Prejudice and non-inclusive practices can affect an employee’s experience throughout his/her time with the company. Prejudice is harmful when a person makes decisions about people based on false, inappropriate or unfair assumptions and beliefs. Under the influence of prejudice, hiring and promotion choices may be based on unconscious attitudes about gender, race, age, weight, sexual orientation, physical attractiveness, and other factors.
Areas of influence
Authors of the book “The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias” Pamela Fuller and Mark Murphy identify three zones. In the “zone of excellence,” employees feel included and treat each other with respect. Knowing that the company values them gives them the confidence to contribute to the best of their ability. The “zone of limits” is when employees feel that no one listens to or tolerates them. Unfortunately, most diversity programs, with their message of tolerance, tend to put employees in this zone. In a “negative impact zone,” a culture that accepts and perpetuates prejudice can lead to harmful consequences, such as employees feeling wronged, persecuted, or humiliated.
Bias traps
Realizing that one has prejudices is the first step. The next is the reaction to them. One way for a person to become aware of their biases is to be on the lookout for “bias traps” – stressful or uncertain situations that trigger the primitive and emotional parts of your brain and lead to biased thinking.
When confronted with a stream of information, the brain automatically filters it out. Humans are incapable of rationally processing so much data, so they switch to automatic mode and unconscious biases to make quick decisions. A common bias that is triggered in such a situation is confirmation bias, where a person gives more weight to data that matches their existing assumptions. “Anchoring” is the tendency to base one’s conclusions primarily on the first information one encounters.
When a strong belief contradicts the facts, people are more likely to reject the fact than to abandon their belief. The dominance of feelings leads to affinity bias. When a person is under pressure to act quickly, perhaps because of a deadline, they are more likely to turn to their biases to get the task done quickly.
Awareness of one’s own biases requires courage because one may discover attitudes and assumptions that are contrary to one’s conscious values. As one practices self-awareness, one can recognize one’s most deeply rooted unconscious biases. When one identifies his biases, one can overcome them.
