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5 definitive books on Leonardo da Vinci
For years we have been fascinated with the artistic prowess of Leonardo da Vinci.
- Over 7,000 pages have survived of Leonardo da Vinci's personal notebook collection.
- Leonardo da Vinci's sketches, ruminations and theories make for a thrilling read.
- Many biographers have attempted to figure out what made da Vinci such a great artist.
Centuries have passed and yet we still sing the praises of the quintessential Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci. The historic figure, the legend and the man fits the bill for our reverence, intrigue and near worship at times. Da Vinci was an intelligent, creative and complicated figure. Within just the past century alone, a countless numbers of books have been written about him.
Those who wish to learn more about him and about the time period in which he flourished would do well to dive into these five select books on Leonardo da Vinci.
Da Vinci's Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian Man
The Vitruvian man is a world renown sketch found in one of Leonardo's notebooks. The image is named after the famous Roman architect Vitruvius. While this image has been parodied a million times over and stamped on trinkets galore, the true genius and history of this piece eludes most people. Historian Toby Lester scours the historical record and recounts the many figures and forces that made this image a reality in 1490, when da Vinci first drew it.
The history is fascinating, as the roots of the picture go back to proto-Christian imagery in which the author finds compelling evidence that the Christ figure owes its prestige and presentation from how statesmen originally presented a godlike Augustus Caesar to the Roman populace. Vitruvius was an instrumental force in ancient times and would come to greatly influence Leonardo, as he also drew on ideas such as the microcosm and macrocosm.
Da Vinci's Ghost is at once both an intimate personal story of da Vinci and a far-ranging historical tale which contextualizes his greatness and creative mind.
Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of his Childhood
In typical Freudian fashion, Sigmund Freud goes to work on his most famous attempt at a psychoanalytic biography. Reconstructing da Vinci's early life from a few references in his journals, Freud argues the point that, from a psychoanalytic perspective, da Vinci's greatness stemmed from sexual repression. No surprise there, considering this was Freud's modus operandi.
"Observation of men's daily lives shows us that most people succeed in directing very considerable portions of their sexual instinctual forces to their professional activity. The sexual instinct is particularly well fitted to make contributions of this kind since it is endowed with a capacity for sublimation."
Freud wrote this book in 1910. Rather than putting this book off as outdated, there are a number of keen observations and thought-provoking ideas that Freud puts forth. Like the many biographers that came both before and after him, Freud is desperately searching to understand where Leonardo's otherworldly artistry and genius stems from. Freud also concedes the point pretty heavily throughout the book that, in the end, these are just simply his own observations. This is by no means a definitive answer on the enigmatic figure da Vinci still evokes.
Leonardo's Notebooks
What better place to learn about a man than from the words written in his own hand. These are the personal notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci – the books he poured the contents of his mind into, so that he could both be understood and understand himself. The authors have organized this remnant of his writing into a cohesive and categorical layout, so that you can glide from his thoughts on painting, sculpting and anatomy to his interests in philosophy, natural science and much more.
"The mind of a painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the color of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects are in front of it."
These books give you the privilege to embark into the mind of the Renaissance master and experience something incredible. Nearly all of these pieces of writing are accompanied with some kind of artwork.
Leonardo
Professor Martin Kemp is considered to be the world's leading expert on Leonardo da Vinci. This treatise offers us an incredible amount of insight on what made him such a great artist and scientist. Kemp goes on to explain in great detail the artistic merit within masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.
The book is both a journey on the winding and disparate career path da Vinci would take throughout his life, his many dreams left undone and a who's who of the cultural milieu of 15th century Florence and Italy. Kemp draws heavily from da Vinci's notebooks to paint a full picture of the genius behind the creations.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind
Charles Nicholl's book paints a rich picture of the Italian Renaissance worldview, one da Vinci existed in and shaped while he was alive. He expertly traces da Vinci's birth as an illegitimate child in Tuscany to his infamous ties and time with the ruling families of Renaissance Europe.
Nicholl also manages to write an even-keeled portrait of da Vinci the man. He doesn't spend too much time pouring his energy into psychological analysis or going deep into art interpretation. Utilizing his notebook entries, as many biographers before, he fleshes out a general day-to-day life of the master, which makes for an intimate portrayal of the man. While the mystery is still there, reading Nicholl's work is a humbling admission into the daily minutiae of man who affects us all.
Live on Monday: Does the US need one billion people?
What would happen if you tripled the US population? Join Matthew Yglesias and Charles Duhigg at 1pm ET on Monday, September 28.
26 September, 2020
Big Think LIVE
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Is immigration key to bolstering the American economy? Could having one billion Americans secure the US's position as <em>the</em> global superpower? What if massive population growth could nourish rural economies and strengthen our country from the inside out? Perhaps these questions are provocative fodder for more debate and contention but, for Matthew Yglesias, asking them and arguing about them is part of the American way. Join him in a conversation moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg as they explore the case for one billion Americans.
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Ask your questions for Matthew Yglesias during the Q&A!
</p><p><strong>Join the live stream at 1pm ET on Monday, September 28.<br></strong></p><h2>STREAMING LINKS<br><a href="https://youtu.be/FKaApFbTpx4" target="_blank">YouTube</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom/posts/10157677011223527" target="_blank">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://edge.bigthink.com/live_streams/111" target="_blank">Big Think Edge</a></h2>
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Should you grow a beard? Here's how women perceive bearded men
Whether or not women think beards are sexy has to do with "moral disgust"
22 January, 2020
Photo Credit: Frank Marino / Unsplash
Sex & Relationships
- A new study found that women perceive men with facial hair to be more attractive as well as physically and socially dominant.
- Women tend to associate more masculine faces with physical strength, social assertiveness, and formidability.
- Women who display higher levels of "moral disgust," or feelings of repugnance toward taboo behaviors, are more likely to prefer hairy faces.
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<p>The beard is an ever contentious subject in the domain of male grooming practices. Love them or hate them, new research on heterosexual mating preferences offers clues about why some women fawn over facial hair. </p>
<p>Research by <a href="https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191209" target="_blank">Tessa R. Clarkson et al.</a> at the University of Queensland measured women's judgement of the attractiveness of men with varying levels of facial masculinity and beardedness. What they found was that women do indeed perceive men with facial hair to be more attractive as well as physically and socially dominant. Particularly, women with high levels of moral disgust.</p>
Beards and perceptions of masculinity
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjU5OTg0MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NzkxMjM3N30.cH-GqNwP5GVqvstgJWAhBPn1B_lYpVEAI0I7iax7EQw/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C1900%2C0%2C849&height=700" id="caae6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cb0a355a4e8e1899789bc45f3f7aef56" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Photo Credit: Wikimedia
<p>The study used 919 American (mostly white) women ages 18-70 who rated 30 pictures of men they were shown with various stages of facial hair growth. The photographs depicted men with faces that had been digitally altered to look more feminine or more masculine, with a beard and without a beard. The women rated the men according to perceived attractiveness for long-term and short-term relationships. The study found that the more facial hair the men had, the higher the men were rated on their attractiveness, particularly for their suitability for a long-term relationship.</p><p>Part of this might be attributed to facial masculinity — i.e. protruding brow ridge, wide cheekbones, thick jawline, and deeply set narrow eyes — which conveys information to a woman about a man's underlying health and formidability. Women tend to associate more masculine faces with physical strength and social assertiveness. It can also indicate a man with a superior immune response. The researchers suggested that their findings favoring bearded men could be due to the fact that facial hair enhances the masculine facial features on a man's face, like creating the illusion of a thicker jaw line. This could communicate direct benefits to women like resources and protection that would enhance survival among mothers and their infants. In other words, while a beard doesn't mean superior genetics in and of itself, it might be a primitive, ornamental way of saying, "Hey girl, I'm a testosterone-fueled lean, mean, pathogen fighting machine." <br></p><p>It could also be that a beard becomes its own destiny. The researchers in this study cite prior research that found that by growing a beard, men felt more masculine and had higher levels of serum testosterone, which was linked to a higher level of social dominance. They also tended to subscribe to more old-school beliefs about gender roles in their relationships with women as compared to men with clean-shaven faces.<span></span><br></p>What does disgust have to do with beard preference?
<p>Obviously, not all women dig beards. The researchers were particularly interested in what traits make a women prefer bearded men over clean-shaven faces. They looked into several factors including a woman's disgust levels on various concepts, her desire to become pregnant, and her exposure to facial hair in her personal life. </p><p>According to the study, women who were not into facial hair were turned-off by potential parasites or other critters they imagined could be in the hair or skin. Women ranking high on this "ectoparasite disgust" scale might have viewed beards as a sign of poor grooming habits. However, women who ranked higher in levels of "pathogen" did find the bearded men to be desirable, possibly because they perceived beards as a signal of good health and immune function. An intriguing discovery in the study was links to morality. Women who displayed higher levels of "moral disgust," or feelings of repugnance toward taboo behaviors, were more likely to prefer hairy faces. The authors opined that this could reflect a link between beardedness, politically conservative outlooks, and traditional views regarding performances of masculinity in heterosexual relationships.</p>Additional findings
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjU5OTg1My9vcmlnaW4uZ2lmIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNDI1NjUyOX0.P9B8WbmJR0q4nfzYZKbuNSA-2SAigVWJgrQE-_Gxlds/img.gif?width=980" id="49143" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2ed3b1d6f20fc170bf2974646e565e8d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Giphy<p>The correlations that existed between married and single women's rating on the attractiveness of beards were not particularly clear, although the researchers noted that single and married women who wanted children tended to find beards more attractive than the women who didn't want children. They also found that women with bearded husbands found beards to be more attractive, which might indicate that social exposure to beards influences how desirable they are perceived of as being. Or it could be that men with wives who like beards grow beards.</p><p>It's important to note that culture plays a huge role in how attractive women perceive certain male characteristics as being. This study looked at a small, culturally specific group of American women, so no big, universal claims should be made about masculinity, facial hair, and male desirability to women. However, research like this is important in highlighting how human grooming decisions are driven by much more than fashion trends. Sociobiological, economic, and ecological factors all play a part in the way we choose to present ourselves.</p>
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Learn innovation with 3-star Michelin chef Dominique Crenn
Dominique Crenn, the only female chef in America with three Michelin stars, joins Big Think Live.
24 September, 2020
Big Think LIVE
Having been exposed to mavericks in the French culinary world at a young age, three-star Michelin chef Dominique Crenn made it her mission to cook in a way that is not only delicious and elegant, but also expressive, memorable, and true to her experience.
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Having been exposed to mavericks in the French culinary world at a young age, three-star Michelin chef Dominique Crenn made it her mission to cook in a way that is not only delicious and elegant, but also expressive, memorable, and true to her experience. Crenn will share the importance of gaining knowledge and inspiration from what and who surrounds you, building a unified and empowered team, and inventing a business model out of inspiration, as well as necessity.
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Ultracold gas exhibits bizarre quantum behavior
New experiments find weird quantum activity in supercold gas.
26 September, 2020
Credit: Pixabay
Surprising Science
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<p>Experiments by California physicists revealed "bizarre" behavior in an ultracold gas. The results promise innovations in quantum engineering and a connection between classical physics and quantum mechanics.</p><p>The scientists used lasers to set up an optical trap for lithium atoms. As they were held in a lattice formation, pulses of energy shook up the system and made the atoms exhibit truly unusual quantum activities.</p><p>The research was carried out by UC Santa Barbara undergraduate student Alec Cao, who was the lead author of the paper, and his colleagues in professor David Weld's <a href="https://www.physics.ucsb.edu/people/david-weld" target="_blank">atomic physics group.</a></p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">The scientist's lab specializes in creating <strong>"artificial solids"</strong>, described as "</span><span style="background-color: initial;">low-dimensional lattices of light and ultracold atoms" by the university's <a href="https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2020/020020/quantum-shake" target="_blank">press release.</a> These solids can simulate how quantum particles would behave in dense solids that are subjected to repeating force. The experiments go back to the work of the Nobel laureate physicist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Bloch" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Felix Bloch</a> for the underpinning. Bloch predicted that if you apply constant force to a quantum particle in a periodic quantum structure, it will start oscillating.</span></p><p>Despite Bloch's theoretical prediction, actual observation of such oscillations didn't happen <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.213201" target="_blank">until 2018</a>, also by Weld's group. </p><p>In the new experiment, they changed laser intensities and outside magnetic forces, creating time dependency and curving the lattice. This established a force field leading to slow oscillations that "gave us the opportunity to look at what happens when you have a Bloch oscillating system in an inhomogenous environment," explained Weld.</p>
Quantum Mechanics, Onions, and a Theory of Everything
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="036ae7b8dd661df2d125a3421a0299ba"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bcVruA0AJ-o?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>And what happened was quite unexpected, according to the researchers. The atoms were shooting back and forth, moving further apart at various intervals, and even created patterns in reaction to the energy pulses.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"It was a bit bizarre," explained Weld. "Atoms would get pumped in one direction. Sometimes they would get pumped in another direction. Sometimes they would tear apart and make these structures that looked like DNA."</p><p>To explain what they were seeing, the scientists applied <a href="http://www.physics.emory.edu/faculty/weeks/research/tseries7.html" target="_blank">Poincaré sections</a> - a mathematical technique developed for classical physics. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"In our experiment, a time interval is set by how we periodically modify the lattice in time," said Cao. "When we chucked out all the 'in-between' times and looked at the behavior once every period, structure and beauty emerged in the shapes of the trajectories because we were properly respecting the symmetry of the physical system." </p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">Professor Weld pointed out that Alec understood that these paths could tell precisely "</span><span style="background-color: initial;">why in some regimes of driving the atoms get pumped, while in other regimes of driving the atoms spread out and break up the wave function."</span></p><p>The research may have applications in topological quantum computing as well as advancing knowledge of how quantum chaos appears, explaining such phenomena as the butterfly effect. </p><p>Check out the new study in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.032032" target="_blank">Physical Review Research.</a></p>
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3 cognitive biases perpetuating racism at work — and how to overcome them
Researchers say that moral self-licensing occurs "because good deeds make people feel secure in their moral self-regard."
26 September, 2020
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
Personal Growth
Books about race and anti-racism have dominated bestseller lists in the past few months, bringing to prominence authors including Ibram Kendi, Ijeoma Oluo, Reni Eddo-Lodge, and Robin DiAngelo.
<p>Sales of these books <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/22/sales-of-white-fragility-and-other-anti-racism-books-jumped-over-2000-after-protests-began/#66ad3308303d" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">increased by up to 6,800%</a> in the aftermath of global protests against racial injustice, according to Forbes, showing the role such work plays in raising awareness and leading to a cultural reckoning.<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/22/sales-of-white-fragility-and-other-anti-racism-books-jumped-over-2000-after-protests-began/#66ad3308303d" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a></p><p>While readers learned about allyship, companies also showed their strengthened resolve to tackle racial inequality by making public statements on their social media accounts, and <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/companies-fighting-systemic-racism-business-community-black-lives-matter/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">releasing detailed action plans with their commitments to change</a>. It is still too early to say what affect these individual and collective actions will have in the long-term, and whether reading books on anti-racism and making public statements will result in a more just society where everyone has access to the same opportunities and is treated fairly.</p><p>But what we do know is that lasting, positive change is difficult to achieve without deliberate, sustained effort informed by <a href="https://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/feature/Using-data-for-public-good-in-fight-for-racial-equity" target="_blank">reliable data that is free from bias</a>.</p><p>And it's important not to underestimate the role cognitive bias can play in undermining these efforts - and to stay vigilant in spotting and mitigating it.</p>
<h3>What is cognitive bias?</h3><p>Human brains are hardwired to take shortcuts when processing information to make decisions, resulting in "systematic thinking errors", or unconscious bias.</p><p>When it comes to influencing our decisions and judgments around people, cognitive or unconscious bias is universally recognized to play a role in unequal outcomes for people of colour.</p><p>This helps to explain why unconscious bias training is often the first resort for companies looking to build more inclusive workplaces, with <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carmenmorris/2020/07/21/dont-jump-into-unconscious-bias-training-until-you-read-this/#190a1cde3f41" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">outcomes that may be highly variable and, at times, result in little measurable improvement</a>.<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carmenmorris/2020/07/21/dont-jump-into-unconscious-bias-training-until-you-read-this/#190a1cde3f41" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>These three cognitive biases are likely to be at play and could influence our decisions:</p>
<h4>1. Moral licensing</h4><p>This is when people derive such confidence from past moral behaviour that they are more likely to engage in immoral or unethical ways later.</p><p>In a 2010 study, researchers argued that moral self-licensing occurs "because good deeds make people feel secure in their moral self-regard", and <a href="http://adam.curry.com/enc/20140824153442_monin2010compassonmorallicensing.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">future problematic behaviour does not evoke the same feelings</a> of negative self-judgment that it otherwise would.<a href="http://adam.curry.com/enc/20140824153442_monin2010compassonmorallicensing.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>Participants who had voiced support for US President Barack Obama just before the 2008 election were less likely, when presented with a hypothetical slate of candidates for a police force job, to select a Black candidate for the role.</p><p>As the study authors hypothesize, "presumably, the act of expressing support for a Black presidential candidate made them feel that they no longer needed to prove their lack of prejudice". Other research shows that <a href="https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/soco.2016.34.6.559" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">implicit and explicit attitudes toward African Americans</a> did not substantively change during the period of the Obama presidency.</p><p>Moral licensing may help explain the limitations of corporate unconscious bias training in creating an anti-racist work environment, an effect which has already been observed when it comes to tackling gender inequality.</p><p>Iris Bohnet, a <a href="https://qz.com/631767/why-companies-that-take-pride-in-diversity-programs-still-wind-up-hiring-white-guys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">behavioural economist</a>, suggests that "diversity programs aimed at influencing the worst offenders might backfire… Training designed to raise awareness about gender and race inequality may end up making gender and race more salient and thereby highlighting differences."</p>
<h4>2. Affinity bias</h4><p>This is our <a href="https://diversityjournal.com/13763-affinity-bias-conundrum-illusion-inclusion-part-iii/ride-in-diversity-programs-still-wind-up-hiring-white-guys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">tendency to get along with others who are like us</a>, and to evaluate them more positively than those who are different. Our personal beliefs, assumptions, preferences, and lack of understanding about people who are not like us may lead to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/12/29/your-unconscious-bias-trainings-keep-failing-because-youre-not-addressing-systemic-bias/#7a4bcad71e9d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">repeatedly favouring 'similar-to-me' individuals</a>.<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/12/29/your-unconscious-bias-trainings-keep-failing-because-youre-not-addressing-systemic-bias/#7a4bcad71e9d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>In organizations, this often affects who gets hired, who gets promoted, and who gets picked for opportunities to manage people or projects.</p><p>Employees who look like those already in leadership are given opportunities to develop their careers, due to affinity bias, resulting in a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/02/success/diversity-and-black-leadership-in-corporate-america/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">lack of representation in senior leadership roles for BIPOC</a>.</p><p>Affinity bias is particularly insidious in recruitment processes, where it presents as a lack of "culture fit", an ambiguous evaluation that should be avoided as an explanation for declining to hire a candidate.</p><p>Many hiring managers have a hard time articulating their organization's specific culture, or explaining what exactly they mean when they say "culture fit", leading to this being <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/06/how-to-reduce-personal-bias-when-hiring" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">misused to engage employees that managers feel they will personally relate to</a>.</p>
<h4>3. Confirmation bias</h4><p>This is the tendency to <a href="https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/confirmation-bias-how-it-affects-your-organization-and-how-to-overcome-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">seek out, favour, and use information that confirms what you already believe</a>.<a href="https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/confirmation-bias-how-it-affects-your-organization-and-how-to-overcome-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a>The other side of this is that people tend to ignore new information that goes against their preconceived notions, leading to poor decision-making.</p><p>It can hinder efforts to create and nurture an antiracist workplace culture, and also contributes to the limited effectiveness of unconscious bias training, together with moral licensing and affinity bias.</p><p>Many people's perceptions of others with different identities and with whom they have limited interaction, is strongly influenced by media depictions and longstanding cultural stereotypes.</p><p>For example, a 2017 study published in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-11085-001" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">people tended to perceive young Black men as taller</a>, heavier, and more muscular than similarly sized white men, and hence more physically threatening.<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-11085-001" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>Persistent notions about female or BIPOC candidates being inherently less qualified than white male candidates can <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/04/if-theres-only-one-woman-in-your-candidate-pool-theres-statistically-no-chance-shell-be-hired" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">undermine efforts to increase diversity</a>, because such candidates are more likely to be negatively evaluated and ultimately not selected.</p><p>Confirmation bias also helps to explain why <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/12/why-arent-there-more-asian-americans-in-leadership-positions" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Asian Americans are underrepresented in leadership</a> positions despite outperforming other minorities and white people in the US on education, employment and income. Long-held stereotypes lead to Asian Americans being seen as modest, deferential, and low in social skills, while at the same time penalizing those who adopt more dominant behaviours.</p>
<h3>How to overcome unconscious bias</h3><h4>1. Change systems, not individuals</h4><p>The main reason unconscious bias training programmes fail to have the desired effect in creating lasting change, is that they are focused on changing individual behaviours while leaving largely untouched the systems that enabled those behaviours to thrive.</p><p>Individual biases are difficult to shift in the long term, and the academic evidence suggests that <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0950017017719841?journalCode=wesa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">knowing about bias does not result in changes in behaviour</a> by managers and employees.<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0950017017719841?journalCode=wesa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>The whole social environment - rather than the individual - needs to be addressed. This can be done by implementing company policies and programmes designed to mitigate bias through all stages of the employee's journey, from selection processes to performance ratings and promotion decisions.</p><p>These structures, which should be audited regularly, are important in ensuring that any individual's own bias is limited and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mishagajewski/2020/06/29/youre-more-racist-than-you-think-how-your-mental-biases-perpetuate-racism-and-how-to-fix-them/#5306428d7ffc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">does not influence decisions at an organizational level</a>.<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mishagajewski/2020/06/29/youre-more-racist-than-you-think-how-your-mental-biases-perpetuate-racism-and-how-to-fix-them/#5306428d7ffc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>Such structural initiatives may end up influencing social norms within organizations, so behavioural change happens on a larger group level, leading to <a href="https://qz.com/631767/why-companies-that-take-pride-in-diversity-programs-still-wind-up-hiring-white-guys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">improved compliance from individuals</a> as they gain a new understanding of socially-acceptable behaviour.</p>
<h4>2. Slow down and act deliberately</h4><p>Bias is most likely to affect decision-making when decisions are made quickly, according to Stanford University psychology professor <a href="https://time.com/5558181/jennifer-eberhardt-overcoming-implicit-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Jennifer Eberhardt</a>, who studies implicit bias in police departments.<a href="https://time.com/5558181/jennifer-eberhardt-overcoming-implicit-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>We are less likely to act on bias when we slow down and control our thoughts, consciously overcoming first impressions and the biases that come with them.</p><p>This is where unconscious bias training may have an impact, because self-awareness and education are key to shifting mindsets. Such mindset shifts are needed for people of colour as well, as research shows that they are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01973533.2018.1462185" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">equally subject to the unconscious bias provoked by negative stereotypes</a>.</p><p>At work, slowing down may take the form of ensuring that one person's biases do not contaminate processes through <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/06/7-practical-ways-to-reduce-bias-in-your-hiring-process" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">establishing control mechanisms</a>: ensuring a diversity of feedback givers during recruitment processes, and establishing structured interviews with the same set of defined questions and evaluation criteria for each candidate.</p>
<h4>3. Set concrete goals and work towards them</h4><p>Data is essential to making real progress on diversity goals, and especially important when it comes to mitigating the effects of bias because it provides an objective measure of what has improved – or worsened – over time.</p><p>The goals themselves will be specific to each organization's needs and context. But taking into consideration local variables such as countries of operation, company size, business goals, and organizational culture, setting goals and tracking progress in a transparent way ensures the environmental change (as opposed to individual) that is needed for success.</p><p>Data is key to buy-in, and companies can increase accountability by collecting and analysing data on diversity over time, comparing the numbers with those at other organizations, and sharing them with key stakeholders internally and externally.</p><p>Data collection also helps companies identify roadblocks, and <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/05/diversity-and-inclusion-efforts-that-really-work" target="_blank">engage with key stakeholders on strategies to address them</a>.</p><p>Reprinted with permission of the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/cognitive-bias-unconscious-racism-moral-licensing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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