It is the ten percent happier Podcast Dan Harris, hey everybody. We all, of course know that bias can lead to massive problems in our culture, but we might think that prejudice. Tribalism are problems for other people to solve. That assumption came back to buy some. I guess today when she embarked upon a journalistic investigation of what causes humans to be biased and how we can deal with it. She ended up seeing that she had some tumbling blind spots and assumptions of her own,

An ordeal is a science and culture journalist who has written for the Atlantic and the New York Times. Among other publications, she was educated at MIT and Harvard her new book is called the end of bias of beginning the science and practice of overcoming unconscious bias. I love this interview, she's fascinating. We talk about why we humans evolved to have biases what happens in our bodies when somebody challenges are biases, why some of the most popular personal and institutional strategies for confronting bias, dont work, the role, mindfulness and loving kindness meditation can play in reducing bias and

surprising to me at least power of studying history in this regard, I should say this is actually part one of a week, long series we're doing on by us on Wednesday. We have Robert right author of the fantastic book why Buddhism is true who has done some pretty fascinating work to challenge it own tribal instincts, we'll get started with Jessica, nor Del read after this Remember when you're living room was just the living room or when your guest room wasn't also an office and a yoga studio with asked a lot of our lately, so give your home a vacation and book a vacation home with verbal verbal has millions. Private homes to choose from so whether you are looking for a beach house, that's just a beach house or a cabin. That's just a cabin. We ve got you cupboard, download the verbal out and find the perfect vacation home. That's just a vacation home. What are my goals for the new year? Making sure I give a quality sleep

I need to have enough energy to both hit the gym and tackle work. Every day of the week, my favorite part about the sleep number three sixty smart. is that it shows my ideal schedule and best times for activities based on my circadian rhythm, so whether that's worth out or winding down I'll energy? I need to have a full, healthy, balanced day, proven quality. Sleep is life. Changing sleep which starts with sleep numbers are just ability it's time for sleep numbers, lowest price of the season, save up to one thousand dollars on fleet number three sixty smart bets, plus special financing for a limited time only at sleet number stores or sleep number dot, com, slash happier, subjects, credit approval, minimum monthly payments required Cecily numbered outcome, slash happier for details, Jessica, Nordic welcome to the shop. Thank you so much for heavy me to pleasure. Why? And how did you get into this immense

immensely important subject of bias. No, I think that I had been always kind of aware of being a woman and aware that my being a woman in the world, was affecting the way that people were interacting with me, but I was sort of like kind of a background. Harm wasn't really something that I thought about a lot or really intensely. I think that the sort of turning point for me it was when I was starting out as a journalist- and I had been working for a number of regional and local publications and publishing in Minnesota and wanting to make the next step and publish in more national publications. I started pitching to national publication. I not hearing anything back and not

any luck, and then I had this one particular experience which was trying to pitcher particular story that had like a particular sort of window of time that it would have been relevant and I sent the story out no response and kind of. In a moment of desperation, I decided to send the same pitch out under a man's name, and so I chose Jamie as my alias made a new email address, new email inbox sent out the same pitch and the peace was accepted within a couple hours, so I was shocked. Actually I really didn't expect it was going to work like a purple like a charm, and I think that's what sort of collect my interest in bias into place. I started getting much more interested in researching kind of the psychology of it. I dont,

that that editor necessarily had an overt well considered belief that pictures from women shouldn't be, you know considered as seriously as pitches from men, but nonetheless that's what happened inside got much more interested in the topic really from my own experience in it just grew from their. Your writing about the psychology of bias is fascinating. You talk about. It is whenever two people meet its like these two edges like to echo, systems meaning one another. And that's where bias comes into play. Yeah I mean, I think, really any time to people come together. There is the opportunity for bias too emerge I mean. Even you know you and me speaking right now we're engaging with each other. We have this video platform, so we can see each other and we're bringing This encounter untold numbers of expected

sons, ideas, association, stereotypes that can influence the way that we're interacting- and I think one thing- that's really important to think about with bias- is that this isn't just me projecting my biases onto you as a passive recipients or you projecting here. Ices onto me as passive recipients. It's really and interaction. So the way I treat you effects your response to me, which in turn affects my response to you it becomes this kind of dynamic, complex interaction that can have really really extreme consequences and we're not actually, in that case, when it goes truly pear shaped, were not responding to one another, as human beings were actually responding to the culture store,

about the group, whatever group is operational in the moment to which we belong. Yes, I started thinking of it as responding like more to add a dream or a hallucination than an actual person, because the culture has so many messages and so many false ideas, some true ideas, a lot of false ideas about different groups of people, and it's all on play. I think they're in that interaction. In the book you describe stereo typing, as on the one hand, a normal human, activity and neural activity of the human mind, but also a kind of addiction you mean by that yeah. So this is really interesting There's a media scholar named Travis Dixon, who says overtime, stereotyping can become almost an addiction, and I think what is meant by that is that when we stereo type another person,

like, if I'm stereotyping you, what I'm really doing, is predicting something about you and predicting what you're going to say or do how you're going to us, bond to me how you're gonna be in the world and its an expectation, so when our brains expect something or predict something, they do something very specific with what happened so of our predictions are right. We have sort of a few of reward, feels good, and if our predictions are wrong, it can be kind of unpleasant jarring, like there's some really interesting, search by Wendy bury mandates. The psychologist who found that when people interact with someone who violates a stereotype, they respond as though there experiencing cardio vascular threat like it's, it's jarring to have our expectations of violence.

and its rewarding to have them confirmed. So when we have an expectation and its correct and we get a reward that feels good and when it bends intermittently? That's called intermittent reward like an intermittent reward cycle, and that becomes really addictive. So that's why our phones are addicted of right, because we're checking social media were checking our inbox and sometimes we get a paying, and sometimes we don't and that's an extremely addictive cycle. So yeah there's some research who sent just that- and this is actually research that I think are some is under review right now that stereotyping is actually it fits into. This intermittent reward cycle, which is like an extremely hard cycle to break. So would the I thing for me to do as a straight white male is to be as insensitive as we stereotypically are in this interview, because

would reward whatever stereotyping you might be holding, as as do I like really sensitive and right here present that by give cardiovascular response: there would be dangerous there, maybe a surprise like it here, bonding away that violates the stereotype. It might be a little bit surprising are uncomfortable, but I would like to get it. that discomfort and enjoy better, find a citizen affinity that year working absolutely do my best observe barely civilized that unless they are being slightly facetious here, but this is- and I know this from some limited about a personal experience- this is really hard work. When you do it yourself and as I understand it, this path for you has been wrenching at times. It's really difficult. You know. Sometimes people ask, will what can I do? How can I start down this path and trying to tackle my own biases

I really what I think is the first step is self reflection, introspection which sound simple but, as you know, as a meditative or it can be challenging to separate yourself from the person whose, having the thoughts to the person whose observing the self having the thoughts, and observing thoughts that are violation of who we are we are all the kinds of values that we want to uphold can be extremely wrenching, yet an app really. I mean every time I'm confronted with my own bias. In my own mind, it's concerning you know and disturbing, but I think the Good NEWS is that over time it becomes easier to see it like with meditation overtime. It becomes easier to

serve the practice habits in the patterns of your own mind and hold those patterns more loosely and pause before acting on an immediate reaction or a kind of a reflex. If you come to my love to go through some of the specific tough moments for you in the course of reporting this book, who is of many year process, I know there is at one boy, you wrote an article four, the Atlantic, I believe about a company that was doing a lot of work on implicit bias. I think that company with slack, which many of us use fur workplace communication and there was a little bit a push back- can tell us about how that went down for you. Yes, I wrote this story that look tat this particular company in their approach. To

to improve diversity and the company. So I researched this story- and I spoke with a number of people at the company about some of the initiatives that they had put in place and did my what I thought was my due diligence. I reached out to a couple of people who didn't respond: interview, requests, and so I went ahead and wrote the story and after the story was published, I got a lot of positive feedback from people who said you know. That's really helps me understand how I can put better initiatives into place in my company and was very valuable, and then there were some people who were set about the story and expressed that there was a sense of paternalism, and that was really concerning for me to receive that feedback and to try to

understand how this story that I was intending to have a really positive, a fact could itself be embodying some of the negative qualities that I was actually trying to work against, and experience of getting that negative feedback and kind of working through. It was an emotional journey. For me. I mean first through a feeling of deny all like. I don't think this is really true. I sort of rejected the accusation. I went through a feeling of kind of like bargaining like oh well. If I'd been able to get certain interviews, then maybe I wouldn't have come across that way and as it was kind of going through this emotional experience, I was like wait a second those are We familiar emotions like girl denial. Bargain Oh that's grief. Those are the stages of grief

And then I started asking myself what am I grieving? What's going on here? I think I was grieving. one, not totally sure. Maybe I was breathing my own innocence, the loss of a sense that I I was immune somehow too, of the negative patterns that I was also trying to work against And let me have maybe it sounds tried to say, but I mean I think I did get to appoint of acceptance. You know, which is one of the final stages of the grieving process and being able to look closely at some of the assumptions that I had made.

into that article, going into the writing and editing and being able to sort of hold them up to the light and accept some of the assumptions that I had made as being bad assumptions? Realizing the mistakes that I had made was ultimately really essential. It was a painful process to go through a vague anybody's ever receive feedback, whether its on by a sore. The color scheme you chose Verve Party that will sound familiar to anybody ever receive feedback which comes to mind. Is this concept white fragility. I know Robin De Angelo who wrote that book white fragility is controversial, so I'm not here to pass judgment on whether work is good or bad, but the concepts compelling

I think- and I wonder whether many white people get stuck in the denial and are not willing to go all the way through the stages of grief, to acceptance and maybe improved compartment. Yes, very much cell. In fact, one of the experts who I interviewed for my book is a social psychologist works with companies in trying to treat more inclusive organizations said that. where she sees people's get stuck the most is in making a mistake and then being unable to recover from that. So she has actually said that she thinks the most important step in the process of working against bias and discrimination is persisting after a mistake. Persisting after a must, stop being able to experience the emotional difficulty and all the emotions that go through on shame, gilts defensiveness.

angry in all these feelings and then being able to move through it and move towards acceptance and positive action. I think that I'm, you know random American, who is one of your guests as well talks about doing wraps. You know these are wraps that we have to do. We have to kind of build up a certain amount of fitness to be able to face what's happening in ourselves and keep moving forward, but I mean, I think way, fragility of its such it. I mean we can have a whole conversation about white fragility. I think it is a useful concept. I think that she defines it as an inability to tolerate racial stress. I believe that's her definition of white fragility. I think that there is something really deep beneath that which is an unexplored but felt sense of horror and shame. I think that's what is beneath that inability to tolerate racial stress and I think that's the law

all that we have to get to in order to move through it and take positive action to change, and the horror and shame is a result of the fact that the workings of our mind are behave when the world often will subconsciously not meet up to the story. We tell ourselves about being a good person. Yes, that's part of it. I think there's also mean part of my journey in writing, this book was also really studying history and the origin of some of these toxic lies that we absorb, and so I think that the horror it is not only a feeling like the moment we might be behaving in a way that violates our values. That might be. Someone unintentionally, I mean that's hard to countenance. No one wants to hurt someone. Most people don't want to hurt people, but I think there's other level of horror and shame, which is a felt connection to an inheritance that is a horror, filled and shameful inheritance.

and the sense of being a beneficiary of a hideous inheritance, which is the inherited of racism when Rachel Hierarchy is an so painful. We don't want to look at it, so we stay and denial or spam. I think that we say a lot yeah. I think it's very common one of the I know you make is that you came to see that your own tendencies toward bias, whether it has to do with racism or sexism, were not just hurting other people, but there were Harding you can you say more about that? This was a really essential part of my journey in you're standing and combating bias. Us there was a really essential step which was moving from. where I started even before writing this book, where I started- and I

where a lot of people are, is a sense that bias and discrimination are essential to combat because they harm other people, insignificant ways which is absolutely true, and the consequences can be lethal, I think what I didn't understand earlier on in my process was the way that these policies that I was perpetuating on other people were also really harming me and that move from what you might call legacy you're a stick mentality like I possess all the goods, and I I need to you know extent. my beneficence toward others, so that they can benefit from my large ass going from that kind of Savior rustic mindset too an understanding that I'm off oh harmed and we're connected and the harm that I perpetuate on. Others harms me is really, I think, the root of moving beyond this kind of enough there's another word than cigarettes,

moving beyond this kind of like simplistic ocean of how change gets made. What I found was that my perpetuating of bias or discuss a nation or unintentional unexamined prejudices against other people was creating a sense of disconnection supper, Asian moving away from kind of the flow of life and into more of a lonely, disconnected existence or experience. It was also disconnecting me from reality in a bubble talked about this like decades, and ago that white supremacy is a delusion and it harms white people because it causes them to be trapped in a delusion. There's a philosopher names Charles Mills, who says one of the ironies of white supremacy is that white people have created a world that they cannot understand why people have created a world that they cannot understand, and I think that

that separation from the reality of the world is another really deleterious consequence of this whole system that were involved in what is I mean why people have greater world that we cannot understand. Maybe he means that it's not natural, to have this kind of culturally imposed ratification? Yes, human beings have always had cast. some spots. Some level to be can a delusion of your own superiority and unexamined delusion. That is nonetheless, quite powerful in terms of its motivating you're behaviors. is to not see the world as it is, and sun some level. You know that the world isn't real. You like that, and this cognitive dissonance just kind of breaks you after a while and also I mean I think that way.

We interact with one another through this, like lens of delusion than we can actually be authentic with one another either, and so, if you interacting with me and I believe you're bringing prejudices too are interaction. Then I can actually be truthful with you. I can't share what's authentic about me with you and then you can't understand me and you can't understand the world and I kept me I've had it with you either. If I don't see you does it fully human. Yes, there's also a win. The argument I've heard- and I think this is really kind of goes. I see what you're saying I believe the already was made on show by a gentleman named Lama. Ride Owens and I think I'm giving credit to the right person here, but I remember him saying something: the effect of to force yourself again, probably subconsciously, to not see,

inequities and iniquities in our society leads to a kind of heart hardening that creates stress for you and disconnection and that its subtle, but that's a real, pain that white people or anybody in a dominant or privilege group is carry absolutely yeah. I mean I think that in a sense being able to move

through the world with a feeling of like comfort and ease as a white person requires the denial of others suffering and requires what you might call a barbarous indifference to pain, and I think that over time that does dehumanize the south, it does harden the heart in a way that is not good is not healthy. You know is not human. I think that's what happens to police in many cases. That's what I saw when I was in a viewing police officers cause. I was very interested in how police can change their behaviors and I spoke with dozens of police officers.

and absolutely sensed and heard and saw that the kinds of daily the experiences that officers have contributes to a gradual eroding of their humanity. I think there are a lot of officers that would actually candidly agree with that, their quite open about how it affects them. I want to talk a lot more about what works and what does it mean two in your terminology and bias, but allow me to stay with you for a second: did you start out this process? Thinking well, not immune to bias but allows biases everybody else. I'm not saying that with any judgment, because that's a assumption, I've, around two yes yeah and I think most of us probably fall into that category of thinking. Yeah bias- is definitely a problem

It's probably more of a problem for other people than me, I'm probably in a slightly better position to be able to really tackle it and talk about it. and I was very humbled through the process of doing this research to find that I was really no different and had a lot of work to do myself.

I particularly sauce sexism, in my own mind, unexamined ways that I was making assumptions and discriminating against women, a group that I belong to, and that was a whole journey in and of itself. What about liquid first of all, I would say, is an ongoing process. I think we're all constantly in kind of some sort of transformation and hopefully towards something more life giving and life affirming, and I think for me, part of this process was really asking the question: where did these ideas come from, and so I dug into the history to try to understand the origins of racism and also the origins of patriarchy and in the process discovered, for

while the patriarchy predates the written record. So it is really old, thousands and thousands of years old and so old. In fact that, in order to try to find the origins of patriarchy, they have to look at like bones and try to deduce how people were buried to see. If there were moments when Mesopotamia area, men and women were treated someone equally by looking at their burial practices. So I think for me digging into the history of the patriarchy and how it evolved over time. Helped me see both how deeply it is woven into like the fabric of every aspect of our life, but also how I had absorbed those ideas. And so I started to notice, for instance, just how Irene added to men and women differently. I mean how I interpreted a piece of writing if it was by a man or a woman.

or how I responded instinctively to an email from an unknown email address if it was from a man or a woman, deserted I think that happens so quickly and so automatically that it's very hard to observe them unless you're pretty motivated to really try to, examined them, and once I was able to see the national, Friends of bias, in my own mind, I was able to start to interrupt question and interrupt them more consistently, but it was humble to see how those patterns played out. I mean I'm curious up turn the question to you is that something that you have thought about or practiced, specifically with regard to sexism, two percent women want to overstate how much I have thought about it or practiced it, but definitely

I've had a pathway, many ambling moments. I give you one example. Nearly three years ago, actually more than three years ago, one of the early employees of the company that I cofounded, which is called ten percent, happier wrote an email to the co founders. There are three of us all white men. She, the woman who wrote the email, is a white woman and pointed out that at that time we had ten full time, employees all men, not all white men, but all men- and we had a bunch of part time employees and of which she was one were women. But we didn't have any full time, women and we had at that time just made a new higher who was a white man, and this was after she had brought it up with us over and over and over again, and she felt, I think, not with no small amount of justification that things were going in the wrong direction.

took a lot of courage for her to write that he now. I, however, responded to it internally induced those first few seconds of reading and then maybe in the first day or two of thinking about it before actually responded in real life. With what you described earlier Sort of stages of grief denying it be angry that their than it was written in the first place, etc, etc. It triggered aims storylines that I carry around about being a monster, and then I got to the point of, and so did my co founders of, like she actually right were laid on this boat.

we're not so late that we can't do anything and committees were formed and three plus years later, I think, to companies well over fifty percent female. We have a lot more work to do on. The leadership level of the company is way too mail and white, but a lot of strides have been made and we ve all learned tongue. So yeah, that's just one embarrassing story and I could regalia with many task and a follow up. Question sure scores see said that she had brought this up like numerous times just before she read the email, if you're willing to be honest, what went through your mind of the previous times she brought it up like. Why did it not trigger any kind of meaningful change? Earlier? So, given the honest answer, I actually had been making a lot of noise about this internally. I come from a culture a day Bc News which is my day job at the time, which is very diverse. We have plenty of cultural problems, You know in particular show that I was the anchor of Nightline was, I think, eighty percent female an extreme

the heavy on people of color women of color, and so I had been pounding the table on this for a while, but had not hurt, none the less. I knew that hadn't done enough. Clearly, added done enough. And I had enormous amount of power in the company and nothing had changed, and I don't think there is you, will there. I know there wasn't a will there on the part of my colleagues who was just running a start up as it's like a rolling existential crisis, you're always on the cusp of death, and we need help and we just reach out reflexively to the people. We know in our network and as three white man, the men, people we know, and our networks in the Tec World were mostly white man, and so that's how we got into their predicament we had to diversify. Our pipelines would did about your readings, informed committees, about how to learn how to better interact with women in the workplace? How to create a workplace? That's more hospitable to women, given that the motto workplace was created by men,

men. So we had to do a lot of learning, so I dont think it was the case and if my female colleagues so that he may was on the show, maybe you'd have a different story. I think she would say that She saw me behaving in ways that were not optimal, but I don't think she would say I said to dance we need more women in his company and dance said. That's it. Idea or we're doing great, but in her email she detail story about how I had made a joke that major uncomfortable, so I do want to portray myself as blameless I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I was just curious. You know, I just think it so interesting because even just things as sort of slippery and fleeting as like what sort of feedback to take seriously are also influenced by these patterns? We ve been talking about, so it yeah becomes becomes challenging judging

put me on the spot anytime, you want. So don't worry about that about how the alpine please no, I mean, I appreciate it, because I'm I wish I had more opportunities to talk to men about the way that gender bias plays out in their own minds. You know, I think that in the aftermath of me to one I feel like that was missing was really an opportunity for men to interrogate how we let this happen and and inward, and maybe it's because we have such a litigious society. People didn't feel safe to do it or because we have a very blame and shamed society. They didn't feel emotionally safe to do it. But I appreciate the chance to talk about it, because I think it can be difficult to talk about some of these patterns and an honest way. One of the difficulties for me among many an you listed a few, was that

Mom was this Bashir, she's retired now, but she was a celebrated academic, physician and editor at the New England Journal of Medicine, trailblazer for women in medicine, my married to credibly impressive academic, physician authority and twist, and so it's it's just contrary to the story. I tell myself about myself, and this is just echoing things you ve already said in this conversation. When can hunted with evidence, irrefutable evidence to the contrary. The psyche goes into crisis, much more. My conversation with just gonna Cordell after this comes to weddings. There are a million things to think about. Zola makes wedding planning easy, so you can focus on the million wedding moments. That really matter instead like how it feel to finally see, although smiles to have all the people you love in one place and to get closer to the people, your closest to over a million couples of pay.

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where we teach you how to meditate without any of the bells and whistles that can make the whole thing hard or confusing or off putting the ten percent have your asses availed to download wherever you get your apps. So I know this is a question you get a lot, but I'm going to ask it because I think it's really interesting. What do we do about it? Six years of riding the bus, ten years of research, inclusive of the writing of the book. You ve done a lot of homework here. What have you learned about? What works? It doesn't work and we can talk about the individual and the systemic levels, but let's start with the individual level. What have you learned about what we can and due to not be so owned by these culturally implanted stories. That trip us up. I can tell you it doesnt work to stare at what doesnt work

is believing that one is objective and has no role in this is a very common response and like as you and I just talking about earlier to think. Well, maybe that's from for other people, but it's probably not really a problem for me that really doesn't work. There's research where people were asked to kind of dwell on their own. activity and then were shown. Resin It was like a male name Female name groups were shown the same resolution but only the name was manipulated. That was one group and then another group was shown Erasmus first and then asked about objectivity later, and the group that had first been kind of primed to think about their own objectivity, showed more by this actually between the male and female resume choice. So thinking that your objective probably only serves to make you

you trust your biases even more, because you don't think you have to worry about it. Another thing that doesn't work is saying: oh I'm color blind or I'm gender blind. I just see everybody the same. There was a study of the large healthcare organization and the researchers looked at different departments in the extent to which they practiced color blindness versus, like multiculturalism, her exploring people's differences and the researchers found it in the departments where color blindness was sort of the predominant way of handling difference. Employees of colored detected more bias and felt more discriminated against, so these are really common strategies and they don't work. So what does work so there are a lot of different things that have been shown to change people's behaviour. That's the Good NEWS that they're not easy or automatic or simple, but they do change behaviour. So the first is what I mentioned earlier. his awareness becoming aware of discrimination both out in the world and also the patterns,

discrimination in one's own mind is a really important first step. There's really robust research about a particular type of training where people are given material to boost awareness and increase their motivation and then given strategies to combat by us, and this awareness seems to be a really key component in changing behaviour, and this particular training is really effective in changing people's behaviour. Even years later they see changes and how people act. What does name of that training, or how could we do in our own lives in a way that might give us some confidence that we're doing some? It actually works shore, so this particular training was developed at the university Scots in by a researcher name, Patricia Divine, is a team of people that conduct this. They ve been working on. This particular bias. Intervention workshop, I think for about

ten years now, refining and developing different adoration of it and it's kind of based on a cognitive behind your therapy model, which is that, in order to change, you have to have awareness that there's a problem. You have to be motivated to change the problem, and then you have to have replacement strategies so in this pretty Miller training. They give you all of the sort of like a cinch presentation of how bias works and what its impact is in the world. How serious its consequences are. These are design to increase awareness and motivation and then give you a sort of ad palette of strategies to use and astray, jeez include things like looking for alternative explanations. For a person's behaviour, once you realize that you're making an assumption about the reason for someone's behaviour coming up with alternative explanations, developing meaningful relationships with people of other groups, that's a whole other strategy, which I can talk about in more detail. And there are,

like a few other strategies that they offer. So these three things together the kind of awareness, motivation and strategies they have found actually changes people's behaviour. So after going through this particular training, college students were more likely to speak up about discrimination when they witnessed it in an online context. A set of university science and master Hartman's ended up hiring more women when they went through a gender focused version of this training, so these components seem to be helpful in changing people's behaviour in the real world. Another strategy that is extremely helpful is mine, ass, actually mindfulness in meditation, seem to have an effect on a lot of different aspects of bias. There are, I mean, I'm sure, as you know, like compassion, meditation has shown to create more altruistic responses to people who are in other groups. There's some

the interesting research by a narrow scientists named unit Kang who found that, after six weeks of meditation people's responses to the implicit association test went to the euro. This is a task that looks at pre. Familiar with the implicit Association TAT Day, as far as I know, those pretty controversial, it is really controversially and its unclear exactly what it measures. So we could like talk about them. Indeed, controversy due back it's an interesting fighting that she found consistently people's responses to this task that at least purportedly looks at automatic associations. People responded as though they had no bias in their associations. Now that could be that their biases eroded it could be that they just got better itself control their different explanations for what could be going on here. But one piece of research that I found really interesting was about the impact of loving kindness meditation. Some

scientists found that people who were really practiced in loving kindness, meditation, who were shown images of selves and images of someone else over one area of the brain. They showed more similar responses talking at an image of the south and looking at an image of the other than people who were not experienced, loving kindness, Mediterranean, doesnt, really so fascinating, but in a maybe overtime, certain kinds of meditation start to actually a road. Some of this, wrong distinction between the south and other there. Many other approaches that work is well. Those are just a few just staring with meditation for a second. How solid would you say Science is right now that meditation, be it my phone, meditation or loving kindness meditation can help us erode our biases either within the realm of our own mind or

in how we, you know comport ourselves in the world. Well, I would say the science is still in pretty early stages about the effective mindfulness and other kinds of meditation unbiased, but we do know some things that are pretty solid, which are that bias is exacerbated by things. I stress cognitive load, emotional, this regulation, time, pressure things like this, and we know that meditation can act against us so a mindful as and other kinds of meditation can improve. Emotional regulation can decrease. Stress decrease cognitive led to their sort of an indirect link. So I would say that the scientists pretty new, but there does seem to be promising

evidence that it can have a positive impact- and we certainly do have really good evidence that loving kindness, meditation creates more other directed altruistic behaviour. So it's interesting. If I'm here, you correctly, there's some evidence that kind of directly suggests that meditation can reduce bias, but there is also a pretty solid inference. One can make. in that the stress can boost the odds that, where biased are owned by our biases and adaptation is good for stress and therefore by the transit of property, etc, etc. Yeah, absolutely I mean another pretty interesting and compelling piece of evidence is that we do know that our behaviour towards other people is actually more predicted by our national response than our cognitive response. Our feelings are a really good predictor of Howard, an act, and we know that mindfulness,

is an effective way of achieving more emotional regulation. So that's another sort of like inferential piece of evidence about why it can be helpful about other modalities for reducing bias. One of them is having relationships with people who are different from you. I suspect some people might hear then say what how do I do that? Yes, yeah, I mean there's a little bit of a chicken and egg problem here, which is that, if you are arrests or uncertain about having relationships with people who belong to different social identities that it can be hard to have those relationships which are maybe necessary for it? we started eroding road and some of the biases. So is your quest, Like how doesn't control about doing that or like, I could talk more about like what the science is about, how that actually works? Well, it was, in our fully posed question. I definitely want to hear about the science and I suspect there are people who

are worried. We increasingly live in how much it is bubbles or it carefully. Curated, information bubbles as well, and so I think it's been referred to as the great sorting the bubbles can be itty, illogical. That can be raised and it may not be the easiest thing for people to go out and approach. You know somebody who doesn't look like them, and say. Will you be my friend or can we work cooperatively and something so I can reduce by policies, etc, etc. ray, and there is certainly the risk of creating some kind of perverse situation in which a person of another social identity becomes like instrument of like self improvement for the self. I think part of it is really being open to operate. To use. I mean many of us are confronted throughout our data day with an opportunity to either moved more Hamas fully and homogeneity or more plurality and include seventy

and by Hamas away. I mean literally love of the same that's kind of one of the key biases that humans are susceptible to, which is when we have the opportunity to choose a person. We often choose someone who's a lot like us whether a tiring someone like an example that you gave or choosing a friend or choosing a kind of part of town too, and we are drawn to that which is about like ourselves. So I think part of it is just keeping one's eyes and ears open for opportunities that come along, and maybe being more aware of one's own tendency to gravity toward sameness or- homogeneity, and maybe it comes up in the kinds of choice that we make where to send our children to school, what part of town to live in what sort of relationships to pursue, what sort of organizations to participate in volunteer unity is to pursue. I think there may be more opportunities for connection, then

initially maybe be, but it takes some intentionally. I love the phrase is because the intention Amity has to be on a couple levels. On the one hand, yes, it sounds like you would be good for you as individual good for the world to take advantage of opportunities to get some diversion in your life and to be able to have relationship across lines of difference. On the other hand, you don't want to in this The phrase used that I like use, other people as the instrument in your own. You know self Development Agenda YAP yesterday. Certainly a lot of sense

fifty awareness and vigilance to that danger- I think you know it was in the nineteen. Fifty- is that a psychologist named Gordon Airport developed this idea of the contact hypothesis of your familiar with the contact I Papa says. So. Basically, he was trying to understand why some situations lend themselves to the decrease of prejudice and he hypothesize that they're, like conditions that have to be met. order for people to decrease their own tendency to discriminate toward one another, and those are equal status, quo, duration towards a common goal and the imprimatur of an authority or an institutional authority that this interaction is ok by some kind of like larger authority, and so this has been tested and a lot of contexts. And you know this

scientists are always looking for an absolute answer to whether something works or not, and I would say that the exact details of like how and why and wind contact works are still in development are still being research. But there is some really compelling and interesting evidence that when people work cooperatively on a common goal under the aegis of an institutional authority, It actually changes people's behaviour so like there is an amazing study that looked at a cricket team were men of different casts in dear, were team members on the same cricket team and found that compared to men who did not share a team with members of other casts. The men who played together worked together collaborated together, were teammates experienced, like the entire process,

of being at a team member with someone of a different cast later were more likely to choose some one of a different cast as a future teammate and were more likely to be friends with someone of a different cast, and that's just one study. But there are many studies that show that this collaborative cooperative work and I think the cooperative is really key element. This isn't one group extending charity to another. These are people working together as equals. This seems to be an effective way of decreasing the kinds of prejudice that are so harmful. I mean we see it in. soldiers who fight side by side as well. That's another context where we see prejudice start to erode. It's making me think, joined rotary Club or do social service work where you're fully equal. It doesn't matter what your status is in the larger society coming in Europe to build something together: you're going to feed people together or

you're in a joint school board or whatever it is. That sounds like it could be a really good waited derived benefits, you're describing yes, absolutely absolutely much more. My conversation with Jessica nor Adele after this as I understand it. Another thing that you recommend- and you did touch on this earlier, but I think it's worth going deeper on it now is studying history yeah. I mean there's research about this and I can also speak from personal experience that studying history is an extremely powerful way of tackling bias. The research has to do with something called the morally hypothesis, which is named after Bob Marley, who said since the court is, if you know your history than you'll know where you're coming from and a few researchers have looked at what happens when people understand more about history, I think in one study, white participants were taught,

bout, the: U S, government role in creating discriminatory housing policy and how this impact housing. Segregation and they later acknowledged and understood more present day racism, then the participants who didn't game that historical knowledge, so there's something about seeing the past that allows us to be able to connect to the present and see the present more. Clearly. I found that in my own experience, reading deeply into the history of racism, the origins of racism, the history of patriarch the trajectory of patriarchy in society, allowed me to both see the machinations of you

ideas in my own head and the way that I inherited them and also allowed me to hold them more lightly. I don't, if there's another way of saying that I think it was seeing present day by us and discrimination as the legacy of a long history of toxic lies. Both allowed me to see it more clearly and also be able to let it go more. I felt its grip on me was less strong when I understood where it came from,

that this is a cultural invention. This is a human invention. This is not a natural is not ordained from above. This is something we humans created, two very ill effect, and we humans have the capacity to turn it around. Seeing that cultural contingency, I think, was a really important step for me. It was an important phase in my own journey. I ain't as massively powerful, an important point and just it build on it. A little bit of front of mine was imitation teacher by the name of seven isolation, but on the show, a number of times she likes to quote, I believe it's Krishna Murky, who said something the effective. You think you're thinking your thoughts, but actually you're thinking the cultures that, and that is really helpful, just and you'd

have to blame yourself for these horrid thoughts that are scattering through your consciousness at any given moment, and once you take the blame and the shame out of the game, then you can look at the thoughts more forthrightly and not be so owned by them. I would just add to that that loving kindness, meditate, It is really useful in terms of kind of reducing the amount of inclement where, that may be in your mind at any given moment. Visa yourself in my experience, I don't know if there's any data to back this up. In my experience Little less horrified, I'm a little warmer to myself in those moments where I see that I am thinking of the nets completely unfair and ungrounded yeah, and I think that really important in addition to that, is that that space of possibility that opens up when we see that these are not preordained and that we have the capacity to change that possible

reality is so fertile. We can actually choose another path and I think it's incumbent on us to choose another path. I mean we ve seen the horrible consequences of not using another path. And so I don't want to leave it as like. We just need to feel compassionate toward ourselves and continue doing what we have always been doing like one feel compassion towards ourselves, so that we are able to move direction of connection and inclusive pity and fairness towards our fellow humans areas. Undeniably, true- and I'm glad you made that point just to sum up- and I dont know if one were to some- are correctly I'll- take a stab out in your your correction, if I'm wrong after an enormous amount of research. On your end, it sounds like there are a number of strategies that use found that have evidence

in them that individual can take to reduce their bias in those include taking a biased training that has evidence to support it, meditation cooperating with people who were different from you, learning about story- and perhaps most importantly- you said this earlier- but I'm may add a back here- persistence not giving up when, inevitably you screw up, yes, slowly and then. Additionally, there are a lot of strategies that organizations can also take you, and I have talked mostly about interpersonal interactions, but if you think about how these policies can have really deleterious console says in large organisations when you have a lot of people interacting with one another, that's another kind of important dimension as well. I'd love to hear a little bit about that, because I sometimes come across studies that show that these expensive corporate, biased trainings are,

neutral two negative, but I rather doubt at my fingertips, I'd just recall seeing articles like that. So what does work yeah I mean there are a lot of approaches that can be effective and organizations looking at the practices of the organization, I think, is incredibly important. So what are the sort of policies and practices that are in place and where is biased coming it? I think the place to start is not like. Is our organization biased but like in what ways, despite just show up in our organization. Where are these patterns happening because they are, they are happening there happening everywhere So, where are these patterns showing up? Where are these patterns up and hiring or promotions, or even interpersonal interactions? You know whose voices are heard whose getting interrupt

whose ideas are acted on. These are all really important questions for organizations to ask, and then I think, once certain do that analysis with, hopefully, maybe the help of like a consult There's somebody comes into help an organization look through those things, then. there are a number of things that can be done. I'll. Give you one example which is coming up with really shared, consistent, transparent criteria for making decisions. if we know that we are going to be inclined towards him awfully that we're going to be inclined toward choosing that, which is the same and one way to combat that in a formal way is to develop a list of care, Syria that everyone agrees on for making a decision that might be influenced by him awfully, for instance, win sitting a new higher, rather than looking at

resume and interviewing someone in deciding whether they seem like a culture fit, which is a criteria that a lot of people using an organizational. This isn't having a set of criteria that are decided on ahead of time and then looking to see if that candidate meets those criteria is one way to formally decrease the influence of bias and decision making every organization is going to be different, but a larger question for any organization. To really ask itself is why is this important? What is our fundamental motivation for trying to achieve an unbiased workplace or an inclusive workplace? And what are we hope it will achieve so there's a classic study by business professors, Robin Julie and David Thomas David Thomas, is now the President of Moorhouse College, but he was a Harvard Business School, professor, along with rabbit you even this classic study was published.

and what they were interested in, was understanding why some organisations functioned well in the context of diversity, and some organisations did not function well and they found that there were three different motivations, our expectations for what diversity would achieve in an organization. One set of motivations was really about justice and equality, and the idea was these teams were interested in pursuing diversity because they thought that it would help the organization live up

What's ideals there was. There was another set of motivations that was really about business opportunities that it was important to have a diverse set of employees, because it would open up new business avenues, and then there was a third set of motivations which were about the fundamental functioning of the organization, and in these teams they felt that diversity was important because it was essential to the future of the company. It was essential to the functioning of the company to have all of these different perspectives and have them integrated while and included in the first two examples. The first two kinds of motivations about pursuing justice and equality and opening business opportunities did not function that, while actually

was the teams where the motivation was about the fundamental functioning of the company teams, where they believed that it was important to include everyone's ideas and make sure that everyone felt safe and that people had influence, because those ideas were essential to the company that those perspectives were essential to the fore drove the company. When the leaders at that organization felt that diverse perspectives were essential to the functioning of the organization and that this was a source of wealth, this was actually a source of like essential resource for the organization. The organization functioned better way, people were able to have disagreements and move beyond them resolve conflict to learn from one another sort of all of the benefits of diversity were able to be realised, and it really helps

with a fundamental motivation? So I think that something that's really important forward innovations to ask themselves. What are we really trying to do here and do we believe that all of these perspectives are fundamentally important? I think that's organ donations, but we have to start in order to make these changes is a fascinating point in what it brings to mind. For me Tell me if this is it an appropriate association is an article in the New York Times magazine. I read several years ago by Charles: do him about a mad dash, a long, frustrating internal research project at Google, where they were trying to figure out? What was the common denominator among the tea that function the best and for a long time I couldn't figure it out till they arrive on an answer which was something called psychological safety, which is the feeling within a team that everybody was willing and able to speak up. Answered I for years with terrible, creating cyclist.

Safety is still struggled to do it and seeing that with such an eye opener for me, a really put it on my radars, something I need to continually strive to do so you with that came to mind for me, as you were talking to, that makes sense. Not only does it make sense, but psychological safety is actually the link between diversity and performance, so people talk a lot about the benefits of diversity. That organizations are more creative and have you no better problem? Solving. That's not actually, true, necessarily because all of the power dynamics that exist in the real world can just be recreated in a workplace

Research does show that if everyone feels psychologically safe, if everyone feels they can learn from one another, they feel safe enough to learn from one another. Then diversity becomes this huge resource that allows for better performance disobey such as an adversary. Should I want to congratulate you that I know that your book I said this a couple times of just marvelling at how much time you invested in producing this book ten years of research, six years of writing on the book, I think you mentioned at one point two off might to me that you spent four months doing fact: checking alone citizen monumental achievement at such an important subject so regulations on finishing in putting it up to the world. Thanks

come on the show thanks so much damn, thanks again to Jessica, the show is made by Samuel Johns Gabrielle Zocor Men, Dj Cashmere, Justine Davy came like a memorial were tell and gent plant with audio engineering from our good friends over at ultra violet audio will see well on Wednesday, with the aforementioned Robert right. We're going to talk about some of his own attempts to challenge his own biased. He's in tribal instincts that's coming up on Wednesday.