Leadership Essay

Decision Making and Decision Biases

Even well-meaning leaders can fall into decision making biases that render their decisions

unethical or problematic. Messick and Bazerman (1996, 2000) claim that many unethical

organizational decisions are not really based on greed, neglect or cruelty but rather biased ways

in which people process information to make their decisions. Leaders often suffer from biases

they have regarding the way the world works, about other people, and about themselves.

Biases about how the world works:

Ignoring the possibility that low probability events can occur even if they pose serious

consequences later.

Limiting the search for stake holders and as result, overlooking the needs of important groups.

Ignoring the possibility that the public may find out about an action.

Discounting the future by putting immediate needs ahead of long term goals

Underestimating the impact of decisions on other groups or stake holders.

Believing the world is certain instead of unpredictable.

Failure to acknowledge and confront risk.

Framing risk differently for followers than for leaders.

Blaming people when larger systems are at fault.

Excusing those who fail to act when they should.

Biases about other People

Beliefs that people in our group, culture, or circle are more normal, better, and

trustworthy while people outside our group, culture, or rank are inferior, strange, or less

trustworthy.

Giving special consideration and aid to people in our in-group

Judging or evaluating people according to their group membership (stereotyping).

Biases about Ourselves

Rating ourselves more highly than other people.

Underestimating the likelihood that negative things like illness, accidents, failures, and

addictions can happen to us.

Believing that we can control random events or other people.

Overestimating the contributions we make to our organization.

Overconfidence which prevents us from learning more about a situation

Believing that normal rules and obligations don’t apply to us.

Contextual pressures

Organizations that promote conformity and obedience over dissent and innovation.

Putting profits over people.

Putting appearances above reality.

A division of labor that allows subordinate to claim they were “just following orders” and

superiors to claim they only set broad policies and cannot be held accountable for

unethical or illegal acts done by their subordinates. When tasks are broken up into small

segments, we may not even know we are doing anything wrong. For example, a low level

government secretary may unknowingly shred documents that are needed in a criminal

case. Sometimes the pressure to do well on national tests may lead elementary and high

school teachers to give their students more time or help than is ethically allowed.

1. When do these biases creep into your decision making?

2. Which one are you most prone too and what has happened when you have let it influence

your decision making?

Implicit Bias: Bias as a Cognitive Process

Explicit bias reflects the attitudes or beliefs that we knowingly endorse on a conscious level.

In contrast, implicit bias is the bias in judgment and/or behavior that stems from cognitive

processes operating on a level below our conscious awareness and without our intentional control

(Staats, 2014). Implicit bias arises out of the human tendency for snap judgment. Everyone is a

“cognitive miser”; people want to avoid thinking anymore than necessary when they make quick

decisions (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). In doing so, people avoid “fact checking” the “evidence” that

supports their judgment or decision. So for example, instead of having a conscious reason for an

assessment (smoking is bad because one’s seen a damaged lung); one makes an implicit

association (a boisterous Arabic man on the street reminds one of angry shouting crowds of

Middle Easterners as seen on the media).

Everyone is susceptible to implicit biases (Rutland, et al., 2005) and from a young age,

children develop biased associations directly from authority figures and indirectly through

observation (Castelli, Zogmaister, & Tomelleri, 2009; Kang, 2012) and media exposure (Dasgupta,

2013). As adults, implicit biases, which encompass both benevolent and unfavorable assessments,

are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control (Blair,

2002; Rudman, 2004). Because implicit associations arise outside of conscious awareness; they do

not necessarily align with an individual’s declared beliefs or even the stances they would explicitly

endorse (Graham & Lowery, 2004; Greenwald & Krieger, 2006; Reskin, 2005). Emotionally, people

generally associate bias or prejudice with hostility or antipathy towards an out-group member.

However, research suggests that episodes of implicit bias are accompanied by feelings of fear,

anxiety, a sense of being startled, and discomfort, rather than emotions such as anger, hostility,

or a sense of disapproval (Fazio et al., 1995; Dovidio et al., 1997).

While implicit biases are deeply rooted and largely unconscious, they are nonetheless

malleable and manageable when brought to awareness. Through counter bias training, the implicit

associations people form can be gradually unlearned and replaced with new mental associations

(Blair, 2002; Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001; Dasgupta, 2013; Kang & Lane, 2010; Roos, et al., 2013).

Research also suggests that making a sense of personal accountability conscious (i.e., to imagine

being called upon to justify one’s attitude or actions) can decrease the influence of bias (Reskin,

2000, 2005). Similarly, taking the perspective of others and considering contrasting viewpoints has

shown promise at reducing automatic biases (Benafordo & Hanson, 2008).

To show how pervasive implicit bias can be, Chugh, Milkman, and Akinola (2014) sent

emails out to more than 6,500 randomly selected professors from 259 American universities. Each

email was from a (fictional) prospective out-of-town student whom the professor did not know,

expressing interest in the professor’s Ph.D. program and seeking guidance. These emails were

identical and written in impeccable English, varying only in the name of the student sender. The

messages came from students with names like Meredith Roberts, Lamar Washington, Juanita

Martinez, Raj Singh and Chang Huang, names that earlier research participants consistently

perceived as belonging to either a white, black, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese student. In total, they

used 20 different names in 10 different race-gender categories (e.g. white male, Hispanic female).

What did they discover? First, despite not knowing the students, 67 percent of the faculty

members responded to the emails, and remarkably, 59 percent of the responders even agreed to

meet on the proposed date with a student about whom they knew little and who did not even

attend their university.

When Chugh’s team computed the average response rates for each category of student

(e.g., white male, Hispanic female), by dividing the number of responses from the professors by

the number of emails sent from students in a given race or gender category, their analyses

revealed that the response rates did indeed depend on students’ race and gender identity.

Professors were more responsive to white male students than to female, black, Hispanic,

Indian or Chinese students in almost every discipline and across all types of universities. Chugh

and her colleagues found the most severe bias in disciplines paying higher faculty salaries and at

private universities. For example, the discipline of business showed the most bias, with 87

percent of white males receiving a response compared with just 62 percent of all females and

minorities combined.

Surprisingly, several supposed advantages that some people believe women and

minorities enjoy did not materialize in their data. For example: Were Asians favored, given the

model minority stereotype they supposedly benefit from in academic contexts? No. In fact,

Chinese students were the most discriminated-against group in their sample. Did reaching out to

someone of the same gender or race — such as a black student emailing a black professor —

reduce bias? No. They saw the same levels of bias in both same-race and same-gender faculty-

student pairs that appeared in pairs not sharing a race or gender (the one exception was Chinese

students writing to Chinese professors).

Did it help to be in a discipline with a greater representation of women and minorities?

Again, no. Faculty members in those more diverse disciplines, like criminal justice, were no less

likely to discriminate than those in less diverse disciplines, like statistics.

3. Describe an instance where you fell into an implicit bias?

4. Describe an instance where you felt implicit bias from someone else against you?

5. Have you ever caught yourself in a moment of implicit bias – what happened?

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