Question
9-9a Unconscious Bias The deaths of African Americans at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, and other states in recent years have brought the
9-9a
Unconscious Bias
The deaths of African Americans at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, and other states in recent years have brought the debate about racial bias in the United States to the forefront. Blatant and active discrimination in the workplace is not as big a problem as in the past, but subtle, and often unconscious, bias is still a big problem in organizations.Unconscious biasoccurs when a person is not aware of the bias in his or her favorable and unfavorable assessments, actions, and decisions toward members of specific groups. As noted, some sociologists and psychologists have proposed that people have innate biases and, left to their own devices, they will automatically discriminate.Unconscious bias theorysuggests that white males, for example, will inevitably slight women and minorities because people's decisions are influenced by unconscious bias.Consider the following findings related to unconscious bias:
- When researchers mailed thousands of similar rsums, some with stereotypically black names (such as Jamal or Lakisha) and some with stereotypically white names (such as Greg or Emily), to companies with job openings, the rsums with white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to result in a request for an interview.
- Research has found that women who come to the emergency room with a stroke wait 15 percent longer than men to get brain imaging, even when they have similar symptoms, and severely injured women are 15 percent less likely than severely injured men to be sent from a nontrauma hospital to a trauma center.
- Doctors who were shown patient histories and asked to make decisions about heart disease were much less likely to recommend cardiac catheterization (a helpful procedure) to black patients, even when their medical histories were statistically identical to those of white patients. After a stroke diagnosis, women are up to 30 percent less likely than men to be given one of the main treatment drugs.
- Several studies have found that e-mail messages with stereotypically black names sent in response to apartment rental ads on Craigslist get fewer responses than ones with white-sounding names.
- Studies of state legislators have found that white legislators in both political parties are less likely to respond to constituents with African American-sounding names.
1)Answer the following:
a.In your own word, what is unconscious bias?
b.Provide an original example of unconscious bias.
c.Provide a research-based example of unconscious bias based on section 9-9a
d.Knowing that all human beings are vulnerable to unconscious bias (of some sort - as you read, this is not disputable), what can you do to minimize its negative impact?
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