Bias, bigotry, and other brain blunders
The elephant in the room—the one everyone recognises—is overt bias: those charmingly blatant attitudes and prejudices someone proudly wears on their sleeve. It’s delightfully obvious and enables some truly impressive mental gymnastics. Then there’s the other elephant—the one lurking in the shadows, rarely discussed. This is unconscious bias: our hidden preferences for or against a person, thing, or group, neatly tucked away where even we can’t see them. Despite our best efforts to be impeccably fair-minded, we might harbour deep-seated resistance to differences—race, gender, physical traits, personality types, sexual orientation, you name it. How embarrassing. ...