What are the two types of bias?

A bias is an unfair or unjust preconceived notion that a person has formed about another person or group of people. Bias comes in two different varieties: conscious and unconscious.

A conscious bias is a bias that people are aware they have. They involve explicit opinions that a person knowingly holds and acts on, such as disliking someone because of the color of their skin. Over the years, many steps have been taken to address conscious biases in the workplace, including the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and other categories. Of course, conscious biases still exist in the workplace, but there are policies, procedures, and even laws in place to address them.

An unconscious bias is a bias a person has without realizing it, which makes it the more difficult type of bias to address. An unconscious bias affects a person’s thinking in ways that the person is not aware of. For example, an employer might have two final candidates for a position in an organization’s web marketing department. In every other essential way, the candidates are equally qualified, but one candidate is middle-aged and the other is just out of college. Because the employer has an unconscious belief that younger generations probably have a firmer grasp on social networking than their older counterparts, the employer might be inclined to offer the job to the younger candidate based solely on the employer’s preconceived assumption.

Even a person’s name on a resume can trigger an unconscious bias. According to one study, a name on a resume that seems to suggest the applicant is white is much more likely to result in that person receiving a request for an interview than a name on a resume that seems to suggest the applicant is African-American.

A person’s unconscious bias can even be at odds with how that person thinks about people on a conscious level. For example, a manager might consider herself to be a strong supporter of the LGBT community and yet be unconsciously reluctant to promote an employee who is gay because of an unpleasant verbal exchange the manager once had with a supervisor who she knew was gay. In such an example, the manager is not even aware that she is harboring an unconscious bias against LGBT employees, which is what makes unconscious bias difficult to discover and eradicate.