LibGuides: Unconscious Bias: Home

Definition and Types of Bias

What is unconscious bias? Bias is a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another usually in a way that’s considered to be unfair. Biases may be held by an individual, group, or institution and can have negative or positive consequences. There are types of biases

1. Conscious bias (also known as explicit bias) and

2. Unconscious bias (also known as implicit bias)

It is important to note that biases, conscious or unconscious, are not limited to ethnicity and race. Though racial bias and discrimination are well documented, biases may exist toward any social group. One’s age, gender, gender identity physical abilities, religion, sexual orientation, weight, and many other characteristics are subject to bias. Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness.

Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one’s tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing. Unconscious bias is far more prevalent than conscious prejudice and often incompatible with one’s conscious values. Certain scenarios can activate unconscious attitudes and beliefs. For example, biases may be more prevalent when multi-tasking or working under time pressure.

University of California, San Francisco, Office of Diversity and Outreach

Unconscious Bias in the Classroom

Unconscious Bias in the Classroom
The underrepresentation of women and racial and ethnic minorities in computer science (CS) and other fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is a serious impediment to technological innovation as well as an affront to fundamental notions of fairness and equity. These gaps emerge in the early grades and tend to persist, if not widen,
throughout the secondary and post secondary years. The unconscious biases (UB) of teachers, school administrators, and fellow students may contribute meaningfully to the persistence of these gaps. Fortunately, a nascent literature on targeted interventions that directly address UB suggests there may be compelling opportunities to promote broader engagement in CS and STEM education and employment. The fields of neuroscience, social psychology, economics, and sociology articulate the many possible origins of UB and the ways in which UB can harm stereotyped groups, particularly in educational settings. This interdisciplinary literature yields two troubling, important insights:
» Humans consciously and unconsciously store experiences in our brains and those experiences (memories) later influence instantaneous, automatic decision-making, which is critical to cognitive functioning and cannot be turned off.
» Exposure to UB can trigger self-fulfilling prophecies by changing stereotyped groups’ behaviors to conform to stereotypes, even when the stereotype was initially untrue. (From the executive summary)

The Dangerous Mind

The Dangerous Mind
The challenge of accessing higher education doesn’t disappear with the arrival of a college acceptance letter. Even those fortunate enough to gain admission to college are not necessarily guaranteed full access for a number of reasons — some students will struggle academically; others might struggle with economic woes or illness. But beyond these well recognized difficulties, new evidence suggests that women and minorities may face an even more troubling barrier in their pursuits of higher education: unconscious gender and racial biases that pervade academia. (From the introduction)

Mindsets for the Twenty-First Century and Beyond

Mindsets for the 21st century and beyond
The world is morphing into a place that no one can foresee. How can we prepare students to live and work in that place?

Not long ago, people could learn job skills and use them indefinitely, but now jobs and skill sets are becoming obsolete at an alarming rate. This means that students, and later adults, need to expect and thrive on challenges and know how to turn failures into stepping stones to a brighter future.(from the article)

The New Science of Wise Psychological Interventions

The New Science of Wise Psychological Interventions
Citizens complete a survey the day before a major election; a change in the survey items’ grammatical structure increases turnout by 11 percentage points. People answer a single question; their romantic relationships improve over several weeks. At-risk students complete a 1-hour reading-and-writing exercise; their grades rise and their health improves for the next 3 years. Each statement may sound outlandish—more science fiction than science. Yet each represents the results of a recent study in psychological science (respectively, Bryan, Walton, Rogers, & Dweck, 2011; Marigold, Holmes, & Ross, 2007, 2010; Walton & Cohen, 2011). These studies have shown, more than one might have thought, that specific psychological processes contribute to major social problems. These processes act as levers in complex systems that give rise to social problems. Precise interventions that alter them—what I call “wise interventions”—can produce significant benefits and do so over time. What are wise interventions? How do they work? And how can they help solve social problems?

Gender Bias in Performance Evaluations

Gender Bias in Performance evaluations
This paper provides new evidence on gender bias in performance evaluations of university
teachers. We exploit a quasi-experimental dataset on 19,962 teaching evaluations, where
students are randomly allocated to female or male teachers. Despite the fact that neither
students' grades nor self-study hours are affected by the teacher's gender, we find that in
particular male students evaluate female teachers worse than male teachers. The bias is
largest for junior teachers, which is worrying since their lower evaluations might affect junior faculty members' career trajectories.

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