"bias" (a film directed by Robin Hauser) - What an eye opener!

Last week I attended a private viewing of the 2018 documentary film Bias and a bonus chat with Director Robin Hauser. The event was sponsored by Washington Women's Leadership Initiative, and it was awesome! I thought I’d write up a few key nuggets that I walked away with, for the benefit of anyone who could not join. Feel free to chime in if you attended, as it was hard to take notes in a dark theater.

​Hauser is interested in exploring unconscious bias, the bias that is below the threshold of consciousness, and specifically how it relates to gender and race. This film features many of the top researchers in the field including Tony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, co-founders of Project Implicit at Harvard University. They are best known for the IAT (Implicit Association Test). I highly recommend going to this site to take one of their tests and examine your own implicit bias. It’s completely free, and the results will have a lasting impact on you, guaranteed.  ​

View the trailer for a sneak peak.

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Here are some of the highlights:

• Guilt / Responsibility If you take the IAT, you’re bound to feel (as I did) some sense of guilt about the bias you’re carrying around with you. The researchers in the film encourage you to think of your results as the thumbprint culture has on our brains. And, instead of feeling guilty that you have implicit bias, you can take responsibility.
• Orchestra Audition Case Study In the 1970s, there was concern that orchestras would only accept people from prestigious schools. To eliminate this bias, they began doing blind auditions. In other words, musicians would audition behind a curtain so the judges would not know who the person is, rather they would be judged solo on their performance. Well, an unintended consequence happened as well. It turns out only 5% of those musicians were women and after the blind auditions were implemented, the number of women skyrocketed to 50%. The funniest part is that women started removing their high heels (so as to not make noise while walking) as that was the only indicator left to inform the judge that a women was entering the stage.
• “Competence/Likability Dilemma" Gender Study Two different audiences were presented information about the same leader. The only difference was a change in the name and gender of the leader. When asked to rate how competent and likable the leader was, both audiences rated high competence for both candidates, but the male leader scored much higher on likeability.
• How the Brain views Difference An interesting note about how your brain works. When you see others as the same, you access the ventral part of your brain. However, when you think about someone as different than you, you actually access a DIFFERENT part of the brain (the dorsal).
• Chameleon Effect We mimic others' behaviors when we consider them to be part of our in-group. There was a fascinating virtual reality simulation in which the director, Robin, put on the VR equipment and became a person of a different race. Robin is a white woman but in this VR world, she was a black woman. Then, they placed another avatar next to her who was also a black woman. They then had the avatar make subtle movements like scratching her arm. If Robin also scratched her arm, this would indicate that Robin now identifies in this in-group as a black female (and she did!). People have reported sustained sensitivity to gender and race only after two encounters with this tool.
• NextDoor This online community site is primarily for connecting people to exchange goods, share community events, and keep the community safe. However, what was happening is that racial profiling was at its prime. People were posting comments such as “AA man slowed down to make a u-turn at the intersection of ____.  Be alert.” NextDoor has since put in measures to require people to post more detailed information about a person (beyond one’s gender and race) and to only post if there’s a potential threat of safety.
• Artificial Intelligence The question is: Does AI have implicit bias? The researchers in the film all seem to believe that, because humans are the ones creating the algorithms and feeding in the original data into the systems, yes, most definitely, AI is filtrated with implicit bias. "Garbage in; garbage out." They referenced many examples including the Risk Assessment tools used in courtrooms to assess the risk of future crimes of the people being tried.

If you saw the film, please chime in to add or build off of anything I mentioned. There was so much information packed into this film. It both educates and entertains. Loved it!
 
Thank you WWLI for hosting this wonderful event!

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