When thinking about who you mentor, or even who wants to mentor you, we need to consider unconscious bias. We should be thinking about this in many other arenas too -- recruiting, hiring, development, etc.
Unconscious bias refers to a judgement you make about a person usually based on limited knowledge when you're not even aware of doing it. For example, when you meet someone who graduated from the same school as you, you have an instant connection and may prefer hiring this person rather than others who may have stronger credentials.
I saw an interesting talk by Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard researcher who has been at the forefront in this line of social science research for at least 20 years. Dr. Banaji led the group through a very interactive presentation of the cognitive research that explains how well-intentioned people have these unconscious biases that make them do things that are not so great.
She noted how people have a strong capacity to imitate others (just stick your tongue out at a baby and see what happens) and as leaders we need to think about who might be following us!
Some points that stuck with me:
- Sterotypical associations are hard to break
- Discrimination happens by those we help (not just those we don't help)
- Blind interviews produce greater diversity
- We pass judgement in the first few minutes of meeting someone
She showed a video of a person's face changing where people were asked to assess how smart they were and it found that people felt those whose eyes were closer together weren't as smart!
http://webscript.princeton.edu/~tlab/demonstrations/
We might miss important elements-- See the selective attention test on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
Co-author Tony Greenwald's website
http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/
The new Benaji-Greenwald book called Blind Spot, the Hidden Biases of Good People comes out on 12 February!
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