According to the American Psychological Association in implicit bias is an unconscious negative attitude towards a specific social group. According to Project Implicit these attitudes and stereotypes can negatively impact our understanding, actions, and decision making. But how do we change our behavior if we’re unaware of our bias?
Uncovering your own Implicit Bias
Project Implicit’s mission is “to contribute to a more aware and equitable society by shedding light on the hidden influences that shape our perceptions and interactions through awareness, research and education.” They maintain a public testing site offering multiple Implicit Association Tests (IATs) to measure attitudes and beliefs that we may be unwilling or unable to report. This allows us to better understand our unconscious thoughts and feelings.
With a variety of topics available individuals can anonymously explore their unconscious beliefs related to age, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and appearance. This resource is available by visiting: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
Overcoming Implicit Bias
The good news is that our unconscious beliefs can be changed, we just need do a little work to get there. The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) offers an 8 Tactics to Reduce Implicit Bias.
Introspection – identify and explore your own implicit associations with the IATs available.
Mindfulness – often our biases emerge when we are stressed. Practice ways to reduce stress.
Perspective-taking – Learn about how people being stereotyped feeling. (I highly recommend the book We Can’t Talk About That at Work! as a framework for talking about challenging topics.)
Learn to slow down – take a moment to pause and reflect on positive examples of people from the stereotyped group which will reduce our reflective actions.
Individuation – Find ways to connect with the person on a personal characteristics like shared interests.
Check your messaging – use statements that welcome and embrace multiculturalism and other differences.
Institutionalized fairness – Support cultural diversity and inclusion, identify blind spots and review images used to support diversity and inclusion.
Take two – Know that you will likely falter at resisting implicit bias and will likely need to “take two” from time to time.
Additional Resources:
8 Strategies to Reduce/Interrupt Implicit Bias
Combating Implicit Bias and Stereotypes
Five Strategies to Mitigate Unconscious Bias
Strategies to Reduce Implicit Bias
Tara Moss, a Canadian-Australian author, once said “A lot of change is possible by just acknowledging unconscious bias-that exhaustively documented but unpleasant reality many would rather ignore-and listening with less bias and acting on what we then learn.” By taking small steps we can move towards listening with less bias and acting in a more equitable way.
