A Real Glow-up via Conscious Thinking

World-renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung said that

Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge.

Jung's proposed difficulty doesn't refer to a brain fog, a lack of concentration, or a memory lapse. Neither did he mean the kind of thinking that is required to brush your teeth or jot down the shopping list. He was talking about thinking thinking. You know, the one that takes effort. Truly, have you ever sat down and took a long mental splash to figure out how our neurological system registers a message in milliseconds to enable leg movement?

In a quantity-over-quality world of full-blown capitalism, we're stuffed with over 11 million chunks of information daily while being able to digest only 40% of them. These chunks are mainly received in a “reactive” and hassle-free way rather than as “active” and purposeful products of deep thinking. How many times did you just skim through a webpage, isolated the most important bits of the text and clicked off? But what remains in the long run if we're left with sparse snapshots of knowing? What do we absorb and store in our internal hard drive as sustainable knowledge which we can retrieve any time?

Conscious and Unconscious poles

Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel prize-winning behavioural economist who specialises in human judgement and decision-making. His theory of the “two brains” (or simply, systems) separates effortless intuition from deliberate reasoning. System 1, where unconscious (or else, cognitive) bias resides, is an automatic processing of the mind. The basic mathematical equation 2+2 is a leading example of S1, because the answer sits at the top of your head. You thought “4” out of habit without actually thinking. Hayley Barnard, the co-founder and managing director at MIX Diversity Developers, argues that

Our biases are essentially thinking shortcuts. We rely on our unconscious processing ability to handle about 99 percent of the information we process.

Essentially, S1 thinking is in charge of almost everything we do—even of those conclusions we uncritically jump into.

On the contrary, System 2 is analytical and rational. Since it requires mental energy, it's normally slower in operation; we don't seem to be making enough use of it. Still confused? Here's how you can tell the two branches of the brain apart. Let's say that you're driving and suddenly another vehicle swerves into your lane. S1 is what spurs your survival instinct into hitting the brakes; S2 performs complex actions and allows you to navigate an unexplored route if your usual path is obstructed. However, when left unattended by S2— our controlled faculty of mind — S1 could lead us astray, resulting in poor decisions without us even realising. Where do you stand between the conscious and unconscious poles?

Getting comfy with being unconsciously biased

Because our conscious mind is ill-equipped to deal with bulk of data, it burdens the unconscious with them. In order to protect itself from overloading, the unconscious brain forms patterns and allocates individuals to categories. For the sake of saving time in a fast-paced world, we tend to linger to known, easily recognisable images instead of approaching every interaction as if we're experiencing it for the first time. In this way, however, we aren’t forced to re-evaluate our existing value system. As a result, we form snap impressions and judge a book by its cover.

We can glance at these two men belonging to the same taxonomy of human beings, but — let's admit it — we will still scratch that stereotypical itch and make assumptions over who's the nerd and who's the bad guy based on their appearance and mannerisms. These assumptions and unintended people preferences derive from our socialisation as well as the representation of certain groups in the media.

Founder of IdentiCy, Candice Bosteels, notes that unconscious bias

is based on what feels safe to us in a certain situation. Our experiences, our preferences, our education, our upbringing all contribute to the model of the world we have, and it makes us who we are. That is not necessarily a bad thing—it becomes problematic when we start treating groups of people as less favourable, or we make bad decisions based on that model.

Such treatment works as a social filter in which we create some kind of character profiling that fits people to convenient boxes. When we find individuals with whom we're alike, we feel comfortable and reach a state of cognitive ease. The world makes sense to us and such conviction uplifts our mood. By contrast, when our brain encounters information that is foreign and hard to grasp, it falls in a slack-off mode. Ultimately, we'd rather adopt a view that we can process no matter how flawed, far-fetched or unreliable it is (*cough* conspiracy theorists alert *cough*). Isn’t it about time we got comfy with being unconsciously biased?

We can’t worry or challenge embedded concepts and circumstances when we’re happy. And here lies the problem: because we’re less vigilant when dopamine unleashes and makes us joyful, we’re more susceptible to making errors. We tend to prioritise on the fleeting biochemical reaction over a logical thought.

Cognitive ease feels great, but it fills us with a false sense of security by persuading us that we understand far more than we do in reality. Unconscious bias is an effect of this secure fallacy, and it can take various forms. An article in The Atlantic claims that there's an estimate of 100 distinctive cognitive biases, one of which will be the focal point of this post.

Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias causes us to favour evidence that only informs our held beliefs while rejecting anything that may present a differing standpoint. In The Case for Motivated Reasoning, social psychologist Ziva Kunda remarks that

we give special weight to information that allows us to come to the conclusion we want to reach.

When limited by the confirmation bias, your opinionated and defensive nature hijacks your ability to accept an alternate view. It’s perhaps the most prevalent and disastrous bias in the workforce as researchers in the field of neuroscience have indicated.

Resisting the unfamiliar: Storytime

A friend of mine, who is British of Jamaican descent, is actively seeking employment on IT. Recently, she attended an interview via Zoom for a role that she couldn't have been a greater match. I was sure that her skills and qualifications could outcompete all her white male counterparts. A week later, she called me and broke the rejection news. When I asked her what happened, she replied: They gave me a blunt 'We feel that other candidates are more suited for the position.'

To her dismay, that was some racial and gender injustice at its finest! As far as race is concerned, a whopping 74% of candidates with English-sounding names are more likely to land a job than their ethnic minority peers. The BBC carried out a relevant test in 2017 where

Inside Out London sent CVs from two candidates, "Adam" and "Mohamed", who had identical skills and experience, in response to 100 job opportunities. Adam was offered 12 interviews, while Mohamed was offered four. Although the results were based on a small sample size, they tally with the findings of previous academic studies.

It's not just the name. These prejudiced attitudes are part of a larger set of visual markers such as age, height, body size, which are often linked to political affiliation and religious identity. The unconscious brain taps into associations to develop biases and my friend fell in this biased trap...

Regarding gender discrimination, it's no secret that some professions remain territories that only men can access. If we're only exposed to female hairdressers and male CEOs, these stimuli can become wired within the brain from an early age. In fact, a study revealed that 8 out of 10 parents view their sons' mathematical capacity as higher than their daughters;' while another one showed that fathers totalled their sons' mathematical “IQ” up at 110 on average, and their daughters' at 98, and mothers gauged 110 for sons and 104 for daughters (Frome & Eccles, 1998).

When it comes to work settings, recruiters collect a wide array of information about job applicants during the hiring process. Through interviews, candidates share their academic record, professional and personal background, and how they would behave in hypothetical scenarios. But most of the time, recruiters are measuring these details against their own perception and model of what the ideal employee “should” look like. Did they attend the right university? Would they react in the same manner as I would in so-and-so situation? Is their personality in line with mine and that of their teammates?

This approach of the “safe” choice privileges one group over the other, even if there's a likelihood that members of each group will equally attain success in leadership roles.

Yet the question remains: is there a cure in the plague of unconscious bias?

Corrective Acts - Celebrate Diversity

Although unconscious bias can’t be obliterated, there are ways to mitigate it. To narrow down the scope of solution, I will focus on the steps that employers can take to establish a resilient corporate culture. (Note that these steps are applicable for an overall social reform!) To spark innovation and promote a diverse workforce, staff selectors need to slow down and opt from a wide-ranging, individual-centric talent pool. No one can be taken as talented and/or trustworthy to excel in the job unless they're given the opportunity to prove it.

This can be achieved through ‘blind recruitment’ — the initiative to eliminate elements from job applications that might influence hiring decisions, such as school names and address. Remember that a candidate from a low-income household may be a better match than one who comes from a wealthy family. In addition to this blind-picking, ask yourself if your decisions are data-guided or if you count on pure gut instinct? Have you actively listened and taken into account different perspectives? Recognising unconscious biases and making alterations to overcome them should help business owners make fairer choices. To be ever-mindful of unconscious bias, it’s crucial to be self-aware of what is driving your decision-making.

Organisations that launch talent assessment training are more likely to improve hiring success rates, reduce employee turnover, and boost team productivity. Such training should provide an insight of what leadership potential looks like, irrespective of race, class, gender, body type, or ethnicity. With the aid of talent evaluations, employers will activate their critical thinking and discover “hidden gems” — candidates who have low visibility, or who were previously viewed as incompetent to undertake more challenging duties and deliver in higher positions.

Our unconscious biases can throw us in a tunnel. Same old and circular points of view that validate our existing ones and ignoring all the others. Same old and static possibilities that are consistent with what we already support. Now, I dare you to envision and pursue life outside of the tunnel. The evolutionary light of more inclusive and vibrant relationships will crack open the prospect for better outcomes. Remove the unconscious lenses of discrimination and consciously see past your assumptions: see people as they truly are. People like me, you, us!

---