One reason bias is hard to overcome is that they are sometimes tied to our core beliefs. Core beliefs are our beliefs about ourselves and the world that we learned in childhood and strengthen as we become adults. We have core beliefs about all sorts of things and many are positive, some are negative. The problem is that core beliefs are very rigid and sensitive to change.
For example, I have a bias that all slow drivers are grandmas. What a silly thing to be bias about, but it has been the hardest bias for me to overcome. Why? I believe it's because it's tied so much to my core beliefs. I remember as a child that my parents and other adults would complain about slow grandma drivers, so my child brain started equating the two together. I developed a core belief, that eventually became an implicit bias.
The part of our brain that responds to intellectual threats is the same part that responds to physical threats. Whenever our core beliefs are challenged with new information, our brains can go into defense mode, causing us to react emotionally versus logically. When this happens, we might even reject the new information and instead strengthen our original beliefs. This is called the backfire effect and can make a person resistant to facts and logic. Whenever you have a strong, emotional reaction to new information, chances are your core beliefs are being challenged.
The backfire effect is a type of confirmation bias.
Beatrice the Biologist |
Confirmation bias is when our brains subconsciously look for things that match our biases while ignoring things that go against them. Anytime you find yourself thinking something "always" happens in certain situations or with certain people, it probably doesn't. Your brain is just ignoring all the other times. Confirmation bias can also affect how we remember things and change our memories to make us look better or to make people we don't like look worse. Example: One of my implicit biases is that all slow drivers are grandmas. I know this isn't true and I'm actively working to correct this bias, but I still find myself noticing slow elderly drivers more than young teens learning to drive -- even though I taught my own children to drive and remember them driving slowly! I have to take mental effort to make myself notice and remember slow drivers that aren't elderly. |
Negative bias is the unconscious tendency to notice negative events more than positive ones. Combined with confirmation bias, this means we are more likely to notice negative interactions with others that confirm the already negative ideas we have them -- and all of this is happening subconsciously without our awareness or permission.
Research suggests that it takes 3-5 positive experiences to equal one negative experience. This means you have to purposely notice and remember multiple positive experience just to counter 1 negative experience that our brain has latched on to subconsciously. As you can see, it can take a great deal of effort to overcome our biases.