"Fake It Till You Make It: The Final Bias Solution"

Question:

We’ve been working hard to reduce bias in our workplace and thought we had succeeded. Every once in a while, though, something happens – usually in the media – and all of a sudden, we begin to notice biased attitudes re-emerge. Is there anything we can do once this happens?

Answer:

• “It felt so good to believe I had my prejudices beat and then, all of a sudden, just because I had an encounter with one person who conformed to my bias, I found myself making those old inflexible assumptions all over again.”
  
• “I thought it was gone for good,,” said Michelle. “As long as I can remember, I believed all white people were prejudiced – each and every one. Then I made a real effort to dump this bias and began to realize how wrong I was. Just last week, however, I read about a horrible hate crime and it all came flooding back.”
  
• “’All gay men are artistic,’ ‘all men are sexist,’ and ‘all Asians are good at math’ – these were biases that I held for years and thought had finally been defeated. I’m still pretty good when it comes to the first two, but, having met several Asian colleagues lately that put my math skills to shame, I find myself assuming that I was right about their in-born talents all along.”
  

Clearly these three people are frustrated; frustrated because they have all gone through a systematic process for defeating their biases only to find them coming back to life at the most inopportune times.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Backward:

Here’s the good news: When biases reappear, it doesn’t mean we are back to square one. Think of bias reduction as a two steps forward, one step backward process. Sometimes they come back to life fertilized by the appearance of someone who happens to conform to our bias; other times a public event can poor life-giving water on a previously dormant belief. In this article, I lay out the steps necessary to get these thoughts back under control.

Vulnerable to Relapse:

In order to understand what to do when a bias reappears, we need to grasp why human beings are so vulnerable to these relapses. The main reason for this susceptibility is that we don’t want to give up the bias in the first place. Like a sick child who wants to stay home from school for just one more day, there are lots of reasons why we might not want to recover from our bias. Maybe we don’t want to betray or question the parents who planted the bias in the first place, perhaps we cling to the misbelief because it is like an old shoe that has molded itself into the shape of our thinking and is just too comfortable to take off. Most of all, we resist recovery because we are all a little bit in love with our biases.

Like most bad habits, bias has its perks. When we drink alcohol, we feel high. Chocolate tastes good. Smoking calms us down. When we give up those bad habits, let’s be honest, we lose something. The same applies to biases. When biases are abandoned, we lose, or think we lose, lots of things. Most of all, when we let go of a bias, we lose a false sense of security and enter a frightening and ambiguous world of the real. We are forced to break out of a cocoon of bigotry that is warm and safe (and stifling and stuffy) and enter a more open place where we risk an unpleasant sensation of vulnerability.

Fake It Till You Make It:

Sometimes, let’s face it, a bias can be so deeply rooted, so firmly attached, that we just can’t get rid of it, or every time we think it’s gone, it comes wandering back like an unwanted houseguest. In that unlikely event, there is still hope:
Act as if you don’t have the bias. Aristotle was a fan of this approach. He knew that attitude follows behavior and with respect to bias he would no doubt have supported the modern dictum: Fake it till you make it.

Psychologist Daryl Bem put it another way: “Saying and doing becomes believing.” The psychological truism that underpins this statement is that most of us can’t stand doing something that does not conform to what we really feel. This disconnection between action and feeling is called cognitive dissonance. Because cognitive dissonance is so unpleasant, something has to give, and if we’re stuck with the behavior, we are forced by our discomfort to change our attitude.

Let me create a composite character named Bess to show how beneficial faking it can be. Ever since she can remember, Bess has had, as she put it, a “thing” about people who don’t express themselves well. Whether it is that English is their second language or that they lack education, as soon as she hears them speak, her mind is filled with judgments like “unintelligent,” “will never be able to do the job” (even if the job has little to do with communication skills), “uncreative,” negative etc., negative etc., negative etc.

For whatever reason, Bess just couldn’t exterminate this bias. She was aware it existed and aware it distorted her view of many employees who had much to offer the organization, but she still found herself avoiding people who did not articulate up to her standard. The problem became so bad that one staff member, a Latino immigrant, went to Bess and said that he felt she was discriminating against him. Fortunately, they were able to work together to avoid any legal action, but the incident was, for a while, very disruptive to the diverse work team that Bess’ manager was trying so hard to develop.

Fictional Bess felt awful about this incident so, determined to change her behavior, she made a list of the things her bias was causing her to do and the consequences of those behaviors. Here’s that list:

1. Behavior: Failure to initiate conversations.
Negative consequences: Perception of discrimination. Alienation of the team.

2. Behavior: Failure to assign employees to plum projects.
Negative consequences: Employees’ inability to gain valuable experience and exposure. Perception of discrimination.

3. Behavior: Failure to call on particular team members during meetings.
Negative consequences: Missed opportunities to voice ideas or ask questions. Perception of discrimination.

Having made her behaviors concrete and measurable, Bess set out to do things differently:

1. Substitute behavior: Bess consciously began to initiate conversations with people whom she used to ignore.
Positive Consequences: She discovered how much these people had to offer and began to treat them more fairly.

2. Substitute behavior: Bess started deliberately assigning those employees who were qualified to good projects. Notice I said, “those who were qualified”; she resisted the temptation to substitute her own bias for a Guerilla Bias in which she patronized someone just because they were different.
Positive Consequences: Most of the employees excelled.

3. Substitute behavior: Bess began to call on people more equally during meetings and, most important, really listened to what they had to say.
Positive Consequences: She and her team were exposed to different perspectives. Also, the employees were able to gradually hone their communication skills.

The ultimate consequence was that Bess’ bias began to fade. It faded because it couldn’t survive the onslaught of positive and varied information that Bess’ new behaviors caused to come her way. The better she treated people, the better they responded; the better they responded, the more positive her experience; the more positive her experience, the better she felt about a group whom she had previously dismissed.

Sondra Thiederman is a speaker and author on bias-free leadership, diversity, bias-reduction, and cross-cultural issues. She is the author of Making Diversity Work: Seven Steps for Reducing Bias in the Workplace (Chicago: Kaplan Publishing/Dearborn Press, 2003) which is available at her web site or at www.Amazon.com. She can be contacted at:
Sondra Thiederman, Ph.D.
Cross-Cultural Communications
4585 48th Street
San Diego, CA 92115
Phones: 619-583-4478 / 800-858-4478
Fax: 619-583-0304
www.Thiederman.com / STPhD@Thiederman.com

Copyright 2007 Cross-Cultural Communications. Should you wish to re-print this article, you may do so as long as the current copyright statement and all contact information is included.

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