Week 2: Unconscious Challenges & Otherness

Week 2: Unconscious Challenges & Otherness > The Brain Can Be Surprising (15 min.) > Video: Unconscious Bias

• First we’re going to start with unconscious bias.
• Deepali, what do you know about unconscious bias? Hi, everyone.
• So unconscious biases are these automatic associations we make about people, or groups of people.
• They’re based on our upbringing, our family, culture, society, but what’s interesting about unconscious biases is that we don’t control them, and we’re not aware of them.
• Everyone, all over the world, is constantly sifting through these unconscious biases and applying them all the time.
• So unconscious bias affects us in our lives, but sometimes it’s especially apparent in workplace situations, especially around recruitment.
• The only difference was in the names they chose.
• They intentionally chose names that were associated with certain ethnic backgrounds.
• Forty percent of the non-white sounding names, so the Chinese, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, 40% of those names got a call back for interviews.
• In comparison, 70% of the white sounding names got a call back for interviews.
• The only visible obvious difference in these resumes or CVs was the name on the top.
• In this case, for the recruiters, the decision-making, and the behavior was the callback for the interviews, and there was a significant difference in the white versus the non-white sounding names.
• So when people applied via CVs and resumes, that’s when they had the white discrepancy.
• They also had to apply via employee forms, online forms, and that really made the recruiters focus just on the job characteristics and the skills, instead of people’s names.
• So when people submitted via the online forms, there was no difference in the call back for non-white and white sounding names.
• That’s amazing, so you’re really talking about similar CVs, again going back to your earlier point, the Chinese, Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, non-white sounding names, along with the white sounding names, were submitted through two different methods, right? One is where the name is right up staring at you, and the second one is the employer form where the recruiters are forced to focus on the skills, or the characteristics that directly relate to the job versus the name of the person.