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O P I N I O N
Implicit bias
Help your organization commit to framing diversity and inclusion in a positive light. Examine your own biases and try to be accountable.
W hen I was in middle school, I was relentlessly bullied by a girl named “Jessica.” As a result, every time I meet someone new named “Jessica,” I feel a little bristly toward them at first. This feeling is a result of my implicit bias. Whether we will admit this or not, most of us have similar stories about people we tend to dislike based on their name or where they are from.
Christina Zweig Niehues
Overt sexism and racism isn’t something we like to talk a lot about in the AEC industry – we’ve come a long way in the past 30-plus years, and overall it’s led by people who are caring and ethical. But these issues haven’t gone away. Whether you’re a business developer, marketer, project manager, CEO, or human resources manager, the concept of implicit bias is important to understand. Implicit bias refers to the attitudes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions unconsciously. It’s something that is deep in our subconscious and encompasses both favorable and unfavorable associations – it causes us to have judgements about people based on their name, hometown, race, ethnicity, age, appearance, sexual orientation, gender, and a whole lot of other characteristics inherent to a person. It’s pervasive
– everyone has some form of implicit bias, and it doesn’t necessarily align with our declared beliefs or endorsements. “Whether you’re a business developer, a marketer, a project manager, a CEO, or human resources manager, the concept of implicit bias is important to understand.” A simple test for implicit bias is to remove the name and any unique identifying characteristics
See CHRISTINA ZWEIG NIEHUES, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER January 28, 2019, ISSUE 1281
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