Implicit Bias: The why and how of unlearning and relearning parts of our belief system
I’ve always been a very opinionated person. But if you are anything like me, and if you dabble in social anxiety, you know it can get very difficult to express those opinions. So there is one thing I have gotten good at over the course of several years of being bad at expressing. I love listening, so much so that I state that as a hobby sometimes. But, talking in group settings has always been scary for me. So, I listen and listen. And honestly, that helps a lot. I can go on and on about why listening is one of the most underrated skills, but for now, I want to talk about where it has helped me the most.
While listening can help you learn a lot of things, it’s also a great way to unlearn and relearn. We all know we have unconscious biases. Some of them are so subtle that if I pointed them out to you, it’ll be difficult for you to admit. I was recently reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (which, by the way, you should read no matter who you are and what you do). He talks about how we make snap judgements in the blink of an eye. Gut feelings are also a part of these judgements. Your intuition does get better when you trust it more. But sometimes, these snap judgements can go terribly wrong. The internalized biases tick in when we see a person. Over the course of your life, you would have learnt a lot of things, and that forms a part of your belief system. It’s very easy to jump to a conclusion from the years of experience you’ve had. Multiple social experiments have brought the destructive sides of these subtle biases of our brain to the forefront — one of my favourites is this: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2017/03/11/simple-experiment-exposed-gender-bias-workplace/
There are beliefs and associations that we have unconsciously. They act as shortcuts for our mind. But what we also do is, through experience, we start associating a lot of other things with each other implicitly as well. We know that when we think of bread, we think of sandwiches, subway, cheese and/or many other things. But what happens when you look at a person of a certain race or gender or class and start associating certain things with them? This hinders your ability to look at things fairly. You are trying to put people into boxes. Your mind struggles when you cannot put things into boxes you have previously known of. So, to fill up the lack of meaning, you assume, generalize and fill in the gaps. You ignore the specifics. When something or someone does not fit any box, you want to justify why you think they are wrong in not fitting any of your boxes. You want to stand with the status quo even though it is disadvantageous to certain people. The need for order and stability can make you feel obligated to the current social order so you think it is good and so you stand up for it. That can get destructive.
Well, you cannot really be bias-free ever. But, one very powerful and simple (but not so easy) way to overcome this is to listen and observe. People can be excellent mirrors sometimes. You can learn to unlearn from them. It’s not that it’s impossible. Check out this awesome experiment called backward brain cycling: https://ed.ted.com/best_of_web/bf2mRAfC. It’s about how an engineer, Destin Sandlin, got together with a group of welders and created a backwards bicycle to explore whether “you can never really forget to ride a bicycle” is actually true (you know the answer to it now, right? it’s not!).
When you start listening and observing actively, your brain picks up things that you would not notice otherwise. You will start observing patterns in people. If you are conscious of toxic patterns, you are halfway there in unlearning those. You will also possibly start seeing those same patterns in yourself. The point is to be more self-aware and not be hard on yourself for having these biases.
What works for me?
- I heavily rely on what is called the “frequency illusion” — it’s basically when you notice something and it sticks in your memory, you start seeing it everywhere. It’s not that what you’ve noticed has increased in frequency, but you just start noticing it more often now. So, when you listen and observe, you start storing some things in your memory. Once that is done, you begin experiencing the frequency illusion.
- Now comes the difficult part — admitting you have one of these biases or toxic thought processes. This is because most of us have a “bias blind spot”. It’s similar to a visual blind spot. You are blind to the biases that you have. That is why it is easier to listen to and observe others because you are more likely to find a bias in them than in yourself. But try telling that to someone and you’ll face a backlash. But then, how do you admit this yourself? This is what I do:
I identify what triggers these biases and thought processes in people around me — it can be anything — certain words, actions, movements, smells etc. Then, I actively try to observe and catch myself when I’m around such triggers.
- All you have to do now is break that chain of thoughts. It’s easier to do that if you have something to substitute it with, just like it’s easier to break a bad habit by replacing it with a good one (trust me, it’ll take time and effort, but your brain will adapt to it — look at Destin Sandlin).
If you are looking at stereotyping people due to a bias, try to remember that you will instinctively want to put people in boxes — but a lot of people won’t fit those, so try not to generalize — instead, look at the person individually instead of as a part of a larger stereotype.
All of this might sound very daunting. But, just a little bit of effort on your part can have a large impact on the lives of people around you. It’s not easy to be bias-free. Ever since you are born, you are made to believe that there is one single norm, as if that is the fabric of the Universe. It’s not true. Everyone has their norms. Even when you actively start to make amends in your thought process, there will be times when you will misjudge and misinterpret people — because the default is to be able to put everything into boxes and not tolerate ambiguity. It’s okay to look at someone and try to put them into a box, but what is not okay is to treat them any differently (especially if it concerns opportunities) if they do not fit into boxes you know of. Ambiguity is a part of being human, it’s time we embrace that.
If you have any thoughts about this and if you have other things that have worked for you, feel free to reach out to me at riddhitanna11@gmail.com. Here’s a great article/cheatsheet for cognitive biases: https://betterhumans.pub/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18.
