In a recent post, I wrote about how I took a certain implicit bias test that concluded I unconsciously associated 'Asian' and 'native'. Since I feel strongly that unconscious bias is a reflection of our accumulated experiences, I decided to come up with a new version of this test intended to assess personal experience and suggest in my rambling, roundabout way how it might contribute to unconscious bias.
Here’s an early version of the test – you can take it at home! It should take about five minutes.
The TOA Innocent Experience Leadership Bias Test
1) Set a timer for one minute and hit start
2) Think of as many examples of great American leaders as you can. These examples do not need to be political leaders or famous people – just write down the names you associate with leadership. If you accidentally name a foreign person, that’s OK, just keep going!
3) After the minute is over, note the race and gender of your leaders. If you aren’t entirely sure, you can guess. Mixed races can count as half, a third, etc – just use your best judgment.
4) Using whatever source you trust, find the demographics of the USA. If you trust me, use the numbers I pulled from this link: 73.3% white, 12.6% black, 5.2% Asian, 8.9% for all other races (including two or more). Let’s split men and women 50/50 within each demographic.
5) Compare your leaders by percentage to those demographics.
6) If your results are discrepant, ask yourself how long it would take for you to think of enough leaders so that your answers in #2 would match the national demographics as determined in #4. For example, if you named twelve white leaders, you probably should have named around two black leaders and one Asian leader. How long would it take to name those extra three leaders?
7) Before sending me an angry email, remind yourself that, like any test, this one is designed to trick you just a little bit...
OK – the results are in! I didn’t take the test myself, and probably could not honestly have done so given my role in its design, but here’s what I think I would have done – I would have named at least 73% white leaders, a result I expect of just about anyone else who dares to take the test.
What I expect my test to tell me is two things. First, the natural baseline in this country for what we consider an example of great leadership would skew heavily toward white people. Second, within each racial subgroup men would form the majority. This view likely surprises no one. I think that’s OK because this result isn’t destiny but merely a prophecy. Like all prophecies, we choose which ones are going to be self-fulfilling. If an analogy is required, my test is far from a disease diagnosis – it’s a lot more like a concerning vital sign such as high blood pressure or a history of eating processed foods. There is time to change the outcome but it will require a concerted effort built on an understanding of where the road leads and an acknowledgement of the pressures that keep us on the path.
How can someone apply the lessons from this kind of test? The answer is to be more conscious. The best opponent for our unconscious thinking is to become a more conscious thinker, and remain so, until we’ve taught ourselves to react the same way that we think. In other words, the only tutor we can hire for our unconscious is our conscious.
A good place to start is to acknowledge that we choose leaders based partly on how they match our existing mental models for leadership. A person who knows that his or her best examples of leadership all fit a certain demographic descriptor might take an extra moment to weigh a decision at the polls, assess candidates after a job interview, or consider if a student’s participation in school government is being weighed equally to peers of another race or gender. It doesn’t have to be a long pause, just a moment is OK, because a moment is all it takes for the conscious to acknowledge, dismiss, and eventually improve the impulses of the unconscious.
