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The Whispers of Bias that Distort Our Thinking

Like a whisper from behind, bias started to come into my consciousness. At first I didn’t recognize its voice. Quiet and small, hard to pick out from the other noise.

It arrived last week while I was comparing a survey questionnaire that Ignite 360 had fielded to the prior year’s version, executed by a different firm. A question in the prior survey (on the left in the image below) had a very limited range of answers for race and ethnicity. It was very restrictive and didn’t allow for the complexity of how people identify today. And yet that’s how the question had been fielded for 8 years of this tracker study.

A year ago I heard about a different way of looking at the way this question is set up during an industry conference presentation. We took the guidance of the Insights Association and evolved the question and answer options. Looking at the image below and thinking about people you know in your life, it might be easier see both them and yourself in the 2024 version on the right.

More accurate and inclusive concepts of understanding race and identity aren’t new, yet it took time for the industry to adapt. Typically when writing a survey, those demographic and screening questions are the same in every survey so there’s a lot of cutting and pasting. This can create a Status Quo Bias and may be the explanation for the lack of updating the answer options. It had always been done that way, from 2016 until 2023. If we don’t bring a critical eye to things that have “always been done that way,” we risk letting bias turn into prejudice and judgment. It’s always worth revisiting and re-evaluating.

In this same working session, the whisper I was hearing got louder when I noticed that veterans had been omitted from the analysis plan (a document which identifies the audience sub-groups we would be analyzing when the data comes in). We had been deliberate in including a question to verify veteran status this year and yet it didn’t make the cut in the initial plan to analyze the work. Another example of status quo bias as we don’t usually have that sub-group catalogued let alone analyzed in most corporate research. For this study, which includes an exploration of mental health in the workplace, it felt like a gap to close. So we did.

The next morning the whisper behind me turned into a full-throated voice as I read an interview with Isabella Rossellini in the New York Times. The profile itself was fascinating and then, toward the end, she turned the tables on the interviewer, questioning the reporter’s bias that was appearing in the questions. The stereotype that Rossellini spotted was that a woman can’t be happy without a man in her life. An old trope to be sure and it informed a series of slightly veiled questions that gave Rossellini pause. Stereotypes are another form of bias, as is confirmation bias, which is when you look for the data that confirms your pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses.

Whether bias is the voice we hear in our mind or the rose-colored glasses we sport to make the world conform to how we want to see it, the prevalence of bias and how it hardens into prejudice is something to be on the lookout for.

Bias and expressions of prejudice often show up as ‘being judgmental’ — that behavior we need to dismantle as Step 1 in The 5 Steps to Empathy™. There are evolutionary factors that hard wire us to judge and have created different types of bias within us. If we have truly evolved over the millennia, then we should be able to turn on the self-awareness of our own thoughts and actions to acknowledge and see our bias. I believe that’s part of what was happening to me this past week. I was becoming more aware of the bias that surrounds us, and bias that I carry myself.

The culture we live in, the images and messages we consume, the communities we live in, all condition us and shape our perceptions and judgments, programming bias into us from an early age. The path out of this can be education and exposing ourselves to diverse experiences. For this to be successful though, take that curious breath and be open to learning without judgment.

There is bias in the machines as a controversy in the AI community has revealed bias programmed into a generative language models. It’s being written into the code through the existing bias of the programmers and it’s also learning bias based on the data it is training on.

Chat GPT4 has trained on everything that’s on the internet since it’s inception until about this time last year. Now, consider what it sees in humanity - everything we are capable of, both good and bad. Stereotypes reinforced and old ways of thinking that aren’t recognized for their evolution over 30+ years. Consider how that might subtly inform it’s responses. For example, early last year, DALL-E was queried to show an image of a competent leader and a nice leader. The image generated for the competent leader was a man while the nice leader was depicted as female. That’s bias coming through. Informed by history but not reflective of where the world is today or where it is going. Inadvertent, yes, but there it was. A message sent to anyone who got that response, reinforcing old tropes.

In those micro moments, and we are exposed to thousands of them every day, whether in human interaction, our thoughts, media consumption or machine-based contexts, bias is present. Strengthening the critical thinking and awareness that can recognize and challenge biases will help overcome them and reduce their propagation.

Another example of bias in AI happened with the team at Google working on it’s AI product, named Gemini. Mindful of minimizing bias like that DALL-E query revealed and looking to present a more contemporary reflection of society today and where it may be headed, the team made some adjustments which effective programmed bias into the AI. The result to queries asking for images of people who are members of certain groups like Nazis, were presented as more ethnically diverse than historically accurate. Right idea to reflect a more diverse society but the execution needs some help. As the article points out, Google has gone back to make some fixes.

Bias doesn’t always show up with volume turned up loud like it did with Gemini. Keep your ears tuned for it in the voice and action of others as well as yourself. Provide yourself and others grace as they recognize bias and rewire their neural pathways. Dismantle bias through awareness, education and critical thinking to get to the other side where understanding is more easily achieved.

Q&A: My kid is more empathetic than I am? What do I do???

Congratulations on having someone so well attuned to others in your house! It’s a gift that can serve you both well in the years to come. To start, help your child understand and set boundaries. One of them is that being empathetic doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice yourself, or even agree with the other person. There are ways to support people in need that don’t involve giving the proverbial shirt off your back. Another useful skill will be to help them recognize when empathy might be ruling their decision making and encourage combining the head and the heart to make an informed decision.

An example of this that I shared while recording a podcast the other morning: if I gave money every time I saw a commercial about saving the unwanted cats and dogs, I soon wouldn’t have enough money to pay my bills which would get me into trouble. Instead, I recognize that animals need our help and so I look at our household budget and decide how much I can contribute without putting my own financial security at jeopardy. After all, if I’m unable to make a living because I’ve given it all away, it will prevent me from being able to give more away in the future.

Finally, use your child’s gift as an opportunity to strengthen your own empathy skills. Try to see the world through their eyes, whether they are taking on the perspective of another or feeling someone’s feelings. It might help you strengthen your own empathy muscle.

Brace for Election Stress Disorder

Like it or not, we are in a big election year. At Ignite 360 we recently conducted the latest round of interviews with the Navigating to a New Normal participants. This cycle we had a conversation about how they’d like to be talked to should their side be the losing side this year. I’ll share more next time, including some video clips. In the meantime, how would you answer the question: “What do you expect you’ll hear from someone you know who supports the other side should their side win the election? What would you want them to say?”

In the meantime, this piece in the New York Times explores the reluctant path to acceptance of the presidential re-match and explains the concept of Election Stress Disorder which many people experienced in 2020. Psychologists expect it’s going to be experienced “on steroids” this year.

Have You Visited This Lonely Planet?

The Pentagon released the results of a study looking into decades of research into UFOs and UAPs - flying saucers and little green men - and came up with…

…nothing.

That’s right, no credible evidence of being visited or of a crash site.

In a clear example in myself of confirmation bias and belief perseverance, I thought to myself “well of course they aren’t going to say we aren’t alone” and I immediately dismissed the findings of the study. It disrupts my world view just like Chris’ world view would be disrupted if they accepted that school shootings were real.

Last summer it appeared to me, that the government was slow-walking out the fact that we are not alone. After all, as I wrote about in this newsletter, what’s one more existential crisis thrown into the buffet of angst we’re living through in this 21st century?

What do you think?

Is There More Good or Bad in the World?

While writing the main piece in this week’s newsletter, I got curious about what AI thinks of human kind based on what it has learned so far. I asked GPT4 to do a SWOT analysis on the human race. I then asked about our chances of survival. Finally, I queried if there was more good or bad in human kind based on what it had been trained on.

Here’s the summation of the answer…

It was a very inconclusive answer which I imagine is a bias written into the programming. It’s not here in this clip but I noticed it kept referencing “our survival” which it seemed to be including itself in. Does GPT4 think it’s human? Or was it programmed to believe that? I’ll stop and not go down that rabbit hole. I was relieved to see empathy included as an important attribute that can help us survive and make the world a better place. Let’s get on it!

If you’d like to see the full SWOT analysis, let me know…

I hope you liked this edition.

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Reading Between the Lines delivers of-the-moment insights into empathy and human behavior; expect practical tips on using the skill of empathy in everyday life and exclusive updates to keep my community close. All on a biweekly basis.