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Overview

At one point or another, you’ve probably questioned your own beliefs about discrimination and equality. But have you ever considered how much of a role your upbringing plays in that? Most people don’t realize the extent to which their background influences what they believe. In this book, author Dolly Chugh draws on cutting-edge psychological studies to show how our unconscious biases are informed by our experiences. For example, even if you think of yourself as being anti-racist, there’s still a good chance that racist tendencies lurk beneath the surface. Fortunately for us all though, we can learn more about ourselves and others so we’re aware of what we’re paying attention to and what we’ve been neglecting all these years.

Big Idea #1: Having a growth mindset means being willing to learn, but prejudices are hard to overcome.

When we’re making a decision, do we want to stick with what we know or try something new?

Documentary filmmaker Perrin Chiles is always up for new challenges. When he was about to make a film, he chose the subject of autism even though he had little experience with it. He took on this challenge because of his growth mindset, which allows him to learn and do anything that’s out there. Many people have fixed mindsets—the opposite of growth mindset—so they don’t try new things or take on difficult tasks.

For example, someone with a fixed mindset may believe they’re bad at drawing and never take an art class. However, they know that people can improve their skills through practice and hard work. Someone who has a growth mindset realizes that their skill level is weak now but knows it can improve over time with effort.

For Chiles, the opportunity to make a film on autism was an opportunity to learn about people who are different from him. The idea led to great things, including a wonderful documentary called Autism: The Musical that opened eyes and touched millions of people.

However, not everyone is as open-minded as Chiles. Some people have fixed mindsets that prevent them from exploring new things and experiencing different cultures. Hollywood movies are very narrow-minded in this way since they often only portray one type of person: a straight, white male with no physical disabilities.

Only 27 percent of the speaking roles in the highest-grossing films were female. Additionally, only 4 percent of Hollywood’s new movies were directed by women. This is because there are built-in prejudices in Hollywood that make it difficult to overcome them.

Big Idea #2: Unconscious bias can now be measured, and the results are usually disappointing.

An unconscious bias is a prejudice that people are not necessarily aware of. It’s now possible to measure these biases and raise awareness about them so they can be addressed.

Studies have shown that we process 11 million pieces of information per second. However, the average person only processes 40 conscious thoughts in a day.

So, we can say that 99.999% of the information we take in gets processed unconsciously. This includes our unconscious biases. These are associations made based on accumulated information, such as associating black people with weapons.

So, how do you measure unconscious bias? One way is to take an Implicit Association Test (IAT), which was developed by Harvard psychologists Mahzarin Banaji, Anthony Greenwald and Brian Nosek. The IAT requires quick reactions to questions that access your unconscious brain. For example, the test can ask whether you associate men or women with subjects like career and family or sciences and the arts.