Jory MacKay on October 15, 2024 How to overcome your unconscious biases (12 examples)
While we’re not here to debate the existence of free will, we’ve all looked back on situations where it seemed like our brains went into autopilot. These unconscious biases can influence who we hire (and listen to), the decisions we make, and what we prioritize in our daily lives — and not always for the better.
One survey found that nearly 40% of people frequently experience bias that leads to unfair treatment based on factors such as their age, gender, or race.
As team leaders or project managers, we need to do better.
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In this guide, we’ll explain the psychology behind unconscious bias, why it’s so important to understand the biases influencing your own thoughts and actions, and how you can overcome some of the most common and damaging biases.
Let’s get into it!
What is unconscious bias?
Unconscious bias refers to the ingrained assumptions, beliefs, and associations we hold outside of our conscious awareness. Sometimes also called implicit biases, these mental shortcodes inform our decision-making and interactions with those around us — without our knowledge.
The truth, however, is that everyone has unconscious biases.
As our brains evolve, we develop unconscious biases as a way to process information faster. Our minds refer back to past experiences to infer outcomes and guide us in a certain direction.
But bias doesn’t just come from our personal history. Cultural norms and the opinions of those we trust reconfirm these unconscious biases, too, further shaping the way we see the world.
Yet, just because unconscious biases are natural, doesn’t mean they’re always right — or fair.
Many of our biases are based on superficial information or data that unimportant to the decision at hand — for example, someone’s age, gender, appearance, or speech patterns.
These mental “shortcuts” cloud our thinking and prevent us from making objective judgments. This is especially true in the workplace, where critical decisions such as recruitment, funding approvals, and employee development must be made based on facts, not our unconscious opinions.
The good news is that, despite unconscious biases being ingrained in our psyche, we can overcome them if we’re armed with the right knowledge and tools to recognize them, think objectively, and make clear decisions.
Why it’s so important to understand your own biases
If you’re in a management or leadership position, it’s important to understand unconscious biases and their effect on you. If you don’t, it could have negative consequences for you and those around you.
Here are just a few of the many ways that unconscious bias can damage your ability to build engaged, high-performing teams and make sound business decisions:
- You could unfairly judge a teammate’s abilities. As a manager, you want to get the best out of your team to boost productivity and achieve the best results. If your unconscious bias judges someone incorrectly, you could shoot yourself in the foot by missing out on skills and knowledge that could drive additional value.
- Your team can become disengaged. Employees at large companies who perceive bias are nearly three times as likely (20% vs 7%) to be disengaged at work. If your team is disengaged, their productivity, morale, and effectiveness will fall through the floor.
- You might limit creativity and innovation. Biases, such as status quo and anchor bias, stop us from seeing the world in a new and exciting way. In the competitive world of business, this is a problem as those who innovate often drive greater success. If you’re in charge of driving the growth of new ideas, keep biases in mind to stop you from going stale.
- Someone might persuade you to take unnecessary risks. Influence and negotiation are a core part of any business, but unconscious bias can allow others to take advantage of you. Beauty, affinity, and conformity bias often leave us vulnerable to people we admire.
- You could hire an awful candidate. Recruitment is a hotbed for unconscious bias. When you need to decide based on little information, our brains love filling in the gaps. If you let those unconscious thoughts and feelings rule over objective measures, such as experience and skills, you will likely make a terrible hiring decision.
- You could miss out on the benefits of diversity. A McKinsey study found that more gender-diverse companies were 21% more likely to gain above-average profitability. If your biases lead you to only build teams who look, think, and act the same as you, there’s a good chance you’ll never reach your full potential.
- You risk making poor financial decisions. When profit and loss are on the line, you must make decisions based on facts and data. Whether approving a business case or setting out your product strategy, ensure critical financial decisions aren’t made based on bias, or you’ll risk losing money down the line.
12 unconscious bias examples (and how to overcome them)
To help you stay ahead of your own unconscious biases, you first need to know how to recognize them. Then, it’s up to you to take action to look past them and reset your judgment to think objectively.
Let’s look at 12 of the most common biases in the workplace and how you can overcome them.
1. Gender bias
Gender bias, often referred to as sexism, is when someone unconsciously associates certain stereotypes with a particular gender.
Some examples of the gender bias in the workplace include:
- Salary discrepancy: Where men and women are paid different amounts for doing the same job — often called the gender pay gap.
- Recruitment: Where recruitment teams are more likely to employ someone of the same gender as themselves, missing out on the benefits of diversity.
How to avoid falling into the gender bias:
- Take advantage of benchmarking. Use clear benchmarking data to ensure employees of all genders are treated equally.
- Follow recruitment best practices. Use blind hiring techniques such as anonymized job applications, skills tests, and diverse hiring panels.
2. Ageism bias
Ageism is when someone is unfairly treated because of their age, often based on assumptions about their abilities or relevance. While it can impact people of all ages, it’s most prevalent against older people.
Some examples of the ageism bias in the workplace include:
- Task allocation: Employees are overlooked for specific tasks because of their age, typically based on assumptions about their experience levels of technical ability.
- Internal promotion: Older employees are often overlooked for promotions in favor of younger colleagues with less experience, as they’re seen as having more longevity.
How to avoid falling for the ageism bias:
- Drive equality. Ensure you provide equal learning and growth opportunities for everyone, regardless of age.
- Consider a formal mentoring program. Bring different generations closer together with schemes like mentoring to promote knowledge and skills sharing across the team.
3. Affinity bias
Affinity bias occurs when we favor and give preferential treatment to individuals similar to ourselves. This may be because they have similar backgrounds, share the same views, or have common interests as us.
Some examples of the affinity bias in the workplace include:
- Ignoring hiring red flags: When new hires share many similarities with us — for example, if they went to the same college or have the same hobbies — we’re more likely to overlook potential issues.
- Undeserved internal promotions: Managers may promote employees because of shared interests rather than on merit alone.
How to avoid falling for the affinity bias:
- Build out diverse recruitment teams. Keep recruitment teams diverse to ensure evaluations are made from various viewpoints.
- Set and track diversity KPIs. Build diversity measures into your organization’s North Star metrics to ensure you’re actively hiring and promoting a diverse workforce.
4. Anchor bias
Anchor bias is when someone holds onto an initial, singular piece of information when making decisions. When this bias takes hold, we “anchor” ourselves to our first conclusion and don’t consider additional information that comes to light.
Some examples of the anchor bias in the workplace include:
- Decision-making errors: When we hold onto a headline statistic or our initial opinion on a topic and fail to consider new, updated information as it develops.
- Stagnant strategic product planning: Staying anchored to an initial plan of action rather than pivoting to a new approach as the situation changes.
Understand unconscious biases and their effect on you. If you don’t, it could have negative consequences for you and those around you.
How to avoid falling for the anchor bias:
- Gain an outside view. Complete thorough research when making decisions, including techniques such as user interviews to get a well-rounded view.
- Regular reviews and updates. When building product roadmaps, take the time to regularly re-review and update based on new information. When the business world changes so often, if your plan is the same now as it was a year ago, there’s something wrong!
5. Authority bias
Authority bias leads us to grant more credibility to individuals solely because of their position. While, in many instances, business leaders have the experience and knowledge to make the best decisions, this isn’t always the case.
Some examples of the authority bias in the workplace include:
- Deferring to the opinions of senior leadership: When working collaboratively, those with the most authority often skew the decision-making process, as others simply want to appease them rather than challenge them.
- A lack of honest feedback: When managers and employees get together to exchange feedback, the process is often warped as the manager's opinion is favored over the employee's.
How to avoid falling for the authority bias:
- Examine your management style. When managing your team, try to take a servant-leader approach. This will give everyone the confidence to input, share, and challenge ideas without the feeling of pressure from authority.
- Use external data. When validating new product ideas within the team, use external viewpoints to provide an unfiltered opinion on the best option to progress.
6. Halo effect
The halo effect is when we form a positive impression of a person based on one positive trait. For example, because someone is a highly effective communicator, we automatically assume they’re great at financial analysis, too.
Some examples of the halo effect in the workplace include:
- Following the wrong leader: The halo effect may lead us to blindly trust someone’s opinion or the quality of their work, which could lead to poor decision-making.
- Decreased team effectiveness: The halo effect may lead us to assign the same person completely different tasks, thinking they can do everything very well, when another team member could do a better job.
How to avoid falling for the halo effect:
- Gain stakeholder feedback. When managing your team, ask for feedback from stakeholders on their performance. Others may be able to provide another point of view without the halo effect bias.
- Use a decision-making framework. When you’re making business-critical decisions, always follow an effective decision-making framework to ensure you’re doing your due diligence and not simply taking the word of someone you admire.
7. Horn effect
The horn effect is the opposite of the halo effect, where we form an overall negative impression of a person based on one negative trait. For example, if someone has made a mistake in the past, we automatically assume their opinions will be wrong going forward.
Some examples of the horn effect in the workplace include:
- Dismissing creative ideas: If someone has previously come up with an idea that went on to be a flop, colleagues often dismiss new ideas in the future.
- Stunted career growth through making feedback personal: If someone received critical feedback from their manager in the past, they assume their manager is a horrible person.
How to avoid falling for the horn effect:
- Focus on learning, not failure. Failure and negativity are part of business, so when projects fail, focus on learning lessons from them rather than apportioning bias-driving blame.
- Build psychological safety. As a manager, you’ll inevitably have to give bad news sometimes. When you do, try to create an environment of psychological safety to prevent horn effect bias from developing toward you.
8. Confirmation bias
If we fall prey to confirmation bias, we seek ideas that only reinforce our existing behaviors, beliefs, and opinions. This essentially creates an echo chamber, where we don’t absorb different perspectives to form a rounded view of the situation.
Some examples of the confirmation bias in the workplace include:
- Ignoring important data while making a decision: When working to make a team decision, people may ignore other opinions or data sets that don’t support the narrative they’re trying to promote.
- Hiring the wrong candidate: During recruitment, confirmation bias may lead you to ask a preferred candidate easier questions or incorrectly assess a poor answer, passing it off as a simple error that isn’t important.
Remember: Nearly 40% of people frequently experience bias that leads to unfair treatment.
How to avoid falling for the confirmation bias:
- Gather external feedback. Gathering effective feedback and external opinions on a topic is the best way to overcome confirmation bias, with the opinions of others you trust giving you a range of different perspectives.
- Brainstorm effectively. When it comes to creating new ideas, using set brainstorming techniques will help you bring different ideas and points of view to life.
9. Conformity bias
The conformity bias occurs when we change our opinions and how we act to be the same as those around us. Crucially, when conformity bias hits, our actions don’t reflect our true opinions and character.
Some examples of the conformity bias in the workplace include:
- Falling into groupthink: Rather than challenging ideas or presenting new ones, we just go along with the group thinking, limiting the collective creativity.
- Not challenging ideas or opinions: When we want to conform, we often follow the opinion or decision of the group, even if we don’t agree with it.
How to avoid falling for the conformity bias:
- Create a culture where it’s safe to speak up. As we’ve seen with other types of bias, creating an environment of psychological safety will help those have the confidence to challenge even if they’re going against the majority.
- Allow anonymous feedback. More practically, many organizations create anonymous ways to give feedback or raise concerns to root out conformity bias.
10. Status quo bias
Similar to conformity bias, status quo bias is the tendency to make decisions or take actions that keep things the way they are now. While staying clear of changes seems safer, it can cause teams, products, and organizations to become stale over time.
Some examples of the status quo bias in the workplace include:
- Failing to keep up with market changes: When status quo bias takes hold, product strategy falls behind changing customer needs, causing a loss of competitiveness, revenue, and profit.
- Delaying or avoiding making tough decisions: While many biases impact decision making, status quo bias will prevent you from making the really tough decisions, such as stopping projects or enacting company restructures.
How to avoid falling for the status quo bias:
- Remove your limiting beliefs. Those who struggle with status quo bias are often overwhelmed with limiting beliefs, which leads us to stay within our comfort zone constantly. Overcome limiting beliefs, and you can overcome status quo bias.
- Objective data to drive decisions. Use objective data, such as from a competitive analysis, to give you an external view of what’s going on in your industry. This will help further highlight where keeping the status quo could be holding you back.
11. Name bias
Name bias is the tendency to prefer certain names over others. While this happens across the world, in the West, it’s most common against non-anglo-sounding names.
Some examples of the name bias in the workplace include:
- A lack of diversity during hiring: Name bias is highly prevalent in recruitment, where studies have shown Black and Asian-sounding names are less likely to receive calls back for interviews.
How to avoid falling for the name bias:
- Anonymize your hiring. Use blind hiring techniques such as anonymized job applications, skills tests, and diverse hiring panels.
- Question your gut reactions. Listen to your internal dialogue when dismissing an idea or candidate — and then measure that against common biases, such as their name, age, or gender. Are you sure you’re not unfairly judging someone?
12. Beauty Bias
Beauty bias is where we build an overall positive or negative impression of a person based on their appearance. Sometimes referred to as “pretty privilege” or “lookism,” it tends to be prevalent for those considered attractive who go on to get preferential treatment.
Some examples of the beauty bias in the workplace include:
- Unfair hiring and promotions: Whether it’s landing a job or promotion, beauty bias may see someone climb the career ladder versus someone with more skills just because of their appearance.
- Preferential treatment and lighter workloads: If we consider someone attractive, we must ensure we aren’t subconsciously giving them preferential treatment with easier tasks or greater opportunities.
How to avoid falling for the beauty bias:
- Use software to help with workload management. When managing your team, use project management software such as Planio to help you fairly assign tasks and manage performance. This will help to keep your team workloads fair while providing a central place for all team members to collaborate, store documents, and track their deliveries.
- Be more objective during hiring and recruitment. In recruitment, use blind hiring techniques such as anonymized job applications, skills tests, and diverse hiring panels. For internal promotions, base them on data and stakeholder feedback rather than personal opinion.
5 questions to ask when you think you’re falling into an unconscious bias
Unconscious biases can influence us at any point, especially at critical moments such as decision-making and recruitment.
If you’re worried about falling into the unconscious bias trap, here are five questions you can ask yourself to help with your own self management:
| Question to ask yourself | Bias it helps you avoid |
|---|---|
| Am I staying open to new ideas? |
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| Am I working with people who are different from me? |
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| If I was working with someone else on this task, would I be acting the same way? |
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| What moments or factors in my background may have formed my opinions of this situation? |
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| Is my team operating at its maximum possible potential? |
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Sometimes all it takes is a quick gut check to see if you’re truly making the best decision, or falling into an unconscious bias.
Overcoming your biases will help you (and your company) grow
We all have biases that impact our day-to-day lives. But, if we don’t learn to recognize and act on them in the workplace, it will only harm you, your team, and your business.
Whether it’s gender bias, status quo, or the halo effect, most biases can be overcome by putting measures in place to ensure fair and balanced opinions and data are considered at major decision points. But, if you’re working on your own, try regularly asking yourself questions to check your thinking is balanced and fair.
To help you stay calm under pressure and keep biases at bay, we’d always recommend using project management software, such as Planio, to manage your team’s work. Not only will it help you keep everything in one place, but it’ll create objective data and transparent reports to help you make bias-free decisions each and every time!
Keep yourself and your team organized. Try Planio free for 30 days (no credit card needed!)
