What is Implicit Bias?

If a hiring manager had to choose between a white person and a person of color to hire for a job position, who would they choose? Let’s say both have the same abilities, skills, connections, qualifications, etc. The job will most likely be for the white person. Because society views white people as more reliable or more trusting than people of color.

If you were given the choice to choose between a female and a male teacher to teach you a Math course, you would probably go for the male teacher. Because society views men as more intelligent beings than women.

If you go into a waiting room (for a doctor’s appointment for instance) and you see 2 empty chairs, one next to a Muslim hijabi woman and another next to a non-hijabi woman, you would probably sit next to the non-hijabi woman. Because you would feel safer.

And the examples go on…

It doesn’t necessarily mean a person is racist, sexist, or non-accepting towards others because most of the time this person is unaware of why they are choosing this over that in the first place. The thing that makes people choose certain things without knowing why is called implicit association or implicit bias, which is the indirect expression that comes straight from the subconscious.

Implicit biases are formed from cultural conditioning, upbringing, media portrayals, experience…

You can find the number one non-racist, non-sexist, the most accepting person in this world, and they would still have implicit biases towards social groups. Why? Are they lying? Of course not. Those biases are ingrained in their subconscious minds. They were programmed into their minds. They can’t help it. It’s there. And you have it as well.

Unfortunately, every social group portrays a certain stereotype; that goes for people of color, Muslim people, Women, countries, etc… They all have certain marks on them, and if you zoom into each group, more and more marks are being put on.

Explicit Bias is the direct expression. It is like saying, “I would rather hire the white person because people of color are not as smart”. That is when you can say a person is racist or non-acceptance of others.

I am working full time as a programmer and if I search for a tutorial on YouTube for something I need help in coding and see an Indian person on the thumbnail of the YouTube video, I won’t lie to you, but I would most likely definitely click on their video than any other video.

Why?

It isn’t because I believe Indian people as smarter than other people, there are millions of teachers that are as good. It is because most of the search results that I have had from searching on tutorials were almost always by Indian people, so of course, there is a higher chance for me to click on their videos since they are always in my search results. Therefore making me get used to them and more likely to prefer them.

See what happened here? Repetition. My brain constantly sees something. It becomes familiar to my brain. My brain would prefer it just because it is familiar. Because the human brain is afraid of the unfamiliar.

This is one of the examples of how implicit biases are born; through experience and repetition.

Another example; is black people, and how badly some people still treat them. Why is that? We all know the horrible history of how black people were treated in the past. This created a stigma around them that makes them more vulnerable to being treated negatively. Unfortunately, this is cultural conditioning because of history. This taught generations to see them differently because they created a certain stigma around them. That is, of course, unacceptable and wrong.

The good news is that people are becoming more aware of this implicit bias around black people and things are becoming better. But still not enough. Black people are still treated negatively. We have a long way, but we’ll get there.

Other stereotypes and biases are born because of social media. As I constantly say: repetition does a massive significance in society, whether good or bad. So imagine constantly saying something about a social group, doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, people would believe it because it is always talked about. And the more you talk about something, the more likely people would believe it.

Our job is to be aware of our surroundings, of other people. To be aware of our minds. It’s not our fault we were subjected to these stigmas, stereotypes, and implicit biases but it is our responsibility to be aware of them and to change them.