In recent years, numerous organisations have been implementing unconscious bias training, with the aim of enhancing diversity and inclusion. This has become particularly important in view of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet more recently the whole notion of unconscious bias and associated training has been subject to a significant amount of criticism and in December 2020 a UK government minister announced that such training for civil servants in England would be scrapped. What then is problem with unconscious bias and what kind of training could replace it?

The problem with unconscious bias

The term ‘unconscious bias’ refers to the notion that individuals hold biases towards people from other social groups (particularly, from different ethnic groups) that they are not consciously aware of. As a result, their decision-making, such as during recruitment, performance evaluation, or promotion, is affected by these subconscious biases, resulting in discrimination and inequality of opportunities.

In the last few years, many organisations have instituted unconscious bias training, with the aim of overcoming these issues and enhancing diversity and inclusion. Yet a number of criticisms have been raised against it, including the following:
• The psychological basis of unconscious bias is unclear; e.g. how it differs from our preferences for the familiar over the unfamiliar and for our own social group over an unknown social group
• There is no accurate and reliable way to measure unconscious bias
• There is only a weak relationship between attitudes and behaviour
• Unconscious bias training may be counter-productive and make the situation worse
• Unconscious bias training may simply function as a tick-box exercise and not achieve real and long-lasting change

There is an ongoing debate on the above, yet whatever the viewpoint, I would argue that an attitudinal perspective, which is what unconscious bias focuses on, is too limited.

Understanding the impact of socialisation

Our socialisation into different membership groups helps form our social identities, which in turn influences our attitudes (including potential prejudices and biases) towards members of other groups. However, our socialisation does not only influence our sense of identity and attitudes toward others; it also has a significant impact on several other facets that underlie or frame our behaviour. I call this cultural patterning.

As the diagram below indicates, our cultural patterning affects several elements, including the following:
• Our expectations as to what will happen in a given situation (e.g. the processes associated with a job interview)
• Our expectations and beliefs as to what the participants should or should not do (e.g. who can ask what kind of questions when in a job interview)
• Our expectations as to the principles that people should uphold (e.g. how truthful one should be in a job interview)

The more similar our socialisation experiences, the closer our expectations are likely to be. Or conversely, the greater the differences in our upbringings, education, work experience and so on, the greater the potential differences in our expectations. The key here is this: not only may this result in variation in behaviour, but more importantly, individuals’ evaluations or judgements of other people’s behaviour can be significantly different. This can result in unfair treatment and discrimination.

A rapport management approach

A rapport management approach focuses on cultural patterning, especially on how we make evaluations when we experience something unexpected. We all have a ‘normalcy’ threshold and when it is breached by something unusual that someone has said or done to us, our evaluation process is immediately triggered. There is frequently an emotional reaction, such as of dislike or annoyance if the experience was negative, and this typically leads to a negative evaluation of the person involved.

However, our judgements are based on our own cultural patterning, and the key is to gain greater awareness of our own, contextually-based cultural patterning as well as that of the other person(s). This cannot be taught directly; rather it requires a personal development strategy. My GlobalPeople team include in our training the use of a very simple tool that helps foster greater evaluation sensitivity in intercultural contexts: the GlobalPeople 3R Tool. The three Rs stand for Report, Reflect, Re-evaluate, and by working through each stage – preferably with someone else – new insights and perspectives frequently emerge, and people’s evaluative judgements are then usually revised. Participants are encouraged to apply this whenever they encounter annoying or unexpected situations, whoever is involved. We complement this with the GlobalPeople 4S Stretch Tool which focuses on behaviour, encouraging flexibility and personal stretching.

But what about prejudice?

Having read through this, you may be thinking: but what about prejudice and discrimination? Isn’t a rapport management approach too superficial? I would contend that our attitudes are deep-rooted, the result of our lifetime of socialisation experiences. They cannot be changed overnight. The best option is to gain insights into other people’s perspectives and experiences and thereby to grow in mutual sensitivity and appreciation.

Helen Spencer-Oatey is Professor Emerita of Intercultural Communication/Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick and co-author of Intercultural Politeness.