Mahzarin Banaji, psychologist: ‘Our biases were useful in the past, but today, they are an obstacle’

There are biases we’re not afraid to express: some prefer Real Madrid and others Barça. But some biases are shameful, like thinking that women are less capable professionally, or that Black people are more likely to commit crimes. And, oftentimes, the biases that lead us to choose one person over another for a job are unconscious.

Until the 1990s, there was no name to define these ubiquitous prejudices. “Tony Greenwald and I decided to call them ‘implicit biases,’” Mahzarin Banaji recalls. The 69-year-old, who was born in Secunderabad, India, visited the city of Bilbao a few days ago to receive the BBVA Foundation’s Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences.

Together with Greenwald, she created a test to assess implicit biases. They wanted it to be a tool for self-awareness, which could be used to build a more just society… but it also gave them some unpleasant surprises. “[Taking my own] test, I show a negative bias toward dark-skinned people! That shocked me,” the Harvard professor says.

Question. Today, the notion that there are biases we aren’t fully aware of is part of popular culture.

Answer. Absolutely! Even an Uber driver in Boston told me, “Oh, I took your test!” In the U.S., it’s already part of the language, even though the Trump administration banned [the term “unconscious bias”].

Q. Did they really ban the term?

A. Yes. It’s on a list of banned words for the federal government and universities. But people still use it.

Q. Doesn’t being aware of these implicit biases put us at risk of overanalyzing, of being controlled by our doubts about whether we’re being fair to other people?

A. It’s a risk! That’s why I recommend against mandatory diversity training. If you force people to take the test, it’s counterproductive. We warn them five times before doing it: “Maybe you shouldn’t [mandate it].” It should be voluntary.

Q. Perhaps people are bothered by having their instincts questioned and then having someone from Harvard come and tell them how to think…

A. Yes, I think you’re right. I would say to them: “I may be from Harvard, but I’m not going to tell you anything... unless you want to know.”

Q. Do you think this knowledge is necessary? Does it have practical implications?

A. Absolutely. I think you can’t be a good leader — you can’t lead a team in a multicultural society — if you don’t know these facts. You can’t be competent if you don’t speak the language of your culture. Knowing and understanding biases is now part of that language.

Q. But there are very competent leaders — at least, in terms of getting results for their companies — like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, who are among the richest men in the world… and they represent just the opposite of “multicultural.”

A. Yes, Elon Musk is a good example. Clearly, certain things happened that led him to become the richest man in the world. If you use that as a measure of success, you’d say that he’s the most successful person in the world. But we’re talking about someone who can’t even accept his trans daughter. To me, if you can’t do that, you’re an absolute failure as a human being. [The same applies] if you choose to support someone with the values that Donald Trump represents. When we describe someone as being “competent,” they may be competent in one specific aspect, but that doesn’t mean they’re socially or morally intelligent.

Q. You argue that, if we understand our biases, we’ll be better at choosing the right people for jobs — the most competent ones. If this were true, people who knew and controlled their biases — and companies that encouraged these attitudes — would be more successful, meaning that kind of thinking would naturally prevail. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening.

A. Well, yes and no. For starters, even if you’re a person who acts without bias, remember that you’re operating within a larger culture that has a tremendous amount of bias.

There are two reasons why somebody may want to pay attention to our data. The first is that, whatever your value system may be, it’s good for business. I’m a teacher and I have biases in my classroom. I call on the students sitting in the front row and not those in the back, because I think students who sit in the back aren’t good students. [As a result], I’m missing out on those kids’ opinions. Now, I have someone sitting in the back watching and counting who I call on. They say, “Mahzarin, you’re calling on the people on the right side of the room a lot more than the people on the left.” If I change that, it changes the discussion. So, my business — which is education, as I’m a teacher — gets better, because I’m starting to notice that I’m systematically excluding some voices and privileging others. And that’s not good for my work. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a teacher, it’s good for business. I think we can prove that.

The second reason is that all human beings, no matter how different we are, want to live in a way where our behavior is consistent with our values. My values tell me I should be egalitarian. Most people you ask will say, “I want to be fair. I want to be equitable. I want to choose the best person.” If we can show — as our data shows — that our behavior isn’t consistent with our values, then I think, regardless of whether it’s good for business or not, everyone wants to know this. That’s why I think people come to our website: they’re asking themselves, “Am I behaving the way I want to behave, or is my behavior somehow not aligned with my values?”

Q. Which of your own biases surprised you the most?

A. One of them shows that I can’t easily associate a woman with a career. And I can’t associate men with the [concept of] “home” as quickly and easily as I can the opposite: a man with a career, a woman within a home. That comes more easily to me. But a woman with a career, a man with a home, that doesn’t come naturally to me. And I have that bias, even though I’ve always had a career! My mother in India also had a career. Why doesn’t that show up [on the test]? Because the cultural [influence] is imprinted on my brain.

I don’t like this bias. I’ve done a lot of work trying to understand what I can do [to remove it]. But for some reason, it doesn’t bother me as much as my racial bias bothers me: black and white, good and bad. For me, white is good, black is bad. I can’t live with that bias. That really upsets me.

Q. But biases sometimes help us make decisions more quickly in complicated situations. If you run into someone in a dark alley, the level of alertness isn’t the same if you’re a woman, compared to if you’re a man. That can be helpful, no?

A. If we had to take these positions from a political point of view, we would always say that bias is bad, because politically, it’s not acceptable to say otherwise. But if you’re a scientist, you have to look at the data and see when a bias can be good.

Let’s start with something simple: what exactly is a bias? One definition of bias is that it’s a departure from neutrality. Imagine there are two things: they could be a man and a woman, but let’s say meat and vegetables. Being impartial would mean I like both equally. But if I lean toward one side, I prefer meat; if I lean toward the other, I prefer vegetables. If I have a bias in favor of vegetables, that’s very good for my health and probably good for the planet.

So, the first point I want to make is that being neutral isn’t always the best thing. You have to decide [between one or the other]. In this case, neutrality may not be as good as having a bias toward vegetables (or meat, depending on a person’s nutritional needs). Now, the second point — and this is very important when we’re talking about humans, about how we relate as individuals, but also as groups within a culture or between countries — is that many of the biases we have today we evolved to have.

Among our ancestors, long, long ago, those who had a [specific] type of biology — one that allowed them to store sugar and fat — were able to survive. Why? Because, at the time, food was scarce: if your body could take a little bit of sugar or fat and store it, you could walk further. And we’re alive today because we descend from those people whose bodies could store sugar and fat. But today, that same ability to store sugar and fat is killing us. This is because today’s world is full of sugar and fat.

I would say that our biases — whether racial, [or having to do with] gender, sexuality, disabilities, or [body types] — served a purpose in the past. If groups of people lived on opposite sides of a mountain and you saw someone from the other group, it was best to run away, or kill them. Because chances are that such an encounter wouldn’t end well. So, in that context, seeing someone as being different and treating them as an enemy was adaptive. Today, in the world we live in, if you see someone very different from you, what you should say is: “Where are you from? Can I outsource my work to your people and do business at a lower cost?”

What worked in the past is an obstacle today. That’s why we need to think about biases not in terms of “good” or “bad,” but rather ask ourselves: “Is this bias useful to me now, in the world I live in?” Even if, in the past, perhaps it was.

Q. Do you think being overly aware of one’s biases can be a disadvantage when you’re confronted by someone who fully relies on their instincts and the beliefs of their group?

A. That’s a very good question. [But another question] is: “which is my group today? I come from what was once called Persia (present-day Iran). Then, my people had to flee, because they were being persecuted for religious reasons. They migrated to India in the 9th century and lived there. Somehow, we’ve managed to live there for all these centuries as a distinct minority. Then, I packed up my bags at age 24 — with $80 in my pocket — and said, “I’m going to America.” Humans have always been on the move. And we’re constantly fighting against others and fearing others… but also collaborating with them. That’s how trade has worked for centuries.

The first issue is that we tend to have what I call a “worm’s-eye view” of the world, not a bird’s-eye view. But if you raise your sights — if you take a bird’s-eye view and go back in time, even just a few centuries — I would say that, today, we’re less fragmented.

It’s true that our societies have the problem that we’re no longer homogeneous within each country or each region like we used to be. It’s an experiment I call “the American experiment,” because, honestly, I believe no other country has had laws that allowed immigration the way the United States has. That’s its strength… or, at least, [many of us] believe it is. It’s an experiment, because it goes against human nature. Human nature is: “each to his own group.” But we say: “No, there’s something more important than that.” Our ideas matter. Our beliefs matter. Our values matter. And we want to unite because, in America, we believe in living without kings.

In this modern moment, we’re saying, for the first time in history, that your religion doesn’t matter, the color of your skin shouldn’t matter, your gender shouldn’t matter, your sexual orientation shouldn’t matter, your race shouldn’t matter. What should matter is what you think. This is a very difficult transition for us. We’re in the early stages. But I think, if you look back in time, we’re no worse off than we were 400 years ago, or a few thousand years ago.

I think what we’re seeing in the United States — and around the world, as [many countries] shift to the right — is this battle between free and open thought, free and open living, versus the forces of tradition, of orthodoxy, that say, “No, we must go back to the cave.” I don’t know which side will win, but I think the arc of the moral universe is long and it bends toward justice and freedom.

Q. What can academics and scientists do in the current situation in the U.S.?

A. Harvard has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on two grounds. One: we’re arguing that they can’t take away our federal funding. Two: they can’t tell us how to run our [institution], nor can they tell us how many foreign students we can accept, or what kind. Twenty-four other universities have signed on to this lawsuit. Not 2,500… just 24. That tells you that there’s fear. You only have to look at Europe in the 1930s to see that many people remained silent. And I would simply ask those who remain silent today: “Who do you think behaved well in Nazi Germany?”

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