Unconscious Bias

Advances in neuroscience and other social sciences have helped us to understand that people can consciously believe in equality while simultaneously acting on subconscious prejudices they are not aware of.

By looking at the complexity of how our brains work, this research has given us a way to understand better how decision making happens in our minds — and to use this understanding to disrupt the impact of hidden biases so that our consciously held values can prevail.

Unconscious bias (or hidden bias, implicit bias) arose as a way to explain why discrimination persists, even though polling and other research clearly shows that people oppose it.

Unconscious bias has a significant impact on real world behaviors.  Study after study in a wide range of fields has shown the potential real-world impact of implicit bias on people’s quality of life.  Studies show, for example, that doctors are more likely to prescribe life-saving care to whites, that managers are more likely to hire and promote members of their own in-group and that referees in basketball might be more likely to subtly favor players with whom they share a racial identity.

One reason why investigating unconscious bias is so essential is the effect it has on our country’s discussion of discrimination. We are used to thinking of discrimination being about individual bigoted people acting overtly to cause some harm against someone because of their race, gender or sexuality.

While there are still some cases of this happening, this mode of thinking about discrimination is obsolete, and it actually hampers our journey towards equality.  As long as discrimination is about a moral flaw in an individual, discussing bias and discrimination is impossible because hanging over the conversation is the idea that someone must be a hate-filled bigot.

Unconscious bias, on the other hand, offers the idea that discrimination and bias are social, rather than individual issues, and that we can thus all participate in promoting equality.

Read more about EJS’s work and unconscious bias. And learn more about the research and efforts conducted by the American Values Institute, a national consortium of researchers and social justice advocates co-founded by EJS President Eva Paterson.