How does implicit bias influence behaviour?

We don’t often actively think about our attitudes and beliefs. We take a lot for granted in terms of our general functioning. Once we have undergone unconscious bias eLearning, however, we come to accept that many aspects of our behaviour are “hard-wired” to these unconscious drivers.

If we look at the meaning of the word implicit, we can understand more about implicit bias. When something is implicit, it is inherently there, underlying everything else. We do not recognise it in our conscious mind as implicit.

It never directly surfaces within our thinking because the conscious perceives it as so obvious. For this reason, when something is implicit, we tend not to question it at all. It’s like having an unshakable understanding of ourselves about our biases. They are tried and tested. A formula for life that we come to trust and we think has served us well.

Self-help

The tricky part of addressing implicit bias in how it influences our behaviour is this element of absolute faith in what our unconscious indicates within the conscious mind. We tend to have no doubts at all about adopting these prompts and directives, for instance, choices, decisions, and interpretations. Automatically, we think we are right, and it’s very difficult to move away from our inclinations to have total harmony within ourselves created by this happy synchronisation between the unconscious and conscious.

Unconscious bias online training will make it clear that with this understanding of implicit bias, we will need to ready ourselves almost to do battle within ourselves to unlock this wiring. This unconditional acceptance of information flowing into the conscious will need to be challenged with validation, facts, and myriad other strategies to allow us to behave in a way that is more aligned with our aspirations than our natural tendencies.

Diversity training unconscious bias brings into focus the barriers to achieving alignment with our more choices in respect of values, principles, and general growth aligned to positive behaviour in support of fairness, justice, and equality for all. Because implicit bias influences behaviour so directly and powerfully, we must recognise that changing our behaviour is a formidable challenge.

Recovery

Bullying prevention training online will also give us important insights into the difficulties involved and how to address power imbalances appropriately. If the unconscious is advocating extremely intolerable behaviour and choices, forceful and immediate remedial action is required. Like an alcoholic, once we can admit that what we are doing is actually damaging to ourselves and others, we must get treatment. If our implicit bias behaviour is milder, it may be okay to try to change more gradually through strategies such as increased awareness, mindfulness, checking in with others to get their opinion, etc.

Beyond external checks in the organisation measuring inclusion, we need to establish our own self-monitory mechanisms, much like an early warning system. One of the best ways to do this is to constantly check with ourselves if we see and treat people as individuals free of stereotypes. When we catch ourselves in generalisation mode, that is when we know to stop. We must then actively engage with more information to reshape and adjust our perspective that naturally flows from expanding our input sources. 

We will know we are winning against negative aspects of implicit bias when we begin to have a broader range of friends or people we care about from amongst a diverse group of people and when we begin to see more positive aspects of their uniqueness, courage, and value. The more we want to be “tuned in” to ourselves and others, the greater will be the counteractive force to implicit bias dictates.