{"id":582,"date":"2015-01-19T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=582"},"modified":"2015-01-19T09:00:06","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T13:00:06","slug":"when-talking-about-bias-can-make-a-situation-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/when-talking-about-bias-can-make-a-situation-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"When Talking about Bias Can Make a Situation Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\trecent New York Times article<\/a>, Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg shared this brain teaser: A father and a son are in a car accident. The father is killed, and the son is seriously injured. The son is taken to the hospital where the surgeon says, \u201cI cannot operate, because this boy is my son.\u201d I confess that I felt stumped, but I could have kicked myself when I read on and saw the answer. Once again, I caught myself, in spite of all the work I have done on challenging gender stereotypes in myself and others, assuming the surgeon was a man\u2014one of those enduring stereotypes about which gender belongs<\/em> in a role. The doctor in this story was a woman, and the mother of the victim. This is a humbling reminder of how deeply embedded and unconscious the stereotypes we carry in us can be. Grant and Sandberg report that 40 to 75 percent of people today still can\u2019t figure out the brain teaser above.\nI have previously written about the ways that gender bias might be creating barriers for women at work<\/a>. In another recent article<\/a> about the dearth of women in technology, Google was praised for instituting diversity-training workshops last year based on an emerging field in social psychology known as unconscious bias\u2014the pervasive and hidden reflexive preferences that shape our worldviews and reactions to others. Grant and Sandberg point out, though, that the approach Google used can make the situation worse, if not handled carefully. They cite several recent research studies that show that making people aware of stereotypes about women actually decreased the likelihood that research participants would hire a female candidate or judge her likeable.\nHere\u2019s the catch: we should not stop making people aware of stereotypes, but we have to be very careful about how we do it. Grant and Sandberg note that research shows that if we just say, \u201cThese stereotypes are deeply embedded and common in our society,\u201d people seem to hear the message, \u201cEveryone else is biased, so I don\u2019t need to worry as much about what I say or do.\u201d Instead, researchers say that what makes a difference is taking the additional step to be sure that we explicitly communicate the following messages about these biases:\n\n\n