venomous snake. We might catch a movement and run before we realize what we saw, and that fraction of an instant could save our lives.
Our culture feeds us "scripts," and these get internalized and effect how our brains respond to stimuli. Sadly, in our culture, thanks largely to movies and television (ever since The Birth of a Nation), Black men and other people of color have been associated so frequently with threats that we've all internalized it. This might be part of the reason police are so quick to assume anything a Black man is holding is a gun. Or so said the folks at the Haas Institute. Apparently, they contacted that TV show 24, which was about counter-terrorism, because after their first season (which debuted in September, 2001, and featured Eastern European terrorists), they always portrayed the terrorists as Arabic. I never watched the show past the first season - I was only interested in the real-time premise of the show, but didn't care for the violence and the script that a "hero" saves the day using violence at his own whim. I think that's dangerous.
My dad and his dad used to work themselves into a certain pitch when discussing electronics or computers, something that interested them both. Someone who didn't understand English would probably have wondered why they were fighting so angrily with each other. Judging from an admittedly small sample (people I've known and news clips I've seen), I suspect it was part of my grandfather's culture of origin.
I was also just listening to a recent episode of the podcast Hidden Brain, where they were talking with a linguist who's studied the way everything from tone to the pace of speech and all kinds of other factors can differ so widely from one micro-culture to another - e.g., the city you live in, your class, your ethnicity, your native language, etc. - that people often draw very wrong conclusions. I notice that my own ability to keep up with a conversation (or ability to not overwhelm a conversation) varies with my mood swings (I'm bipolar 2). When I'm depressed, even if others can't tell I am, I usually can't get a word in during a conversation, because I need even longer pauses than I normally do as a Midwesterner (US). And we draw conclusions about people based on that - assuming people are snobs, or disinterested, or angry, or stupid, or rude.
ETA: Sorry...the point was that these scripts affect how our pre-conscious mind processes incoming data from our senses to recognize potential threats. Those scripts grease the skids, so to speak, just like lived experience would - because our brains didn't evolve in a situation where some stimuli might be real and some televised. If we see the same visual or other cue associated with a threat often enough in whatever media we're consuming, our brains just learn the association.
I suspect, although they didn't address it, that hearing stories from others, and hearing prejudices expressed by others, as well as making our way in a world that has physically structured itself to map onto our social castes and other hierarchies - these things probably also serve as "scripts" in similar ways.
Babbling about how we can't know which biases are good or bad or whether everything is biased in this context is like the defence lawyer arguing whether we can know we're not brains in a vat at the murder trial.
However it’s a bit of a straw man. Admittedly a straw man that you do encounter from time to time (I’ve encountered it at least twice in relation to dating, where people don’t seem to understand that it’s arguing that we all need to be polyamorous bisexuals).
But in the main, when people are talking about discrimination or bias they really do mean the kinds that cause harm and which are at odds with the principles society generally articulated. We don’t think the race of a job applicant should be a factor in job prospects, so it pays to investigate the data that shows it DOES have an effect.
Yes. Everyone knows that big geographical barriers promote speciation. Fewer people know that small physical and behavioural barriers do so too. If a bird's plumage isn't quite right, it can't find a mate. If its song or dance aren't quite right, it can't find a mate.
My guess is all living things act on unconscious biases, and this has been one of the main drivers of evolution. In other words, it's a good and creative force.
White people are biased toward white people, and black toward black? Welcome to Biology 101. Assuming international travel breaks down, and given a few hundred thousand years, we'll end up with at least three distinct species of human. Diversity is good, right?
Unconscious bias is a good thing on a small scale too. Our choice of spouse is informed by bias. (Bob is attracted to Sally, but can't quite say why.) Bias helps inform our choice of friends, career, politics, religion, and leisure activities.
Unconscious bias means we know far more than we know we know.
And now we have all these do-good interferers who want to fiddle with this ancient and universal mechanism, to make the world a better place.
If you want to complain about mucking about with ancient evolutionary systems, that’s your starting point. It’s also why Queensland has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.
In fact both the Greens politician and her rival are indigenous women.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-13/nt-selena-uibo-lydia-thorpe-youth-justice-bail-law/100136066
Of course the studies were biased. Your post was biased also. And mine.
As for adolescent and and humorous errors, three of my five points were borrowed from an article written (if I rightly recall) by an Oxford professor of psychology.
You've demeaned my wits and made bold assertions, but do you actually have anything useful to say? You could begin by explaining the nature of consciousness and its role in human decision making. Once that's cleared up, we can begin to speculate on the effects of unconscious bias.
No? Another time perhaps?
Convincing certain groups that they are victims, and that society owes them compensation (money, affirmative action etc), does enormous harm. Resentment is a powerful motivator.
Convincing other groups that they are oppressors (who must self-flagellate) does enormous harm as well. Self-loathing is a powerful de-motivator.
Unconscious bias bollocks achieves both these odious outcomes.
The peddlers of this nonsense believe they're doing the right thing. They interfere in order to make the world a better place.
Beware unintended consequences.
That roofer was biased and unprofessional. Given three words, she concluded the man was sexist and therefore unworthy. It seems a belief in Total Depravity lives on.
But was he unworthy? What else might be said about this man? Perhaps he'd spent the last ten years nursing his sick wife. Perhaps the rain was leaking onto her bed. God only knows who this man really was.
Doctors do not refuse to treat unworthy patients. Teachers endure unworthy children.
@churchgeek, one point raised in your insightful post opened up a new understanding for me. This has to do with pinpointing the moment when what is 'unconscious' becomes known and can't be unseen.
Long before Freud, it was known that some of our deepest motivations and desires are repressed and hence not available to us consciously. Those mechanisms of repression may have to do with atavistic cultural fears or taboos that manifest only as irrational phobias, nightmares or somatism. Where the repression has been a response to deep-seated trauma, it may be quite literally 'unspeakable' so that the suffering person has no language to name or express what causes such anguish. Could those repressed memories or desires be made conscious and what would happen when the analysand acknowledged them?
There's a poignant moment described in one of Jacques Lacan's therapy sessions when he is speaking with a Frenchwoman who lived through the Nazi occupation and who, years later, can't understand a troubling dream. She pauses in distress after recounting this dream. Instead of speaking or offering an interpretation, Lacan leans over and touches the side of her face, what in French would be a geste à peau, a 'touching the skin'. What the woman 'hears' in her mind though is not geste à peau but the similar sounding word 'Gestapo' and immediately she understands the dream as relating to the war. She feels huge relief and as if a locked door has opened in her psyche.
The internalised 'scripts' you mention are what narrative therapy calls 'thin scripts' because they are unexamined and often serve only as oppressive stories we have been fed since early childhood, limited and inadequate to account for the 'thicker' or layered realities within and around us. If the unconscious bias or 'thin script' is challenged, it offers us a chance to re-author our own lives differently and hear the alternative narratives of those around us without needing to frame them according to learned bias.
Oh look, an appeal to authority. Haven't seen one of those in a while.
Unconscious bias may well be natural and a product of evolution. It may even have benefits in specific situations. You could say the same of the genes that cause sickle cell (which are linked to malaria resistance). It makes little sense to ignore the ill effects or just shrug and assume they can't be addressed.
I’m not sure you’re aware that it’s perfectly possible to agree that there are cases of manufactured concern without concluding, as you seem to, that all cases of concern are manufactured.
To me it feels as if you are spamming the thread to derail it rather than wishing to discuss the topic seriously. If that is the case, I suspect you may not be posting in good faith or to promote a discussion about unconscious bias and how we might address our unhelpful unconscious biases, but rather trying to prevent that discussion. Which brings me to the conclusion that I cannot see a good reason to respond to you in good faith either.
Host hat off
BroJames, Purgatory Host
Take the advice already given by a Shipmate to scroll past any thread you don't think is serious. You can always start a new thread on any topic which interests you which isn't already a thread topic.
If you persist in disparaging the seriousness of this thread you will be referred to Admin as a potential Commandment 1 offender.
You may complain about this ruling in the Styx.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
I'm acting in good faith. I think unconscious bias is nonsense. I give my reasons and I reckon the logic holds.
Suppose I said, "It's clear you disagree because you have an unexplored and unhelpful unconscious bias against people like me."
Could you prove me wrong? Not a chance in hell. Instead, you would simply declare that that particular accusation of bias was nonsense.
Now extend the scenario. Suppose I employ Sally but not Marge. Marge angrily accuses me of unconscious bias, and of course, no one can prove her wrong. Then all her woke friends on facebook target my business. I'm forced to apologise. I fire Sally, hire Marge, and double her pay.
Bad luck Sally.
A useful little trick, don't you think, if you want to get your own way.
(Treated as a crosspost after my warning and therefore not an ignoring of that warning - B62)
Has anything like that ever actually happened outside of Rush Limbaugh's drug-induced hallucinations?
To my mind the existence of unconscious bias is pretty obvious: a fact of life, part of being human. Some of these biases derive from nature, others from cultural nurture, and some from the interaction between the two. I fail to see why this proposition seems to be generating so much heat, even to the point of denial in certain quarters, though I am open to the idea that the concept might be replaced by a better analytical tool.
Then there is the second set of issues regarding the values that are placed on various unconscious biases and unconscious assumptions and their identification. It is here there are likely to be significant differences of opinion and sensitivity to others suggesting our own opinions are less objective than we thought they were. PuddleglumsWager is perfectly justified in arguing that a particular action of his arises from a rational ethical decision on his part rather than unconscious bias and to be irritated by the sanctimonious judgements of his critics: the fashionable conscience, but that does not deny the existence of unconscious bias. Indeed, his beef with the left arises from their unwillingness to acknowledge the source their own unexamined values.
That's your unconscious bias. Logic has nothing to do with it except in the negative of the Humean sense.
Couldn't agree more. Of course, further examination may confirm the virtue of the bias, if you get my drift!
Way to use sophistry to avoid engaging!
It's like the argument about denial in alcoholism.
1. Denial is a feature of alcoholism
2. Therefore I will claim your denial of an alcohol problem is further evidence of a your alcoholism.
Now, of course, you don't actually have an alcohol problem so you'll deny that you do.
Thus the spurious argument that we can ignore denial as a feature of alcoholism.
So, again, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that people who do not profess sexist or racist views treat sexes and races differently.
Hence the suggestion that one of two hypotheses offer the best explanation:
1. People are lying
2. People have biases of which they are not (/ not fully) aware
That's not to pretend that it's easy to work out always but you haven't offered an alternative explanation or accepted that people are arseholes, thus you have in no way refuted the argument.
Moreover, unconscious biases are obvious in all sorts of trivial situations with but a moment's reflection. For example; if you told me a story that involved someone driving their car I would picture them sitting on the right hand side of the car. I live in the UK. That is normal. So what? Well it gets slightly less trivial if you're describing a traffic incident that involved a car turning left. In the UK that would not involve crossing traffic... in much of the world it would!
Or how about, it's 10pm, I would expect it to be night. If you live in Scandinavian or even Northern Scotland, it might not be.
Or, I'm using a keyboard to type, I expect the @ sign to be on the right not above the 2...
And on and on. Unconscious biases are easily demonstrated in trivial things so where is the evidence they don't exist in non-trivial?
You want to argue that people use the notion of unconscious biases to make fallacious arguments about discrimination? Fine. Do so. But make the argument. Don't expect us to simply accept your assertion. And start by explaining why the observations above are wrong or don't apply.
AFZ
Regarding treatment of the sexes, most people I know treat the sexes differently due to mutual expectation and agreement.
If you're not complaining about the style of argument, then why bring it up?
If you are complaining about me using your style of argument back against you, if you find it different coming from a stranger on the internet than from family and friends, then don't do it yourself.
I haven't demeaned your wits. The forum has strict rules against ad hominems, and I've been posting long enough to know not to do it. I've dismissed your arguments, and said why I think they deserve to be dismissed.
Anyway, is my post making bold assertions or is it saying nothing? It can't be both. If I'm making bold assertions then address them. I note that you do not actually mention my analogy about brains in vats.
You're trying to run two arguments:
one, that studies showing the existence of unconscious bias may themselves be biased (on a priori grounds) and can therefore be dismissed - that's a universal skeptical solvent argument;
two, that bias is natural and evolved and therefore biased judgements are perfectly proper.
Those lines of argument are incompatible.
Over twenty years ago, as a mum with a history degree, I offered to write a centenary history of my children's primary school. It's a bog standard state primary, originally serving a catchment area dominated by railway workers.
The first surprise was that in 1900, one of the teachers took leave of absence to attend the International Socialist Congress in Paris, possibly as a delegate on the education committee. I tried to research her in secondary sources. She appeared only as a footnote to her husband, who became an M.P. in 1921. Apparently her own political efforts were purely as "helpmeet" to her husband, despite the fact that she had been politically active for a decade prior to their marriage.
She died in 1917 - had she lived I assume she would have stood for Parliament. There are no shortage of primary sources - newspaper reports, School Board records, census returns, etc. but somehow she had elided notice.
(I'm reluctant to name her here because googling her will throw up my RL name but PM me if you are interested.)
The second surprise was that the retirement presentation to the first headmaster was chaired by someone described as one of Aberdeen's most senior headteachers - Mrs X. Checked the secondary sources which all said that married women didn't have significant teaching careers in Victorian times. Checked the census returns - definitely married. Headteacher of a 1,000 pupil mixed sex school. Author of a series of textbooks. Fellow of the E.I.S. and a member of the E.I.S. General Committee. Noted public speaker. Highly paid. Literally dozens of mentions in the newspapers of the day, sometimes quoting her speeches in full. Literally hundreds of primary sources available.
And yet perfectly competent historians (*cough* Tom Devine *cough*) had used the same resources and failed to spot her, or any other woman like her and wrote that women didn't have significant teaching careers and could not become head teachers in Victorian Scotland. (He's since amended that statement).
If a secondary source states that something didn't happen, it doesn't encourage research into the primary sources. I was just lucky that I started with primary sources.
The problem for women in the C20th was that this deprived them of role models. I have seen many C20th women described as "ground breaking" who had no doubt fought the challenges associated with being "ground-breaking" without knowing that women had already been there and successfully done that. Women have had to continually "re-invent the wheel."
Including more women in e.g. school history syllabuses isn't a "politically correct" thing to do, it's just making the syllabus more historically accurate. It's just removing the unconscious bias which has caused researchers to fail to see the obvious.
Yes. I have (had?) a fear of young men with hoodies. I learned about this bias when, as I parked up at home, a young man with a hoodie ran up to my car and went to open the door. I quickly locked it and reached for my phone.
It was my son.