Having implicit bias means we are not consciously aware of having limiting judgements and pre-conceived opinions about a certain segment of society — whether racial, gender, age or some other defining set of characteristics. Another way to understand implicit (or unconscious) bias is to think of your subconscious automatically, or involuntarily, processing a set of impressions about another person in a way that forms a negative judgement of said person, resulting in unintentional or even unconscious negative attitude.
This “automatic processing” as coined by Kahneman’s theory of System 1 thinking, can be a good thing. Our unconscious mind can make a quick assessment of a situation, processing much more information than our conscious mind, allowing us to react to dangerous circumstances quickly enough to protect ourselves. However, when our unconscious mind is relying on learned, incorrect social perceptions which causes us to marginalize, or treat differently a whole sub-section of our fellow humans, this can be problematic. These attitudes have been formed by everything from media images to cultural values to expressed and implicit family values to our own personal experiences. In a culture with our history of discrimination, it is only natural all of us should have these sorts of biases. The important thing to note is even a person who believes him or herself not to consciously harbor these sorts of attitudes has implicit biases. In other words, we can’t escape being human.
Over the years, courts have defined discrimination as adverse action in terms and conditions of employment on the basis of one of the protected classes (such as gender, sex, race, national origin, religion, age, disability, etc.). An example of illegal intentional discrimination is telling someone they won’t get a promotion because of their sex or race. In this kind of case, the plaintiff claims the employer intentionally discriminated against him or her in terms and conditions of employment based on protected class.
As these concepts evolved, courts saw there were other ways in which discrimination in the workplace operated which didn’t always involve intentional or direct discrimination. Sometimes an employer had a policy that looked neutral, but it had a negative and disproportionate impact on a protected class. This sort of case is called disparate impact, because the policy has a disparate impact on a particular protected class. An example of this is to require all applicants for a job to be of a certain height. Height is neutral, or at least it appears to be, but what could happen is women could be disproportionately screened out of applying for the job
There is another category which has received a lot of attention in the media called harassment, which is a form of intentional discrimination. An example of this is a workplace in which people of a particular national origin are singled out for rude, contemptuous and insulting treatment based on their national origin.
Courts allow implicit bias evidence in some cases alleging disparate treatment. The cases sometimes struggle with differentiating between implicit or unconscious bias on the one hand and intentional or volitional action on the other.
In disparate treatment cases, the use of implicit bias theory appears to be most effective with a narrative of discrimination that happened to the people involved — not a theoretical possibility that it could have happened. This is most effectively illustrated through evidence showing the plaintiff was treated one way, and similarly situated comparators who were outside the protected class were treated quite differently. All this goes to show is that your (or your employees’ ) implicit biases could land you in hot water. The first step to reducing the impact of implicit bias in your workplace is by helping everyone to identify what implicit biases they may have. This is where mindfulness comes in.
Mindfulness practice came into Western consciousness in the late 70s with the establishment of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the University of Massachusetts by Jon Kabat-Zinn. The original focus of the program was to treat the chronically ill. It has since been widely adapted in secular settings, independent of religious or cultural contexts for a wide variety of issues, including physical and mental health, performance optimization, stress reduction, ethical decision-making, interpersonal relationships and many other topics.
It is still early, but there appears to be promising research on the ability of a mindfulness practice to reduce implicit bias. A recent study by Lueke, A. K., and Gibson, B. (2014) found that mindfulness meditation reduces implicit age and race bias. In this study:
- 72 white students completed the Implicit Association Test (IAT)
- Before the IAT, half of the participants listened to a 10-minute audio recording about mindfulness meditation.
- The other half listened to a 10-minute discussion of natural history
The study found:
Students who listened to a 10 minute mindfulness meditation audio tape showed significantly less implicit racial and age bias than did participants who listened to a neutral audio tape. According to Lueke, in follow-up analysis, this reduction in implicit bias for the participants who meditated was the result of an actual weakening of the negative stereotypes affiliated with race and age.
This finding seems quite logical. If mindfulness practice interrupts automatic thinking, then it surely would have the ability to interrupt automatic biased thinking.
In their paper, Lueke and Gibson make note of the studies which have shown that implicit attitudes are better predictors of discriminatory hiring decisions than explicit attitudes; those which indicate that implicit attitudes predict trust in out group members better than explicit attitudes; and those which show that implicit attitudes are better predictors of subtle changes in body language toward an out group member, which in turn leads to more negative evaluations of the interpersonal interactions.
Consider the usefulness of being mindful of one’s own reactions to others in the context of discrimination, whether intentional or otherwise. The first, very crucial, step is to notice one is having a negative response to another person. Without being mindful, we would not notice this. Then, having noticed our own reaction, we can question ourselves. Why is this happening? Is it based on the facts of this situation? What am I basing my reactions on?
Likely, this sort of internal reaction might even take place outside of conscious thought. But being mindful puts us in a frame of mind to be paying attention to reality — what is truly before us — rather than automatically believing our own impressions, which, as Kahneman notes, are sometimes illusions. This would allow us to make judgements based on reality rather than based on our unconscious associations, if you believe the potential implications of the mindfulness and implicit bias study.
If like me, you believe we all do have implicit biases, the more we know, the more we become aware we can be (to quote Kahneman) both blind to the obvious, and blind to our blindness.
A more detailed discussion of case law, implicit bias and mindfulness can be found here.
OCT