Week 5 – Implicit Bias

After completing the Sexuality Implicit Attitude Test, the result I received was: “Your responses suggested a moderate automatic preference for Gay people over Straight people” (Harvard University, n.d.). I was slightly surprised by my results. Not necessarily by which direction the results leaned, but that the results were “moderate,” and not “slight.” Clearly, I have underestimated the power of my own implicit bias.

Implicit bias could impact the reliability, or validity, of a selection process in a few ways. One way is by skewing the results of a selection process to favor someone that has an automatic preference in the mind of the interviewer/manager. An example of this could be favoring someone of the same race, gender, or perceived sexual orientation. Alternatively, it can skew towards disfavoring someone that does not have an automatic preference in the mind of the interviewer/manager. By judging people one way, or the other, based on a bias, the judgements become less reliable at measuring the desired job-related outcomes.

One thing that can be done to counteract implicit bias is to be informed on ways that one could be biased, and follow it up with habit-breaking. As stated in the article, Understanding implicit bias – and how to work through it, “it’s about awareness followed by habit-breaking” (Frazier, 2023). It takes work to battle implicit bias, but it is possible to behave in less biased ways. Finally, don’t forget that “many of us are more biased than we realize” (Payne et al., 2018). By realizing that we all hold implicit biases, we can start doing the work to unravel the biases that we hold.

Work Cited:

Frazier, R. S. (2023, January 20). Understanding implicit bias-and how to work through it. Real Simple. https://www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/implicit-bias

Harvard University. (n.d.). Project Implicit. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1

Payne, K., Niemi, L., & Doris, J. M. (2018, March 27). How to think about “implicit bias.” Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/