Bias

Bias is defined as allowing personal opinions to influence your judgements in a unfair way and can be influenced by mental processes of perception, memory, judgment and reasoning, also known as cognitive bias.

Cognitive biases (sometimes referred to as implicit or unconscious bias) arise because our human decision-making processes are not just factual or objective, but are influenced by a variety of factors such as heuristics (common sense intuition/ based on what we know), motivational and emotional (personal experience) and social influences (media stereotypes). Although many people hold personal values that are in opposition to prejudice, we are strongly influenced by our culture and the way that stereotyped attitudes and biased representations are reinforced through our daily interactions.  These stereotypes are learned at a young age, and create automatic bias that can affect our behaviour, even when our conscious values oppose it.

Watch the animation below for an introduction to ‘unconscious bias’.

Professor of Psychology, Patricia Devine explores implicit and explicit forms of prejudice which she developed into a prejudice habit-breaking intervention. Devine writes that to change our behaviours we need:

• INTENTION to acknowledge our bias and motivation to change
• ATTENTION to when stereotypical responses or assumptions are activated
• TIME to practice new strategies designed to “break” the automatic associations
  
  You can read more about the study here: Devine, P., Forscher, P., Austin, A and Cox, W. (2012) Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention
  Devine offers five strategies which can be applied to a situation when you realise you are experiencing bias. In the Creative Mindsets workshops with students and staff, we’ve reflected on how we might apply these in different ways: in our approach to our creative practice, in the choices we make about curriculum content, in our approach to assessment. Below they are presented with some prompts for further consideration
  

In the interview below, Vikki Hill speaks to Dr Gurnam Singh (Associate Professor of Equity of Attainment, Coventry University and Visiting Fellow in Race and Education at University of the Arts London) about implicit bias, notions of fixed intelligence and stereotypes in a higher education context.

The three short films below are from academics who explore ideas of bias, belonging, ‘otherness’, community and changes to practice and policy.