We all have blind spots- Its called unconscious bias

"Unconscious bias (or implicit bias) is often defined as prejudice or unsupported judgments in favor of or against one thing, person, or group as compared to another, in a way that is usually considered unfair." - Vanderbilt University

Trust me, I know what you might be thinking- “not me!” When I started to learn about unconscious bias I thought for sure it didn’t apply to me. I thought that until I was faced with this quick little test.

Here is the story-

A father and his son are involved in a horrific car crash and the man died at the scene. But when the child arrived at the hospital and was rushed into the operating room, the surgeon pulled away and said: “I can’t operate on this boy, he’s my son”.

How can this be?

……………………….

A few common thoughts- The boy has 2 fathers. The boy is adopted. The Dr. is a step father…. trust me- I thought all of these too.

.

.

.

The answer- The Surgeon is the boy’s mother.

How crazy is that!!

Over half the people who read this little test never think of the surgeon being a women. (hand raise emoji)

Now, the point of this is to demonstrate that unconscious bias is just that- unconscious. So it’s important to spend some time identifying what type of scenarios you may be falling into unconscious bias in and how we can plan ahead to avoid it as much as possible.

Here are a few tips for making that plan-

1. Ask yourself if the situation is truly as clear as you’re seeing it. Are there other ways to see things?

2. Do some additional research and training. There are a TON of free services you can find to educate yourself on more unconscious biased situations.

3. Learn your own blind spots. We each have different factors that play into how our unconscious biases are formed. Get to know what in your history and/or background may be contributing to a bias and stay aware of that.

I trust that you can wing the rest <3

One more thought- if this little test made you realize just how common unconscious bias is... we need to think about what that means for implicit bias. Time to talk about that too!