Hard Science & Hard Lessons: Unconscious Bias and the Promotion of Race Equality

1. Dr Pete Jones Shire Professional Chartered Psychologists Tinu Cornish Coach for Change Hard Science & Hard Lessons: Unconscious Bias and the Promotion of Race Equality

2. Different with Difference – Evidenced Based Psychological Approach to D& I Tinu Cornish, MSc CPsychol Dr Pete Jones C.Psychol. AFBPsS, C.Sci. Reviews of people processes for UB/ST Redesign of selection system to minimise UB/ST Developer of Implicitly UB Test UB workshops in public sector, financial services, IT, manufacturing and engineering Lead evaluator for the Fast Track and Accelerate to Headship programmes • Chartered & Registered Occupational Psychologist • Chair Diversity & Inclusion Group , DOP of BPS • 30 years D& I and Leadership • Research – Transfer of Training, Systems of discrimination • ENEI – Research into how Diversity impacts leadership • Unconscious bias and boards. • PA & social mobility for young people

3. Outline • Understand how our biases are created and maintained by our neurology, our socialisation, our experiences and the media • Understand how the way we think others view our groups affects our performance • Develop ideas to counter bias and stereotype threat in our people decisions

4. What is unconscious bias? • “Unconscious biases are the result of our limited cognitive capacity; we implicitly and automatically both group and categorise people to avoid having to conduct completely new assessments for every new person” • “Unconscious biases are our unintentional people preferences, formed by our socialisation and experiences, including exposure to the media. We unconsciously assign positive and negative value to the categories we use.” • Wi-fi: what we see together, we wire together. • Automatic and rapid • We do not have to believe a stereotype for it to affect us. • Often in our personal ‘bias blind spot’ • Pervasive, and we ALL have them • Resistant to change and creates ‘special’ categories • Lead to ‘micro-behaviours’

6. Measuring UB with IAT White faces & Bad words Black faces & Good words Competent Worthless Competent Black faces & Bad words White faces & Good words Worthless

7. Brain Facts • The brain likes to work efficiently and minimise the work of the ‘smart’ lobes as they have limited capacity • The unconscious processes 200,000 times more information than the conscious and the ‘smart’ frontal lobes are a recent development • The brain is a formidable pattern matching machine which sifts everything we see or hear, whether or not we consciously notice it • What the brain fires together, it wires together, even if we consciously reject that pairing • Use and mylination of neural pathways makes that neural pathway 5000 times more likely to be used • The brain likes to work efficiently and minimise the work of the ‘smart’ lobes as they have limited capacity

8. Lowering our Guard Anger Frustration Stress Habits Alcohol Fatigue Impulsive traits Cognitive load Ambiguity Drugs Threat Poor Working Memory Intuitive

9. Controlling bias: The Moral Muscle Ego replenishment • Humour • Sugar • Simplicity • Rest Ego depletion • Emotional load • Bias suppression • Multiple decisions • Behavioural demands

10. Ten things we can we all do Recognise our own vulnerabilities: our traits and people biases Recognise the contexts when our biases may be most active Recognise that we are reinforcing biases Have the ‘honest conversation’ Schedule demanding emotional or cognitive work away from people decisions where possible Watch our micro-behaviours and try to re-balance them Assume bias will be at play, pause and think Stop suppressing and depleting our natural inhibition process Stop asking people to be constantly alert all of the time Stop rushing with some groups at some times Stop beating ourselves up about it

11. Stereotype Threat • “Stereotype threat is being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group.”

12. How we THINK others see our own groups impacts how we perform Neutral game “Natural athletic ability” “Strategic sports decision making” Stereotype Threat (Steele and Aronson, 1995)

13. Multiple layers ( Shih et. al.) “Neutral” 49% “Female” 43% 54% “Asian”

14. Countering Stereotype Threat • Reframing the task or assessment • De-emphasising the threat • Encouraging self-affirmation • Emphasising high standards with assurances about capability • Providing competent role models both at assessment and at work • Emphasising an incremental view of ability or intelligence

15. Pretending to be colour blind is not helpful • Participants adopting a 'colour blind' approach were independently rated as having more unfriendly facial expressions than those who were explicit about race

16. Pretending to be colour blind is not helpful • anxiety can result in people appearing, uptight, wary, and tense. • Minority colleagues can then interpret this lack of ease in as unfriendliness. • referring to minorities with simple accurate descriptions rather than not refer to a an obvious part of a person’s identity.

17. Pretending to be colour blind is not helpful Majority Group Stereotype threat- Fear of being considered prejudiced • Anxiety – freeze of avoid • Overly positive or avoidance of feedback • Contact theory and ‘friendship potential’ • Poor leader member relationship quality

18. What can I do about it? One thing we could do as an organisation One thing we could do within my team One thing I could do myself

19. Remaining Questions • How does UB impact Higher Education? • How can people control bias without triggering it? • How can organisations support UB management • How can we introduce UB testing without scaring people half to death?

20. “I'm free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.” W.C Fields “There is no sin in having a bias, the only sin is in not being prepared to try to manage it when it impacts your colleagues or customers.” Pete Pete@shirepro.co.uk