Words to Know
Implicit Bias -- Subconscious attitudes or assumptions that influence our understandings and actions
Confirmation Bias -- Tendency to utilize information which reinforces our existing beliefs
Fundamental Attribution Error -- The tendency to attribute other individuals' negative behaviors to their character instead of environmental factors and attributing negative behaviors of our own to the environment instead of our character
Colorblind Racial Attitudes -- An attitude in which one attempts to suggest that they see no difference between individuals of different races
Privilege -- A special right given to certain individuals based on a variety of factors such as race, socioeconomic status, gender, or sexuality
In-Group Bias -- An innate favoritism for individuals within one's own social group or designated group
Microaggression -- Short verbal or behavioral slants, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostility and prejudice to marginalized groups
Additional Reading
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Our Racist Heart?: An Exploration of Unconscious Prejudice in Everyday Lifeby Geoffrey Beattie
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White fragility: why it's so hard for white people to talk about racismby DiAngelo, Robin J
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Uprooting Bias in the Academy
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Call Number: ebook -
Biased
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Call Number: 303.385 Eb3b
Discovering Your Own Biases
Acknowledging your own biases presents one of the greatest challenges in self-discovery and self-understanding because it forces us to look directly at our own flaws. However, it helps us to better understand mental shortcuts that may be hurting ourselves and those around us.
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias involves understanding new information in terms of our own pre-existing beliefs. We make an unconscious choice to recall information that confirms thoughts and theories that we have developed and ignore information that refutes these theories. Below is a short four minute video that can help you better grasp confirmation bias.
Harvard Implicit Bias Test
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Project Implicit - Implicit Association TestsProject Implicit is a non-profit organization and international collaboration between researchers who are interested in implicit social cognition - thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control. The goal of the organization is to educate the public about hidden biases and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the Internet.
This website features Implicit Associations Tests (IAT) on a number of topics. The IAT measures the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., black people, gay people) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., athletic, clumsy). These tests are designed to reveal an individual’s hidden or subconscious biases.
Videos Worth Watching
Kyle Quinn talks about his experience marrying an immigrant and the challenges he did not expect
Tony Salvador discuses our biases we display while listening
