In this installment of EHSDA Shorts, Christina R. Roll, Sr. Risk Consultant, AXA XL, explains the meaning of bias and the types of bias people have.
This clip was taken from a webinar titled “Addressing Bias and Stereotypes in Safety: Overcoming Challenges and Driving Progress.” The full session is available for FREE on-demand here.
The webinar was sponsored by Avetta.
Transcript (edited for clarity):
Question: What is bias?
Roll: So what is bias? In the simplest form, it’s a prejudice in favor of or against a thing, a person, or a group, and it’s when it’s compared with another that’s usually considered to be unfair. And bias does have two different meanings or two different types, which is one we had kind of seen in the video, and the other one is the one that feels a little more icky.
So conscious bias is that explicit bias. This is the bias where you know that you were acting in a way that is putting a group of people or a person individual in a bad light.
You are not going where they go. You’re ignoring them when they talk. You are doing whatever it is because of who they are or where they come from, and it’s different than you and you know that and you’re doing it anyway.
Implicit bias is that type that we saw in the video, but these are the social stereotypes. Stereotypes, see the word I was already mixing. We’re already combining the two and seeing how they fit hand in hand. This is a learned assumption or a belief. So these are the things that we grow up seeing them or hearing them and it’s just something that we’ve learned.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing it on purpose. So these are those unconscious biases where you just have them and don’t recognize them or don’t realize them. And I’ll say this now before anyone kind of starts thinking through “Why do I have?” and “Do I have?” Everybody here has a bias.
Sorry to inform you if you thought you didn’t, but you do. I do as well. It’s called human nature. We just have them because this is what we’re taught by what we see, by what we hear, by what we learn, by what we’re told. That doesn’t mean, though, that we can let that move forward and we can’t change or break what our biases are.