Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

Bias. Amazing.

Really?

I came across a post (thanks to Twitter as usual) recently about academic bias against conservatives.

“John Tierney of The New York Times offers a really important report on the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s recent annual meeting. As Tierney writes, “Some of the world’s preeminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.”

It all started when Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist the University of Virginia, took a poll of his audience at the meeting:

He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

Haidt responded with this simple statement – “This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity.” Haidt then pointed to studies showing that while 20 percent of Americans consider themselves to be liberal, fully 40 percent identify themselves as conservatives.

The psychologist then proceeded to define his colleagues as a “tribal-moral community” that has its own set of “sacred values.” Those values, he argues, blind the academic tribe to its own forms of discrimination. While they see discrimination against women and minorities without difficulty, they blind themselves to their own prejudice against conservatives. Even their jokes assume that everyone is a liberal.”

I do not know how this is amazing in any way at all.  This is only amazing because we have somehow convinced ourselves that there is such a thing as an institution, organization or individual free from bias.  Our institutions and organizations are full of the statistically impossible lack of diversity and as individuals and social groups we all tend to be blind to our own bias.

Human beings are biased.  Regardless of our intentions, our profession, our level or education or professionalism or how “enlightened” we might be,  we are still susceptible to stereotypes, assumptions, labels, in-group / out-group dynamics, implicit associations, cognitive bias, attribution errors and all sorts of other wonderful quirks of human nature.

We love to say that we are “non-judgmental”…that we do not “judge a book by its cover,” …and this is all absolute garbage.  We are incredibly judgmental.  The human brain is relentlessly judgmental and this impacts our relationships and our decisions about other people.

Human beings are biased, and our social groups are biased.  We can do a lot to reduce the impact of this bias but we must do more than simply acknowledge bias exists when it shows up against us or one of the groups that are affiliated with.  What are your blind spots?  What social groups tend to be excluded by your work team, your organization, your community or your professional association?  There is an opportunity for you to provide leadership.  Anyone can take a stand against bias directed towards them…taking a stand against the bias directed toward someone else is a different kind of thing.

And it is needed.

Be good to each other.