Season 3, Episode 11: Exploring Our Biases

Rosanna 0:16
Hello and welcome to season three, Episode 11 of the relentless pursuit podcast “Exploring Our Biases.”

Jordan 0:23
Yeah, so going into this conversation, I’ll admit up front that I feel a little nervous or hesitant going into it, because first of all, no one really for being honest, like wants to admit that they have biases, and so we’ll do some of that admitting today. But it also is just a topic that’s very, it’s, it’s very rife with, I would say, like, with stress, and with, you know, feeling judged from all different kinds of people. And I just I, I think our, our approach here is just to be really sincere, and just to explore what biases we have in the quest of hopefully becoming a little bit more aware and ultimately becoming better people.

Rosanna 1:06
Someone recently asked me like, how do you determine the content and the topics for your podcast? And I told them, you know, we just actually, sometimes we’re just talking and having a conversation, we’re like, oh, this would be a great episode for the podcast. And we’d like write it down in our Notes app. Right. So –

Jordan 1:18
So these are all based off of conversations that we’ve had. And then these are, the shows themselves are real conversations, we’re exploring these things.

Rosanna 1:26
But when you brought up this idea, I think we like had seven or eight, like right off the bat. And then this was one of the ones you proposed, and I was like, ooh, I don’t want to talk about that. But I think after just if you think about the last year, with whether it’s like political, whether Democrat or Republican, right, searching for the truth, and candidates and what they stand for, or, you know, what’s happening in like, the black community or in the Asian community, and all of these kind of racially heightened tensions and, and killings and all of that, like, I get, I realized that it is important to talk about these things and bias and where it comes from and what we believe to be true and, and really pushing back and challenging ourselves to like, examine, what is bias? Do we have some and being okay to acknowledge that it’s there?

Jordan 2:12
Yeah. So before we get into it, I want to make sure that we are not committing the Dunning Kruger effect. Are you familiar with this?

Rosanna 2:22
Tell me more.

Jordan 2:22
The Dunning Kruger effect is when you learn a little bit about a topic, and you feel like since you know a little bit, the topic seems really simple and comprehensible. And you almost oversimplify it, because of your actual ignorance about what everything includes.

Rosanna 2:40
I feel like I’m claiming that I know nothing about this topic, that we’re just having this conversation as a way to, like, really get more acclimated to like, what what this topic is about, and, you know, kind of giving a taste to our audience to get them to like, really experience this conversation, and then get them to search and learn more.

Jordan 2:57
Yeah, so I wanted to bring that up, because that’s a type of bias. And I think that that’s the case here, where we’re really just, you know, just learning about this, and just exploring this together. So, for anyone listening, we invite you along with us, hopefully, you can learn a little bit from us as well. But this is maybe the beginning or the continuation of your own exploration of how you want to learn more about bias and confront some of your own. So why are we talking about that? I heard this quote from Verna Myers, she gave a TED talk. She’s a, I believe, she said, diversity consultant. But she said, “Stop trying to be good people, we need real people.” And that struck me because I think we want to talk about this, because we imagine that we are good people. And that’s I think part of our quest, in a sense is to like become better and better versions of ourselves. And, you know, I think there’s a point where we kind of want to tell ourselves that we already are a good person. And I would agree with that.

Rosanna 4:09
Sure right. Like we don’t Yeah, we don’t rob banks, we don’t hold up people at gunpoint, like, we don’t do these bad things.

Jordan 4:14
We’re nice to people who you know, we interact with and so on. But I kind of don’t want to stop there. And I think that’s where the second half of our quote comes in. Like, we need real people. So we’re going to be real. And a portion of that is acknowledging our weaknesses. And I think along with it, acknowledging our biases, as well. So we’ll get to more applications. But that’s really like one of the applications that we’ll touch upon at the end is just the idea of being real.

Rosanna 4:43
So why do you think it’s hard to talk even just like we bring up the topic bias and like you and I already like, kind of uncomfortable and feeling like we might say something wrong, and people might take it the wrong way. Like why do you think that is?

Jordan 4:55
I think there’s a few reasons. For one, we like it. Like we already imagine ourselves as good people. So if we were to open up and be vulnerable about some degree of weakness or shortcoming that we have then that, that kind of flies in the face of who we think we already are. And I also think the idea of being judged as well, right? Like if someone were to admit, like, I’m biased against, like these types of people,

Rosanna 5:28
Old people. Uneducated people

Jordan 5:30
Year you can fill in the blank with with anything, then, right then that, that opens us up to the scrutiny of others. And that’s really uncomfortable to, so it’s a little bit easier just not to broach it and not with ourselves and not with others, and almost pretend like it doesn’t exist, so that we can maybe more easily get along. Meanwhile, bias persists and nothing has really been solved.

Rosanna 5:56
Okay? Right? So if we’re not really talking about it, or even acknowledging it, right, like we’re not held accountable, and then we’re not growing or getting better in any way. We’re basically just hiding some of our deficiencies – for lack of a better term.

Jordan 6:10
Yeah. Well, and also like being labeled as biased or being labeled as racist, it carries with it some very real consequences as well. I mean, people are losing careers, and they’re losing reputations. There’s, there’s really a lot at stake. I mean, so I’ll just put it out there from now like, I’m biased, I’m racist, I don’t want to be. So I’m going to kind of get the denial out of the way, so that I can actually try to make progress in these areas.

Rosanna 6:38
Well, that reminds me of our book club episode in season two, we read by Ibram X Kendi, How to be an Anti-Racist. And in the book, you know, he is a black man. And he discusses, like, I have done and said and thought racist things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m a racist, right? So you can do bias things and not necessarily always be biased. So it’s like kind of checking yourself checking your attitude, checking your interactions at the door, and calling them what they are in doing better than next time that you don’t have to be in this like fixed state of holding things against people. Right. All right. So should we define what bias is?

Jordan 7:16
It’s my favorite part of every show. You got to break out the definition.

Rosanna 7:20
Alright. So bias is the tendency tendency to favor one thing over another. Which if you think about like that definition, like that shouldn’t scare us into having this conversation. Because scientists who study human behavior, say that bias is a natural normal tendency, and believe that it is a human survival defense mechanism. Therefore, everybody is biased, right? So like, you shouldn’t have to be afraid to say I’m biased, right? Or I shouldn’t have to be able to be afraid to say I’m biased. Because the same as nature, we are all biased, every single one of us.

Jordan 7:50
It’s just a part of a natural part of human psychology.

Rosanna 7:52
So you know, here’s the question, what types of things do people favor? If you boil this down to like a very basic understanding or a very basic level, we favor certain flavors, right?

Jordan 8:04
Favor the flavor.

Rosanna 8:04
Favor the flavor, certain colors, certain textures, certain sports, maybe even certain cities or teams. But people don’t get bent out of shape over that, right? Like you like a chocolate shake. And even though I love chocolate, I like a vanilla shake, right? Like that’s, that’s what I favor. But most biases, therefore harmless, the problem doesn’t come from favoring a certain music or food, people will most likely admit that it’s when we have biases against other people.

Jordan 8:35
When it’s directed towards people, yeah.

Rosanna 8:38
So that’s kind of, you know, kind of a little bit about bias. I know you have this quote here from a time interview in 2019, do you want to kind of really just plays along with what I’ve just said.

Jordan 8:49
Yeah it is fun to read about this. So the quote that I have is that the, “the brain needs to sort everything, the food, we eat, the furniture, we use, whatever, we also sort people and that sorting can lead to bias. Once we have categories we have beliefs, and feelings about what’s in those categories.” And that’s by Jennifer Eberhardt. In a time interview from 2019, and a lot of what we quote, we’ll try to make sure that we provide links in the show notes for all of you if you want to check out a little bit more. It was fun just reading and exploring a lot about what’s been said about it. Another thing that I’ve heard too and so this, this, the brain needs to categorize things we can’t otherwise we really suffer from decision fatigue when we have to like scrutinize every individual sensory input from the ground up, right. So our brain creates these shortcuts. So we can come to conclusions a little faster. But when it pertains to people, and we are taking a unique human individual and then placing them into a predetermined category that creates problems. I also heard bias described as not necessarily as a way to categorize things, but as a way as a way to connect things and so like someone made the statement that when I say jelly, your mind most likely is going to be connected to peanut butter. And so like we automatically draw different kinds of connections between all kinds of things. And it’s, it’s just because like those, those two, peanut butter and jelly don’t really have anything in common with one another except that culturally, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is, at least for me, like a staple of my classroom lunch times growing up. And so it’s natural at someone growing up in that environment would make that connection. And so you got to think about what other connections now when we bring in, you know, a human element, whether it’s their skin color, or their age, or their race, or…

Rosanna 10:46
Class or religion, right, so it’s the association that we’re making with whatever that object or person is. And so would you say that biases are inherent? Or do you think that they’re learned? Or is a little bit of both?

Jordan 11:01
Well, this is that I don’t know if I can answer that question. Because like, on the one hand, we’re saying that, like, biases are like natural human is a natural part of human psychology. But on the other hand, I’ve heard biases described as kind of like this, this invisible fog that we all breathe in. So it’s, it’s kind of in the environment. And I don’t want to say like, it’s, it’s, it’s like, I guess they could be explicitly taught, I’m sure there are some if we were to scrutinize ourselves enough, but at the same time, like, it’s almost like, it’s a way of thinking that we probably would even, it would even be hard for us to admit to ourselves that we’re thinking in that way, but it kind of manifests in certain actions or, or certain decisions. So it’s so yes, like, it’s both like it can be taught because of the way like some of those statements or actions are manifesting those underlying biases. But at the same time, that, like, our mind is going to make connections in one form or another.

Rosanna 12:18
So are there varying sorts of biases? Or is it just like you’re just bias like there’s an overall bias? Or is there kind of a breakdown of different ways that people are biased or things can be kind of deconstructed?

Jordan 12:30
Yes, there’s a lot – Well, first, we can list like, we’ve already started to list like some of the different, like, categories, or like ways bias can be directed towards different people, I guess what it breaks down to is, for one, anyone who’s different from you, right, we tend to favor ourselves and people like us. So the more different I like in literature, and like sociology, you talk about “the other,” or the person kind of outside groups, so we can talk about that. But then also, like, what you find is that like, there are sort of these these implicit biases that reach a cultural level, where even if you’re in that group, you still may have negative biases towards others in that group, too. Okay. So what I’m saying is like, you can have racial bias, you could have bias against someone’s gender, someone’s gender identity, so against someone’s age against someone’s body shape. There’s a long Actually, I didn’t print out a list, but there is and I’ll references again, at the end to there’s an Implicit Association test you can take. And it actually like lists, these different categories, you can actually take a it’s called a touch test. And you can see, at least according to this test, how biased you are towards these different groups of people,

Rosanna 13:54
And it will calculate that for you. Like, based on what you –

Jordan 13:57
Yeah, it calculates, as best as you can. I’ll describe the test later. So we’ll put a link to that in our show notes, too. It’s pretty interesting. So let me walk you through a few different types of biases that we can have. The first one is the maybe one of the bigger ones is confirmation bias. So this is this is a really insidious kind of bias because when we hold a particular belief or perspective, then we tend to find the facts that confirm our belief or perspective. Okay, right. Okay. Right. So if you look like back, and you’re like, let’s go just go back to the stories we tell ourselves. Like, we can be like, Oh, I am a would you say like an athletic person. Maybe somebody believes that about themselves, then the way they look back at their life is they remember a lot of the highlights of their athletic experiences that can reinforce to them that fact. It works negatively to where someone might say, I’m not that athletic of a person, they look back and look at the lowlights of that to even if they have had identical experiences. Or if you have one person who’s religious and one person who’s not religious, like, they can look at the same experience, and one person can say, like, Oh, I know, I attribute what happened. and you know, that’s from God. And the other person might look at that and be like, no, like, this is this is how I interpret like, so you’re going to interpret in facts along the lines of what you already believe. So this, it relates to a lot of different things. And so it’s, if we were to apply it to people, like you might say, like, say, if you have a, a, an existing implicit bias towards a specific racial group, let’s just say. So a confirmation bias would be if you were to see someone from that racial group engage in some kind of behavior that you would is negative, or Yeah, you disapprove of, or you have already connected with it, then you would use that to be like, see, like, that confirms my perspective.

Rosanna 16:05
All this kind of people do this.

Jordan 16:06
Exactly. Even if it’s not true, or you’re misinterpreting what’s actually taking place or what not. The next one, I have a list here, I’ll try to go a little faster through these. There’s a self serving bias, which is attributing success – so anytime we personally experience success – we attribute that to our own skills, like we can take responsibility for the successes that we experience. But the failures we experience are attributed to other factors.

Rosanna 16:39
Never you’re never because you did something wrong or didn’t deserve it. It’s because your boss hates you, or because you didn’t, yeah, yeah, somebody else’s problem. Okay.

Jordan 16:48
So then there’s the going along with it is the fundamental attribution error, which is the I you know, I may be oversimplifying this, but it’s the opposite of the self serving bias. When we, when someone else exhibits a flaw of some kind, we blame it on them on like, their personal character or attributes. And when someone else experiences the success, we attribute it to environmental factors and not that person.

Rosanna 17:13
So we don’t want to give them the credit, right? We want to give them all of the faults. Awesome. Great.

Jordan 17:18
So an example that I read about this is drivers, let’s say there’s someone who’s driving kind of like, slowly or erratically. And you know, there’s, there’s some critique that you have, and then you drive, you’re able to pass them up, and you can see who it actually is, like, we then like place, whatever driving flaw we witnessed, like, I’m like them personally.

Rosanna 17:40
Because it’s a woman, because it’s an old person who can’t see over the street like, right, and doesn’t

Jordan 17:45
matter who it is, we come up with a reason for it. It’s a woman, it’s like, it’s pesky, like woman driver, or if it’s a teen, this punk kid, if it’s, you know, it’s just a white guy, like this arrogant, you know, you know, prude, like whatever the case may be, you can come up with a reason.

Rosanna 18:02
We’re not just blaming the fact that that person is a bad driver.

Jordan 18:06
That’s because of their category. There’s also in group bias, which I referenced a little bit of its failure favoring those who are most like you. There’s the curse of knowledge, which I thought was interesting. I never thought about it like this before this is true. Once we know something, then we assume others know it, too. And we pretty quickly forget about the time when we didn’t know it.

Rosanna 18:35
So because we’re older and wiser. Because you’ve experienced it, or we’ve gone through it, like…

Jordan 18:42
We forget there wasy a time we didn’t know that information. So we just assume everybody must know this. There’s the optimism pessimism bias, which we over, we overestimate outcomes based on our mood. So if we’re feeling really good, we tend to be overly optimistic about an outcome. And if we’re kind of in a cruddy mood, then we become overly pessimistic.

Rosanna 19:02
And that’s the type of bias? I never really thought about this.

Jordan 19:04
This is all coming from a list I found on Psychology Today. Published a few years ago, there’s the decline bias. Now, we’ve talked about this too, I think when we’re talking about kids, but it’s favoring the way things used to be over the way things are or we project that they will be. So we’re always talking about the good old days, and remembering, like, kind of crystallizing the way things were. And then projecting some kind of decline. And that’s I mean, you can track this over 1000s of years, people have always said like, things are going down the tubes. Alright, so those are different types of bias.

Rosanna 19:25
And you know what, I don’t mean to make light because we’re kind of like laughing at some of these. But I think the reason why I’m kind of laughing at some of them is because I’m guilty of, if not all of them, pretty much most of them. And sometimes when you realize how silly it sounds, and how silly you’re being like it’s like laugh cry at that point, you either have to like cry because you’re so guilty or laugh like, Oh my gosh, like I’m an idiot, right?

Are there any of those that we could say like, oh, that doesn’t apply to me?

No, I’m no, I’m pretty sure. I’m guilty of all of them.

Jordan 20:10
Yeah. And so like, Oh, you know those again, like, as we examine human psychology, these are pretty natural defaults that we have. So we think it’s interesting, you could come up and there’s even an even longer list I didn’t even list all of them. So there’s, there’s all these shortcuts that our brain takes or all these avenues that it tends to want to go down. And again, like a lot of it might be innocuous, but a lot of it, especially when we attribute it to the people that we encounter can become rather harmful.

Rosanna 20:42
I mean, that’s hard to me, or hard for me to hear. Because I think something that we’ve talked about, and this is probably well in season one is I love to hear people’s stories. And I love to hear about where they come from, and like learn about what they think and how they feel just because I’m genuinely interested. But when we do things like this, and put people in categories, and then like exclude people, because of these categories, or our associations with these categories, we’re like, missing out on this, like greater human experience, this greater human story. And I feel like that’s kind of what’s at stake with this conversation. Like if we can’t openly and honestly say like, yeah, I’m totally biased, not because I want to be, but because I just, you let your mind think the same way as always thought, and you’re not, you know, you’re on autopilot. And so it’s easier just to kind of continue forward than it is to like, pause at the yield sign, look around, take a breath, like, really examine what’s really going on before proceeding.

Jordan 21:39
So, you know, and the, there’s a lot of stuff like this, you know, some of these sometimes we think about like maybe a smaller interaction. And, you know, if whether we’re biased or not maybe that that small, single interaction doesn’t have a lot of bearing on life or on society. But for one, these, these add up, and especially for people who may be in certain demographic groups that are more subject to bias, like, and that’s why it’s, it’s a little harder for me to talk about, because I feel like, and I’ve been asked the question like, Can you name times in your life that you felt like you were subject to bias? It honestly, like, it is hard for me to think of those times. And I’m sure there are, but I’m looking back and being like, actually, I guess, at least in regards to this, like, I’ve had a pretty good.

Rosanna 22:35
well, you are a privileged individual for a variety of reasons.

Jordan 22:40
Right? Being a really good looking white? Yeah,

Rosanna 22:44
I don’t know, not the right episode for charming people.

Jordan 22:45
Okay. But yeah, but being like a white guy, it’s, I have difficulty putting myself in the position of someone who, you know, I really might deal with or be the recipient of others negative biases on a daily basis. But that’s why I think it’s even like, it’s even more like, on my shoulders to acknowledge that and to be proactive, because, you know, I could continue to coast and autopilot and just be like, yeah, life is great, it’s great for me, it must be great for everyone else to where that’s not really the case. And if there’s something more positive that I can contribute, that I want to know what that is, and do it.

Rosanna 23:25
But I mean, it’s not just your race, either the class that you’re born into the access and the education that you have, I mean, how many degrees do you have? Right? Some people don’t even get the chance to pursue one and you have three, you know. So it’s, it’s that it’s, you know, even freedom to, you know, exercise any kind of religious belief or non belief, like, it didn’t even matter, like you have had the opportunity to like be who you are in an environment that accepts you for who you are. And some people don’t have that. And, you know, yeah, I mean, you’re straight, and you’re married, and you have a family, right? So those are all things that people like, lumped into this good category, whereas anyone that deviates from that is not always in that same category.

Jordan 24:06
Yeah. And so, you know, and then there are bigger consequences that come as a result of that, too. And you think about I think about like the in group bias, for example, right? We tend to favor people who are like us. So you know, for those of us who may be in a position, a position of hiring others, then we kind of think about if we look at the array of candidates, well, is it more likely, even without are intending it to be that the candidates who are more like us tend to rise to the top, you know, is the likelihood of them getting hired more likely? And so and when you can think about that and array of categories too where there’s an opening for some degree of opportunity, who wields the controls to grant the access to those opportunities and who is left out?

Rosanna 24:57
Okay. I think, and this may be I don’t want it to sound ignorant.

Jordan 25:03
But I think I think we already do, let’s just get it out there.

Rosanna 25:07
But as we talked about this, like when we talk about like positions and candidates or jobs, or even like, where we buy things, or how we buy things, you know, we want, right, kind of like you want the best of the best when you do all of those things. So, is the goal to hire the best? Or is the goal to be diverse? Is the goal to be inclusive? Like, if, you know, candidates, A and B are different, and one is better than the other? Who do you give the job to? The best? Or do you? Right, like, Are you trying to be diverse? Like, I guess I wouldn’t know like, what what the right answer is in that situation?

Jordan 25:47
Yeah I think it’s a fair question to and and I don’t have an answer, what comes to mind is also thinking to like, you know, one, like can’t your, you know, minority candidate also be the best? But like, what does it do for your overall organization at the same time, if you have everyone who can acts the same thinks the same, versus having, you know, diverser organizations that word “diverser,” or a more diverse, diverse organization? So I feel like that helps in the the organization and in you know, other ways than what can maybe be so strictly broken down quantitatively on paper.

Rosanna 26:28
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that’s, that’s fair, for anybody listening to a conversation like this is like, you know, consider what your organization needs, or consider what your school needs are what like what kids need to see and factor that in as a high level of importance, in terms of like, the people around you, right? Like that you, you can you can coach anybody into anything. And so like, like, what what do you want people to see? Do you want them to see someone that looks like everybody else? Do you want them to feel inclusive and a part of it, like, I think those things are important. But for a long time, those weren’t important, those were kind of scary or different. And so now, like, I think we just have to open our eyes to that, that that is important, right?

Jordan 27:09
And just a brief aside about ignorance too like, if we if we don’t already sound ignorant, then we will just lay it out there that we even feel rather ignorant about this. I was reading a book The other day, and it said that actually, the the greatest scientific discovery of the last few 100 years was our own ignorance, right, we used to think we had it all figured out just as human civilization. But once we kind of acknowledged that there’s more to learn then that’s where we really saw growth. And so I think that that’s working right now, too, I hope, like I can acknowledge that. There’s a lot that we don’t know, and a lot to continue to explore. But that is going to lead to our growth, rather than just feeling like we already figured it out a long time ago, and things are fine.

Rosanna 27:54
I can’t imagine that anybody thinks that they figured anything out in this life. Like the older I get, like, the more I feel like I don’t know, and the things that I thought were so sure are so understandable or not. And so and maybe that is a result of like questioning why I believe the things I believe or how I feel towards those things, or you know, what I’ve been taught that doesn’t really sit right with me anymore. And so I think that’s a great challenge from this conversation is like, you got to stop and ask yourself some of those questions.

Jordan 28:25
So I have a list here of because I literally like have run this search. I’ve run it a number of times, I’ve read, you know, a bunch of books and articles and things to try to help me answer this question. Or it’s not a question, I guess, but a statement like how to overcome bias. All right. So we’re sitting here we’re talking like alright, all these biases exist. It’s really no crime to say like I am biased because that’s like the same as saying I am human. But we tend to hide that. So how do we acknowledge our bias and then how do we overcome it? So I have a list here –

Rosanna 29:04
okay, in my mind, sorry. Maybe this is an aside and it’s kind of silly because when we were talking about bias at the beginning, it was like we have a preference for flavors and tastes and all of that and so when you when you ask that question like how do we overcome it you know, I was thinking about you and pizza on Friday nights

Jordan 29:22
Myy positive disposition towards pizza.

Rosanna 29:23
Your positive disposition towards pizza because Friday night is takeout night or it became takeout night during COVID to support local and all of that and we’ve we’ve carried that on God bless I have I love how one less night to cook but let’s listen –

Jordan 29:35
I’ve gorge on on greasy food is is you know, we code by saying support local.

Rosanna 29:42
You know, your your preference every Friday night is pizza. And while I don’t mind pizza, like I don’t want pizza every Friday night. And so like you know, you have that predisposition to like pizza and want to enjoy it. And I think if we’re trying to overcome bias, then it’s sometimes it’s not about what you want, it’s about considering others and what they want? Or what’s beneficial for everyone.

You’re telliong me you don’t want pizza this Friday?

Yes. But that’s kind of my thought is like, we need to step outside of ourselves more often, instead of thinking we know best, or that we need to pursue what we want first.

Jordan 30:17
Alright, so this wasn’t first on my list, but I’m gonna list it here anyway. So one of the just going off that one of the recommendations, and I’m listing these almost as, like action points for us, okay. And for anyone listening that’s inspired by any of these. So the first one is to have a growth mindset. So there’s a researcher, Carol Dweck, I think she was from Stanford, kind of coined this term growth mindset. And she contrasted it to fixed mindset. And growth mindset is basically the posture of I have more to learn. And, and I’m capable of learning it. And the fixed mindset is that it was saying, like I am I,

Rosanna 30:58
I am not a morning person, right? But I could be.

Jordan 31:02
It’s a, it’s a strict way of defining yourself kind of closing yourself off to more knowledge and more growth. So I thought this was really interesting. But we tend to have a fixed mindset when it comes to how we think about and engage our, our biases. And we tend to be fixed and saying the kinds of statements like oh, “I don’t have biases,” or “I’m colorblind.” And because that’s, that’s a very safe thing to say, like, it’s, it’s safe to say, I don’t have biases, or I’m not acting on my biases, because then one, we confirm who we are –

Rosanna 31:44
Through bias, confirmation bias, right?

Jordan 31:46
Right, we’re confirming that we are a good person, right? We don’t have these character defects. But it also like, I think it makes us a little bit more comfortable as well, like, it’s, it’s uncomfortable to admit that you have something to work on. So anyway, so that’s one of the suggestions is just to have a growth mindset be like, look like, I am not a perfect person. I have my biases, but I’m working on them,

Rosanna 32:19
And then actually work on them.

Jordan 32:20
And actually working on that, right. And I don’t know, like, I didn’t read this anywhere, I don’t know if you can ever get to the point in life where you have, like, overcome your biases, because it is such like an inbuilt. I will get to some suggestions that maybe can help us like, circumvent that a little bit. But it is such like a built in feature of the human psychology, that I think you’re always going to have to develop the wherewithal to examine yourself and identify biases as they arise.

Rosanna 32:56
And I would agree like that natural inclination is probably always going to be there, but it’s like, are you processing it? Are you attuned to it, right? And then do you move past it like or work on moving like, right? You can’t, you can’t just say that you’re not like, okay, I am, this is what the bias is, alright, instead of doing this, I’m going to it’s choosing to move past it, it’s, you’re never going to be bias free.

Jordan 33:19
Yeah. And I’ll bring this up too. And I probably mischaracterizing it but I’ll go here anyway, you know, I’ve heard the term woke like, over the last few years, especially over this past year. And to me, like, and maybe this is just my own, you know, like reading into the term. But it kind of seems like, like, it’s it’s like so binary, like I was asleep, at least in regards to my my racial awareness. But now I am woke or I’m awake and aware of it. And I tend to picture it more in a spectrum, where, you know, I was, I was never totally like asleep, or you just tuned out to racial awareness and biases. And I am continuing to, like, move along the spectrum to become more and more aware of it. I don’t know if I could ever understand someone else’s point of view so well, that I like, unless I’m them, right, which, which I can’t. So it’s just an ongoing process of trying to work, like, you know, improve myself to try to obtain as close an understanding of someone else’s perspectives and experiences as possible.

Rosanna 34:30
And maybe that’s where you are now, but what if you were in a scenario or in a different position where you do undergo the same scrutiny as somebody else, and then you can understand their situation in a new way and really understand and move at a much quicker pace or, you know, move towards that. So, I mean, I know that term has been overused, but I don’t think that that should discredit someone who may be was very much on one side of the spectrum. Very wholeheartedly you know ignorant and, and harsh and and now sees the light like I don’t just because that’s not your experience doesn’t mean that’s not theirs. But yeah overusing that word I think is a problem.

Jordan 35:12
Yeah. So and maybe that’s why maybe I don’t feel like I really like understand my own use of it right now as much as I’d like. Anyway, back to our list here. We have other ways to overcome bias. So we’ve heard this before, like don’t don’t say that you’re colorblind, that doesn’t really help instead –

Rosanna 35:32
Because unless you literally cannot see color like right you’re I mean, your your eyes and your body actually, right, like, notice difference as we should.

Jordan 35:40
Right. It says like, you can’t identify your biases, if you pretend like you’re colorblind, because we’re, we’re as much as we can try to be colorblind, we’re not like we have these biases that are we’re our minds just automatically take on. So instead, like go looking for your biases.

Rosanna 36:02
Okay, and what happens when you look for them?

Jordan 36:05
I do have that next step. Alright. So but that’s, I wanted to wanted that to sink in. That was my pause for effect. Alright, so for go looking for your biases. And it’s okay to ask yourself, like, man did like, “Do I have a negative bias like towards this individual towards this –

Rosanna 36:21
Community, group, subgroup…

Jordan 36:24
Or, you know, did I just, it was my interaction, you’re biased in some way did it did my my bias manifest in some way during that interaction? Alright, so. So once you do that, and just like looking for it, it’s self examining, then look for what I have in quotes here is disconfirming data that negate existing biases. So let’s say you have just a negative implicit bias towards black men. Look at awesome black men, seek, like seek them out whether in real life or I mean, there’s no shortage of, you know, I’ll use the word celebrities. But I mean, even politicians and writers and thinkers, journalists, scientists, right. And that has the effect of kind of counteracting the negative association that you might automatically make. You can – so that’s another tip there. Another tip is take a test. So I referenced this at the beginning, none of us want to say that we’re biased. But if you take these tests, they’re called, I think they’re called touch tests. And so one link is at implicit.harvard.edu, slash implicit slash ticket touch test, we’ll put a link. But what it does is it flashes, certain types of people, and then certain like words or objects on the screen, and you have to respond as quickly as you can, to the images that are appearing. But what basically what it reveals is, towards which type of person you have a positive disposition, and towards which type of person you have a negative disposition. And you can do this for like, all different kinds of people like we’ve listed already. So it’s pretty interesting because you’re like, Well, yeah, like I have, in my in my head, like a positive disposition towards all these people. But when you take the test you it what it reveals is that were you to link something negative towards somebody, that it shows you towards whom you would like it to. I’m probably not explaining that well… just go take the test. Another fun activity that we can do is just do an inventory. So this is very concrete for like, what can I do that’s concrete, I’m trying to list some very concrete things. In other words, you can take an inventory. So this is a literal inventory. Who do you read? Right? You’re about to read 21 books this year. And I’m constantly reading as well, books or articles or podcasts, things like that. So just like who are you exposed to? Are you exposed to the same types of people over and over and over again, not necessarily bad, because they I’m sure they’re thoughtful and inspiring in their own ways. But if we want to try to overcome our biases, we also want to be exposed to a diversity of people who are influencing us in that manner. So you can do that with who you read. Also, just take a look at your social media, who do you follow? Who are the people you’re allowing to share their thoughts and ideas with you? So just go through your Instagram feed, you can go through your Twitter feed, and so on. And also I put this one down. No one suggested this to me, but I thought this was interesting is this question of who do we invite on our teams and I mean teams in the broadest sense. So this is at work this is in our community This is, wherever we may inhabit. are we seeking out? Or do we feel like the most comfortable with? Or like the Is it the safest to approach people who we already know? Or people who are just like us? Or are we are we being a little bit more intentional, trying to diversify the range people that we’re working alongside.

Rosanna 40:23
But also not just for the sake of trying to be diverse, but like, understanding that everybody has a lot of different experiences and a lot to learn from and so like, wanting to learn from other people who are different than you, and have a different perspective, because once we learn to like, listen and understand their perspective, like we can tap into, like another source of like, thinking and believing and feeling that is reflected in, you know, a diverse world around us, where it’s not just everybody who’s just like us.

Jordan 40:53
Right. And so that’s another suggestion to this one’s a little harder, but it is like, just, like, make more diverse friends. And that one to me like it, it seems very practical, because then you have a way of like genuinely understanding someone who’s not identical to you.

Rosanna 41:12
But is it disingenuous to seek out someone who is different than you to start a friendship?

Jordan 41:18
So so that one, obviously want to be authentic with as well. But this is where I think like some of the other things I’m listing come into play like, Alright, so I can’t, you know, you really, you can’t have a deep relationship with really that many people in general, but you can like, we’re talking about like, who you’re who you’re reading, who’s whose stories you’re hearing, and so on. So that’s why I really like this book, Tell Me Who You Are, which is just a book of like, really like short stories, people from across all 50 states, all different demographics, just telling their stories and experiences. It’s like, I’m never gonna meet any of these people. But and I wouldn’t call them my friends. But I would say like, I’m really genuinely to open my mind to what people’s experiences are other than my own, or people just like me, yeah. Oh, I wanted to show this to a little overdue, actually. So I brought this book with me called thinking in bets by any Duke. I mentioned this on the show before, I’m pretty sure because there’s a lot of good thoughts on it. But any teaches better decision making, using she’s a poker champion. So she uses poker as a like an analogy for a lot of the decisions here. One of the things that stood out to me was this, she gives an optical illusion here. And what’s funny is that, even when you know, it’s an optical illusion that you’re looking at, it doesn’t make the illusion go away. And she ties this to bias into decision making. Here’s one quick quote of hers about it. She says being aware, being aware of our irrational behavior, and wanting to change is not enough, in the same way that knowing that you’re looking at a visual illusion is not enough to make the illusion go away. So I’m saying is like being aware of your bias, and wanting to change it? Is that enough? Like you actually need to it doesn’t make it go away? A step? Yeah. So these steps that I’m listing are ones, it’s like, you actually need to do something, because you know, the bias is so insistent, so persistent, that it’s –

Rosanna 43:27
It’s like a natural default.

Jordan 43:28
It doesn’t just go away on its own.

Rosanna 43:30
Right. So you have to kind of make a new, a new path or a new What do they call like? What do they call it in your brain? Like it’s like a new like route for your, you have to train your brain to think differently, so that you’re not stuck in that same pattern?

Jordan 43:44
So here’s another one, too. This is again, from Jennifer Eberhardt. She says “There are certain conditions under which we become more vulnerable to it” – to bias. She says “when we’re thinking fast and moving fast,” so we just think like in any given moment, like when there’s a certain uptick in the speed at which we’re interacting or responding to whatever the circumstance may be, that is going to that’s especially what our brain needs to take the shortcuts. So she says, “we can slow down and make a shift, so we’re less likely to act on bias.” So just slow down. That’s what I took from that. So that we can like take a you know, if possible, like take a pause, take a step back, and then we can maybe better understand the kinds of decision we’re about to make.

Rosanna 44:35
React more appropriately. It makes me think of your car scenario, right? Someone’s weave in and out of traffic, you’re driving fast, right? Cars are swooping in whatever right? And like, what’s your first what’s the first thing that you say, right? You’re blaming, you know, some kind of bad driving on a certain group or a certain person for a certain reason, because like, that’s the quickest reaction. It’s just kind of like that gut reaction, as opposed to like, calming down and thinking about what you say and what comes out of your mouth.

Jordan 45:00
And so we’re really talking about like being rational, which sounds really simple. But when we have, you know, like chemicals and when to have emotions, like starting to flow through us, it’s really difficult at that moment to just analyze our own thinking and behavior and say, like, “Wait, am I operating under any sort of bias at the moment? Or am I…” you know, so, but that’s kind of what it takes. And it takes we almost have to gift ourself, you know, the ability to slow down and to think through it.

Rosanna 45:30
I appreciate that about you. Because even sometimes, like, when someone upsets me, or something upsets me, you’ll say like, “Yeah, but is this because like, they really did something wrong, or it’s because you’re like, going on this bias, like this perceived bias of like what they’ve done, because they’ve done things wrong.” And like, it’s like, you always get me to like, stop and pull back. And that’s good, because they’re like, you kind of helped filter me a little bit. And I’ve said the same thing to you. Or it’s like, you know, someone who has has done wrong, right, like, you’re going to just continue to blame them. But it’s like, Is that is that really fair? Is that really what the case is? Or is it just easier to blame someone or something? Right? Or some group of people? Because it’s like, because of one interaction one time? Right? Because I have fundamental

Jordan 46:14
It’s so easy, that’s your fundamental understanding of at the beginning and right, you never –

Rosanna 46:18
I’m a woman driver. And so if I cut someone off, right, like, right, is my driving like, you know, on display for every other driver that’s like, it’s, you know, I’m just one person, I’m not at fault for everybody in my category is not at fault for the way that I drive.

Jordan 46:33
Yeah. So, you know, ultimately, there’s, there’s other steps there as well. And I think it just requires this awareness, and then this commitment to, or sorry, for, like, and awareness. And then I would say, like getting getting past the denial of it. And just saying, like, yeah, like this, like I’m human, I have biases, I don’t want to have biases. So you know, I’m going to continually work on myself in this regard. And so the last one that I wrote down, is just love the person in front of us see them for the humanity they possess.

Rosanna 47:12
Which reminds me of our leader love thy neighbor episode, right? Just looking at someone and seeing, seeing the commonality between you instead of what’s different, right. Right, whether cubs or Sox fan, right? It should not be matter.

Jordan 47:27
Sure. So again, like a lot of these are easier said than done. And it takes work. And I think that that is, you know, another thing that makes it so challenging too like, I would love to just flip a switch and be the kind of person I want to be and make society the kind of place it ought to be. But it’s not that simple. So I feel like if you and I can talk about it and work on ourselves in this regard maybe that can, you know, help spur more conversations, and more work in others as well.

Rosanna 47:55
Right? Well, and like we said, we don’t have it all figured out. Right? Like some of the things we’ve said today are, you know, probably sound ignorant or right. What was the first bias that you had mentioned?

Jordan 48:07
I forgot the name? The Dunning Kruger effect, right?

Rosanna 48:10
Like, yeah, we –

Jordan 48:11
We think we think we know so much.

Rosanna 48:13
And we’ll be the first one to tell you, we don’t have it all figured out. We’re trying just to move in the direction of figuring it out a little bit better, and doing a little bit better so that ourselves our family our community this, this little part of the world that we call home can move to being better. So do you have some takeaways? You had all of those steps. But –

Jordan 48:34
Yeah, I listed those action steps. It looks like you listed some takeaways, though.

Rosanna 48:37
I did. There’s two and they’re they’re pretty quick. The first one is no one is immune. So check your blind spots. We’re all biased. If you’re going to, you know, tell me that you’re not biased. I feel like I’m not sure where to go from there. That means you have nothing left to learn. So we all have blind spots. They might be small, but they’re there. Number two.

Jordan 48:57
So are you biased against people who…

Rosanna 49:01
Yes I am biased against people who say they don’t have a bias. Yes, but I can admit that right. Number two biases are natural. We make 1000s of decisions every day, some more important than others. Make sure that the ones that do matter are not based on a bias but rather on reflective judgment and critical thinking. I think that’s that. All right, short and sweet.

Jordan 49:25
Well good, well this is obviously like, it’s not something that we can just like check off list. But it’s almost like once you’re aware of it, you almost have to be perpetually aware of those biases, and do your best to counteract them. So I’m looking forward to having those moments where we can continue to talk through this and work on ourselves.

Rosanna 49:45
Yeah, I think accountability is huge with it. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us for Episode 11. And we look forward to seeing you next week.

Jordan 49:53
Yeah, and you know, this is the kind of conversation that obviously spurs a lot of I hope, good thoughts and also feelings. Well, and if you have experiences or if you have advice that we can learn from then we’re all ears and so keep it coming our way. We’re always grateful to hear from you. Thanks for listening today.