Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How does unconscious bias influence our dealings with power and violence? That’s the question we explore in Room #944 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Power & Violence.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very warm good morning to you. Today we continue with unconscious bias. That was a topic that was requested, to look at it more closely, and we want to engage today with the question of how unconscious bias influences our dealings with power and violence, so that we embed this into the overarching theme of power and violence, so to speak, rather than looking at it in isolation. And I’m really totally curious what aspects come together today. And in that spirit you’re all very warmly invited to join in again this morning too and bring in different impulses and examples etc., so we can work our way along step by step through this term together and just see which perspectives, which aspects all come together this morning. Another reminder for those who don’t know this yet, we have a recording running in the background, and so anyone who joins automatically agrees that the whole thing gets recorded and later published too. And we have three small room rules, a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t agree with that, or can’t speak right now for whatever reason, of course also has the opportunity to participate via the chat with questions or thoughts, and we’ll pick up on one thing or another in the course of the exchange. Yes, unconscious bias, what actually is that, what can we bring into this in connection with power and violence, I’m curious who’d like to open the round with me this morning, and I’ll gladly mute myself now, to see who dares to start with me this morning.
A very warm good morning, dear Marc. What do you say about the topic? A very warm good morning, dear Marc. What do you say about the topic?
Good morning to the round. First I’d like to thank you, Yasemin. Among others, I was also one of the people who wished for this topic, namely because I’m firmly convinced today that this whole topic of unconscious bias was one of the most important elements I’ve ever encountered in my life. And for me that would be a mandatory subject in school, together with Patrick Wenke’s subject “happiness.” Because the attitude toward happiness, whether we’re happy or not, satisfied or not, plus that. And I’ll tell you now, my first sentence on the topic would be, and this is the most important thing to me, if you meet people, a nice example is always New Year’s, when you meet people after New Year’s, they often say, oh, this year I’ve resolved to watch my diet. And then someone thinks, oh, that’s interesting, why? Well, I want to stay healthy and I make sure I eat the right things. And then I always smile, because I always think, well, that’s true for a lot of people, there’s nothing wrong with that either. But we place value on eating the right things, but no one asks themselves, I think, do I think the right things? And today, more than ever, I’m convinced that wrong or incorrect thinking can also make you sick. Only the problem with wrong or incorrect thinking is that I’m not even aware of it. It’s unconscious and has to become conscious first. Because I think I think the right thing, because my thinking is shaped, you can explain that better than I can, dear Yasemin, based on our prior experiences and things we’ve already experienced.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Yes, indeed it’s the case that we have very many different thoughts, so to speak, that have developed over time. Experiences we’ve gathered, that we’ve had, stereotypes we’ve picked up while growing up, which have developed and formed. Through experiences, certain things get confirmed accordingly, through repetitions and so on, and thereby also solidified again, and over time unintended stereotypes and prejudices toward people and groups develop, for example, that we’re not really that aware even exist. And unconscious bias isn’t per se anything negative at first. We all have it and it’s there, and we’ve addressed this in many rooms already, that something like beliefs etc. are important to us, they’re not per se somehow bad, because they give us orientation. That means our brain tries, so to speak, to recognize certain patterns and store that accordingly, because in certain situations we often simply don’t have the time. Imagine if we constantly had to re-evaluate in every situation whether something poses a danger or threat to us. So ultimately it’s about securing existence for the brain, and in that sense stereotypes get formed and also stored over time, through the experiences we make. And based on this, within fractions of a second, an evaluation gets made when we encounter a person, when we encounter a group, when we have certain contexts, so that relatively quickly, without having to analyze and evaluate every situation anew, we, so to speak, reach into our bag of tricks, you could describe it pictorially that way, to be able to react quickly and agilely to it. The disadvantage is that because certain aspects aren’t conscious to us, it’s important to keep creating awareness again and again, to check one thing or another and adjust if necessary, and on the other hand also to be aware that it only goes to a certain degree, so I can’t completely dissolve this unconscious bias, but keep stumbling into a trap again and again, so to speak. So not to assume here either that I can completely dissolve it, to a certain degree yes, not completely. That’s also totally human, so to speak. And at the points where it’s not possible to dissolve it, even with a corresponding awareness, to handle it and see how, for example, structures and processes in companies can be adapted to “override” this process, for example in job interviews or similar, to make sure here that we don’t fall into a trap we don’t even want to fall into. Often it’s the case that we’re not even aware that we don’t want that and don’t want to favor it. And so it’s important to look at this more closely.
Marc, would you like to add to this?
Yes, I’d like to add to that. Namely, I’ve gotten into the habit of thinking counter to a doctor. And I have an example right away too. I don’t know if you’ve seen the show “Dr. House.” Back then that led me, like many others, to complain about German doctors. And say, he must see that, he must know that. And why didn’t he recognize that? Then I talked with various doctors and found out that the structures, and I found this quite interesting, when I go to a doctor in winter and cough and say I have a runny nose, I’m not feeling well, the doctor has little time. I’m not a private patient, so I maybe have five minutes. If I sneeze and cough, the probability that I have the flu is very high. Exactly what you explained, he has the flu, and prescribes me flu medicine. Now I’ll come to a practical example. You just mentioned stereotypes. And I feel guilty myself for having had stereotypes too. Namely, I live in Cologne. And as you know or can imagine, on the ring roads on weekends there are sometimes really great cars. Cars that are beyond good and evil in terms of my financial range. I’m talking about cars that really exceed 300,000 euros. And I’ve also, unconsciously, when I’ve seen such a car, I look, if I can see, at who gets out of this car and who gets in. And then I sometimes see people getting in wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. So people where I think internally, watch out, stereotype, he definitely doesn’t have a job at a bank. He’s definitely not an entrepreneur. And I subjectively assume he already earns money, just not as an entrepreneur in the sense of what an entrepreneur is for me. And then I got caught out and healed by having a really interesting conversation with a friend, whom I told about this again. He said, you can imagine what I saw in Cologne, unbelievable, and what kind of people got out of this car. And then he said, and I’m very grateful for this, watch out Marc, I once had an acquaintance who also walked around in sweatpants and flip-flops and everything, and got out of a luxury sports car. And as it turned out, he supplied all the kebab shops in Düsseldorf. I can’t tell you exactly what, but it really was a business and he’d worked his way to that car, and that was just his clothing style. And my stereotype, what I learned from that, what does a businessman even look like? A businessman, as I know him, with a tie, with a shirt from the bank, and that he’s dressed like me, that doesn’t have to be the case anymore today. And that’s when it dawned on me, and I decided for myself that in the future I’d be careful about judging people by what they’re wearing, or concluding from their clothing whether they run a serious business or not, because that can backfire too.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. A nice example of stereotypes. And they really do accompany us everywhere. We can just check that. The story you told just reminded me of a story from my sister, who worked for many years in a hotel, in a gift shop, and made all sorts of experiences over time. And one of them was about repetition. With most of those who really spend money, leave money behind, who have money, you don’t notice it, so to speak, that they have money, they don’t make that obvious in their outward appearance. They came in with tattered jeans, maybe also with clothes you wouldn’t imagine them wearing. And conversely, those who came in with, I’ll exaggerate now, with a fur coat, that was years ago, when people still wore fur coats and so on. They kept up appearances outwardly, but basically, either they were maybe too stingy, we don’t know that, or they just didn’t spend money because they didn’t actually have as much money as they portrayed outwardly with all the show. But watch out, that’s ultimately a stereotype too. That means she had the experience, in the reverse sense, to say, with most you don’t notice it at all, and those are the ones who really have money. That means, she didn’t go so much by the motto that whoever wears a fur coat or whatever is rich, but on the other hand it’s again a stereotype that gets formed, which she then in turn oriented herself by. And so I find it totally fascinating to also expose this counter-side as a stereotype, so to speak, at this point.
Jürgen, a very warm good morning. What do you say about the topic?
Good morning, dear Yasemin. Good morning, Marc, and everyone else in the room. There’s a lot to say about this, and a lot has already been said too. And I’d like to lean a bit on what Marc shared, namely from his experience, and reference that to my professional experience context, and there’s a hit parade for me. I have a hit parade of three unconscious biases that I’ve noticed in the course of my project work, and that wasn’t just related to our currently valid civilizational and cultural sphere here, so in Central Europe, but I also worked elsewhere, in other countries. And I made these three into the hit parade because, regardless of social conditioning and cultural conditioning, they’re obviously striking for us humans everywhere. And these three, the really essential point from my consulting focus of controlling, and especially risk controlling, is what I call this experience illusion we have, that we all have. And this experience illusion is nothing other than us being able to explain, in retrospect, why we’ve arrived at today’s status quo, why we personally find ourselves in this situation today, and in retrospect build an understanding, a chain of argumentation and understanding, and come to the conclusion, ah, sure, I understood that. The unconscious bias here, however, is that because of this experience, you believe you can also continue calculating the future in this form, or even predict it, which was of course a really essential aspect in my field of topic. Because you forget a really crucial point in looking back, and that’s where what Marc already added as a topic comes in, the topic of happiness, that with this logical backing of why we’re standing at this point today and why it all inevitably had to come this way, we overlook that there was a lot of luck and a lot of chance involved. And so our future too isn’t shaped purely by logic from the past, but again by luck and chance. That’s the really essential unconscious bias for me from my professional report, which you always have to work against. And connecting to that comes the second point, everyone can check themselves against that too, this “what you see is what there is.” I think we all tend, very quickly, to align our decisions, our behavior, with what we see at the moment, and not consider, not even consider or take into account, what we don’t know. Basically, then, behavior control in the respective situation based on what I see, what I know, without reflection on how powerful and to what extent I possibly have a lack of knowledge. That’s the second point. And the third point, that’s also a, I think, scientifically very well-documented type, which I can also confirm, is the halo effect, this halo effect. Also a topic within the framework of project work and the selection of employees, that we tend, very often, from recognized and documented positive and negative characteristics of a person — they worked really well in the last project, and in the last project they were quite a grouch — that we transfer this knowledge, these characteristic traits from completely different situations now without reflection to a completely different new situation or project situation, where I’d exactly need someone like that, who was a grouch and questioned everything and criticized everything. Maybe I’d need them, but I distance myself from them, because this halo effect tells me, that won’t work out with them. Those were, my dears, my three unconscious biases from my professional environment, and finally let me say one more thing, to make a connection to our overarching theme, power. I think that the power of unconscious bias possibly also lies in, and then becomes power and possibly violence, when it gets transferred by us into consciousness and there gets quite consciously used in quite specific situations. That’s the power of unconscious bias for me. Thank you for listening for so long.
Yes, thank you so much, and at this point I’d like to mention again that next Monday we’ll also look again at the power of attractiveness, and there we’ll certainly look at this halo effect again in more depth and talk about it. So maybe that as the corresponding announcement here already. I find that really, really exciting. Thank you.
Marc, would you like to dock onto this here somewhere?
Yes, just briefly. I’m looking forward to the contribution when it’s about attractiveness. There are also industries where I can exercise power through my appearance. Namely, I’m imagining right now, I’m the boss of a construction site and I have, I have Polish and German and Romanian workers I give orders to. If I now do bodybuilding, or if I have a body where people really say, oh man, you don’t want to mess with him, then my body posture alone makes it so that what I say carries much more weight. If, if Marc were on a construction site, I’m very slight, I have to watch out in the wind that I don’t get blown away, then I’d probably have difficulties commanding respect, even if by title I’d be worthy of respect. And that would then be, for example, an industry or a situation where I’d gain respect per se just through my physical appearance, without having done anything. Simply because I look different, and where people think, you don’t want trouble with him.
Yes, thank you so much. I’d first like to take the opportunity again to invite you all to join in, to gladly share different perspectives and thoughts here too. The invitation of course applies equally to everyone. I’d like to point out again though that we not only have a recording running in the background, and everyone who joins automatically agrees to that, but also give the reminder again that we have three small room rules. A profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio, simply to make sure these are serious contributions and not Clubhouse trolls, which still exist on Clubhouse again and again. Anyone who hasn’t followed the room rules won’t be considered for hand-raises. That again as a reminder, for those who are new, who are new to the room, then you have the option, if you don’t want to change that and want to identify yourself, then that’s of course legitimate too, then you have the option to gladly share your thoughts or questions via the chat accordingly, so we can pick that up too.
Jürgen, Marc, would you like to add to this here again, pick up on different connecting points again?
Gladly, Jürgen.
Yes, on one point I’d maybe like to follow up again, which I’ve already addressed, namely the area of learning. And for the simple reason that if you go by the classic definition of “unconscious bias,” then we’re talking about the subconscious or unconscious, however you want to, or whether you even want to separate this terminology. Something happens in us, that’s the common definition, that we don’t consciously perceive and also can’t control. And opinions differ there too, as far as I know, on the possibility of distinguishing one as unconscious and the other as subconscious. But it’s something that generally has the status, let me put it bluntly, we don’t even notice what’s happening to us. And we also have no control over it. And that’s the point of connection for me too, toward the position of power, when at some point I become aware that this stereotype, which formed in me because of my social environment, so let’s call it by name, I have a very specific derivation against certain people and groups of people, and this unconscious thing I grew up with in daily interaction, that becomes a conviction at some point. And that also gets consciously propagated and lived by me. And that’s the essential point for me again, on one hand the topic of learning, and the other, the topic of education, that I only then use this conscious thing, when I’ve been confirmed by my environment, when I was actually confirmed in my behavior, and then have the motivation to behave accordingly too. And so we have, in my view, the entire context of responsibility for our environment, for our closer and further environment again, in the sense of becoming aware that confirming behavior toward someone who, for example, maintains stereotypes, in my view, lets exactly this unconscious bias become a conscious bias, which then also gets consciously used and is no longer subject to the control of some instance located somewhere in our brain, but consciously with ourselves. Thank you for listening.
Would you like to repeat this second part again, this derivation, please, exactly what you meant?
The derivation, you meant, regarding the confirmation, the confirmation learning, so the logic for me was, or is, roughly put, or the structure, that by being in a very specific social and cultural environment, a very specific unconscious bias gets shaped, precisely because I’m within this partial area. And through this environment, upon confirmation, or with corresponding behavior on my part, I also get confirmed, so positively confirmed, praised, accepted into groups, chosen as spokesperson, because I receive, so to speak, for me this is a learning process, a confirmation that’s a motivational basis. This originally actually imperceptibly unconscious understanding for me, and this stereotype formation, then gets consciously used in the future too, in my behavior and my position, not least also to keep receiving confirmation from this social environment. That was the connection to learning and the learning process. And toward education, it’s the responsibility, and also in the learning process of the people around me, those who are responsible and who also reinforce these stereotypes and say, yes, you fit with us, you belong to us, that they have a really high responsibility for the fact that these unconscious biases basically become a confirming behavior. I hope I’ve addressed your question, or your request, again.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. From this, a question also derives for me overall, because you said earlier, in this reference to power, is when I then, so to speak, use it consciously accordingly. I’d like to follow up on that, what does this conscious use mean in this context? So if I have unconscious bias, I know that unconscious bias exists per se in principle, but I don’t do anything against it in the sense of, just as an example, let’s say I’m someone, someone responsible in an HR context, know that unconscious bias exists per se, and say, but I can do that myself, I take the best person anyway, I hire the best person anyway, so we don’t need something like that with us. Is that then already power and abuse of power at this point, or how would you classify that? I’m curious how you see it.
Marc, gladly.
I’d follow up on that directly, because I have a really current example. Jürgen just said responsibility. And I really talked on the phone a week ago with a really good friend who’s the managing director of a mid-sized company. And we talked about the hiring process and also to what extent certificates and diplomas still matter today. And then my friend told me something I’ve never heard from another company. He said, you know, when I currently have job interviews, I really put the diplomas and everything and the grading aside. It depends on which position I’m using this person for. If this person works in our company, in an area I’m not active in every day, so now in machine construction, so really in the construction and production process, then I tell my team, watch out, this decision and this responsibility for a new employee, I don’t want to bear that alone. And I don’t want to bear that for this reason, because I don’t feel like hearing you tell me at some point what kind of idiot did you hire, and that’s why I take all of you into responsibility with me. That means, if someone applies at his company, they get a certain period where they can work together with the team, and the team then decides together with the managing director whether the person fits into the team, and now I come back to it, does this person fit with us? This “does this person fit with us” for certain processes, not for everyone in the company, but the decision whether someone fits with them, fits with a company, isn’t made by one person anymore, but the team decides together. But that only applies to certain areas in the company. Of course the team doesn’t decide whether a new managing director gets hired. That happens on a different process level again.
Thank you so much. Jürgen, would you like to add to this here again?
Yes, if you allow, from my, also again from my professional context, in which I’ve also often had to deal with staffing questions and, if you will, job interviews. And there I see, and also connecting to what Marc said, I see two points, and I have to pat myself on the back here, I don’t exempt myself from this either. Namely, I think that we, or that I, I’ll deliberately limit it to just myself, I don’t want to imply anything about anyone else, that I have a very specific bias from my personal structure, how I work and how I think, a bias that looks for and tries to fathom very specific attributes in a counterpart, in an applicant in this case. Basically, these are personal or professional, character traits that I consider positive and that I, from my point of view, also consider essential for filling this position. Through this I basically make a preselection of attributes I want to see in the other person. That’s the first point. And the second point, and now we come to your question, dear Yasemin, when does the whole thing become power, or concretize into power, then, as a consequence, there’s possibly such a catastrophic development of a conversation, in which, starting from these wished-for attributes, both the conversation guidance and also the feedback, and also the entire content of a job interview, I, as the executor, as the conversation leader, want to steer exactly toward confirming these attributes. And so I possibly totally negate, and thus also don’t recognize, which, for example, positive traits and which strengths the other person has, because I want to be confirmed in my attributive presetting, and select exactly the candidate who has these attributes and confirms me in my attribution with these attributes. And then that’s an expression of power, of a selection power, if you will, that I quite deliberately use, especially in such job interviews. Thank you.
Let me follow up exactly here. But if I now, so to speak, if my unconscious bias kicks in, following the motto, I look at the application documents and think, oh, this is definitely one of those XYZ. And then the conversation happens and it confirms itself for me in the conversation, because I of course, against the background of unconscious bias, have also asked questions that unconsciously lead to exactly that possibly getting confirmed. So because I’m, so to speak, driven by my brain to search for exactly that discovery, and formulate my questions that way too. That’s then not power, because I don’t do it consciously?
I don’t see it that way, no. I do see that as an expression of power too. Though I’d like to say one more thing, there’s an essential difference, I’ve enjoyed both positions, an essential difference between conducting a job interview in the context of a hierarchically responsible person, so a supervisor or responsible person located in the structure. And from my area of experience, also something I’ve taken with me, something quite different in a project scenario, because in most cases in a project scenario this person, I’ll put it this way, gets prescribed by the client. And in most cases, as a project manager, I don’t have the possibility, I can’t even, because I as a consultant don’t know the company, to choose the people myself. But I can at some point start with a feedback conversation, or against the background of, you’re not meeting the requirements or something. So I have to make that distinction. But regarding your question, I’ll nod along, yes, that’s, for me, not without violence, an expression of power, dear Yasemin.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. I’ll give Marc the chance again in a moment, I just want to pick up one thing from the chat. “I’ve so far only thought of conscious bias in the scientific area, otherwise aren’t we rather at the construction of reality?” I’m not sure if I’ve correctly located or understood the question. Maybe you can give us a few more keywords here, Ulla. If one of you has the feeling of having understood the question, gladly dock onto it already. Otherwise, let’s use the opportunity now to follow up at other points too, and gladly come back to this contribution with an addition from Ulla in the chat.
Marc, would you like to follow up here too?
Yes, I’d agree with that too, with the contribution Jürgen made, that this is definitely a behavior in a position of power, namely Jürgen uses, and he explained it really well too, unconscious drives and his needs, to make a decision. And that’s what I also meant with my example about my friend, that of course doesn’t apply to all company areas. If I’m looking for people for a bank, then I have to look at what they’ve done before. I have to clarify the competencies there, then I can’t just put anyone in a position and say, do something at some point, if he then, I don’t know, invests papers worth millions and says, well you had no idea about that, that’s gone down the drain. So it always depends on looking closely, and no one, neither Jürgen nor anyone else, can bring in anything other than their own experience. And since we all had unconscious drives and needs, I’d draw the insight for myself, if I were now the boss of the bank, that I definitely need to always have two or three people around me, so I can scrutinize Jürgen’s decision again, and scrutinizing is best done by strangers, when you look at each other again mutually, because questioning yourself is always more difficult than when strangers look at you and then objectively say how they’d assess this decision by Jürgen or by me.
Yes, thank you so much. I’m currently also parallel searching for the link. Let me just look if I can find it. We’ve shared it several times already too. I’ve saved it somewhere and hope I’ll have it ready in the course of the room. Especially this aspect of unconscious bias just isn’t so realizable for many, in the sense of, well many often do have an understanding that unconscious bias is everywhere, so to speak, present, and nevertheless also this feeling, I could somehow “control” that, in quotation marks, and that we actually hit our limits here through our brain, that it’s not the case, following the motto, I’ve developed an awareness for this and therefore I can now, so to speak, always override it at every point through reflection, becomes clear, based on studies and research results made on these topics, and really insane results can be derived from that, which once again keep showing, yes, we can control that to a certain degree, but we’re still, to some extent, subject to it, even despite awareness and reflection. We can’t completely override it, and there we always come back to a professor who gave a lecture, there’s a YouTube video of it, let me just look if I can find it. I had saved the link here relatively readily available, so to speak, I’m pretty sure I’ll find it before we wrap up the room. Then I can share it again, so for those who haven’t seen it yet, this video. It’s really a great lecture, about an hour, an hour and a half or so it runs, where numerous studies and so on get shown, really superbly conveyed, super comprehensible, where you really become aware for the first time to what extent we really hit our limits here, and that it’s not enough to say, we just talk about it and then pick the best person and make sure that, against the background that I myself don’t want to have any bias or something, that I override that, but that we keep falling into exactly this human trap again and again, so to speak, to accept and acknowledge that too. I think that’s also a really, really important aspect. And not to elevate yourself here and say, but it’s different for me, because I can handle it.
Marc wanted to say something about this, and then gladly Jürgen.
Yes, I want to address the chat contribution. We’re talking about reality, but not about constructed reality. Because unconscious bias is unconstructed. And I also found as an explanation for unconscious bias, that unconscious bias refers to the unconscious, automatic preference or aversion that people can have toward certain groups, individuals, based on factors like gender, ethnicity, age, social class, and many, many other things.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. We’ll certainly come back to that in a moment too. Jürgen, you wanted to follow up on this too.
I just wanted to ask if you meant Professor Spörrle’s talk.
Exactly, that’s the one I meant. I’ve found it now too and shared it in the chat. And you’ve seen it too, I think, Jürgen. Yes, maybe you’d like to say a sentence or two about it, from memory.
So from memory, two positions stuck with me. First, of course, the professional depth presented in an extremely concise way, presented in a special way as a speaker, but extremely entertaining and absolutely recommendable, because you notice someone’s not just talking from a purely hypothetical, I don’t want to devalue it, purely scientifically detached perspective, but really backed with examples that hit us, in the truest sense of the word, where we find ourselves. So please watch it, it’s really worth seeing. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And then let’s gladly try to pick up this bridge to reality again. Marc already delivered the first approach. Jürgen, maybe you’d like to dock onto this again too. Is unconscious bias now something different? Is it the same as the construction of reality? So how real is reality? Though I still don’t know exactly, Ulla, what you mean by “I only thought of it in the scientific area.” Maybe you can specify that scientific context a bit more. That would be great.
Jürgen, would you like to dock onto this here too, maybe?
Yes, I can only agree with that. I, dear Ulla, haven’t understood this contribution that way either, and don’t want to say anything about it therefore. But if it’s generally about the positioning to our topic, both power and unconscious bias, or also the conscious, the conscious bias, that’s an essential part or a part of the whole reality, belongs to it for me. But I think that wasn’t the background for this interjection from Ulla. That’s why I don’t want to say anything further about it now. Thanks.
Marc, gladly.
Yes, I tried to bring in another example from reality. Risk tolerance also belongs to unconscious bias, so the risk tolerance in how we make decisions. And it could well be, I’ve never been to a casino, but it could be that I’m a type who’s gone to casinos since childhood and always had luck. Always worked out well for me. Then my brain learned, hey Marc, risk, great. You always win. You’re just always on the winning side. But if I’m now suddenly the boss of a large company, and the company, and then make decisions exactly with the experience I’ve had, so that my brain said risk is good, you don’t need to be careful there, it’s always gone well, as they say in Cologne, then as boss I make completely, completely different decisions than someone security-relevant to me, who said, I’ve had so many experiences and things that didn’t go well, I’d rather be safe and then doubly or quadruply safe. And there too the unconscious can have an effect on our behavior. And with that, our behavior is then again implied with power. So to what extent I exercise my power, whether I’m more risk-tolerant or in an argument, which I can also say. I’ve now read the biography of Elon Musk. At some point he fired his assistant because she wanted more salary, and she’d done everything for him. I think, as far as I understood it correctly, they worked together for years, she really did everything. She was really his right hand. And then at some point she said, exactly that, you, I work so much for you, I do everything here, I’m carrying the whole company here with you, I’m your right hand. I want to earn this and that. He said, no, I’m just a type, I don’t let myself get blackmailed. You can go, then I’ll just do it without you. And there a boss might have said, no, I feel obligated to you, we built this together. So it also depends on the type and the type of person. And if someone is more risk-tolerant, they’ll probably rather make a decision saying, I don’t need you, I can do it without you too.
Yes, thank you so much. And yes, ultimately, as I said, we now have to leave out the science area a bit at this point, so to speak, because we don’t know exactly what you mean by that. But regarding this other part, we’re not talking about how real reality is. Our construction of reality is ultimately also based on beliefs and so on. That means, how we experience or perceive the world leads to us, within fractions of a second, so to speak, based on that, making evaluations, making decisions and so on. And so we’re of course also directly, as a consequence, in the construction of reality. That means it influences how we construct our reality, how we argue, for example, if we pick up the example again with applications and applicants, why we hired someone or didn’t hire them, then the bias already kicks in in the background, so that certain evaluations and decisions get made on this basis, so to speak. We might argue it completely differently then, we might base it exactly on this bias, that has to be seen case by case. But because it’s unconscious to us, we possibly don’t even open certain doors or possibilities or options, but are, so to speak, already framed in a certain way, in the selection, in the shaping of the conversation, as the earlier example already picked up. And we have that not just in job interviews. We basically have that in every interaction, here at Deep Talk too. The type of questions I formulate already sets, already establishes a framing for the channel, even the choice of the topic already, in which direction the room can go, or maybe can’t go at all. So even these guardrails that get set are also channels that again have to do with various thoughts we have beforehand, when we say, I want to now deal with this or that topic, then I already have the ideas beforehand of which direction that might go. All the more exciting, by the way, I find it to dare this as an experiment and try it out, here with ChatGPT, saying, ChatGPT, you make the suggestions and we let ourselves engage with that, which is something we’ve quite deliberately and consciously done too. I’m also really curious, by the way, when we do the summary and reflection together next week. We’ve made a few slight corrections here and there, but essentially we’ve actually let ChatGPT have its way here under this overarching theme of power and violence, with the suggestions, so to speak, letting it have its way in the sense that we picked it up and didn’t intervene too massively. That’s why I’m also totally curious to do this reflection together with you next week and see what the results actually are. That means it wasn’t set by me now as guardrails, in this case by ChatGPT, which is also a completely different situation than if I, as moderator, prescribe what the framework is at this point. And nevertheless I of course also influence the whole thing through the moderation, through steering the whole thing, through setting priorities, through what I pick up from what Marc or Jürgen says, or don’t engage with. All of that are aspects where this unconscious bias is at work in the background, working away without us really being aware of it. And depending, also with interviews or such, the question arises, what framing do I set there, what relevances do I allow my counterpart, and which do I not allow at all, because I don’t formulate this question that way, or don’t formulate it openly enough, so that my counterpart maybe doesn’t get any opportunity from me here at this point to dock onto something that would have relevance for them. And we know this from, if we now pick up the whole thing in a scientific context too, I know this, for example, from qualitative research, that a lot gets trained in this direction, to bring in as few preconceptions as possible, and also in the interviews conducted, to try really not to make the framing too narrow, already with certain terms and so on, because here it’s usually about basic research. That’s where you use qualitative research. That means you want, as far as possible, without preconceptions, of course it’s not entirely possible, but as far as possible without preconceptions, without steering, to try to approach a topic and keep it as open as possible, precisely not to influence, but to see what comes up, that I possibly hadn’t thought of at all. And that’s how situations arise in the results where you say, well, I never would have thought of that, but that was a huge topic, that was this area in my work, for example with the professionalism in coaching, that was the topic, experts on the topic were surveyed, and I never in my life would have thought that the marketing topic would have such great relevance, especially against the background that most claimed they wouldn’t do any marketing at all, and on closer inspection in the analyses it became clear they actually do marketing, they just maybe don’t call it that, because they don’t even have the understanding that this is also a part of the marketing they’re doing. But that was a really, really exciting insight in this context.
With that I’d like to first bring in Sabine, and then I saw Jürgen wants to follow up again too.
Sabine.
Sorry that I’m chiming in so late. It’s not going quite smoothly with the family right now. I can listen along, but can’t always say something. I actually have a question, or also an uncertainty on my side. If I now try to turn everything from unconscious into conscious bias, don’t I then have a problem with efficiency and routines? Maybe an example for that too. You know I work a lot with foreign specialists and here very often with IT too. And certain things keep happening to me. And when I then tell my husband about it at home, he says, you keep falling for that. Then I ask myself, do I have to steer that differently? Do I actually have to say, when this group arrives, then it’ll be this way and that? No, I don’t think so, because then I keep getting surprised differently again and again. I’d like to have that question in the round.
So, turning unconscious bias into conscious bias, that’s what I meant earlier, that only works to a certain degree. So we can’t override it. And that’s something we may simply accept. It’s also not desirable at all, because I said at the beginning, when we started the room, that we need our routines too. We also need our stereotypes. That gives us security. Imagine, we have thousands of situations every day that we’d constantly have to re-evaluate. That would drive us crazy. That just wouldn’t be possible. And we wouldn’t have the time or the mental capacity either. And it’s also not desirable to constantly re-analyze and re-evaluate every situation. But what’s important is simply creating this awareness that there is unconscious bias there, that we can’t completely dissolve it, that on one hand, with certain important connections, we maybe look at it more closely, to influence it as far as possible, but also to accept that we hit our limits here, and therefore always consider whether something else might be needed, for example to implement structures and processes, like in a job application or selection process, to override that to some extent, or does it have no relevance at all? And I think this relevance plays a really important role here. What relevance does that have for you? Is it, from your point of view of evaluation, for example, sensible to want to override that here? If the routines help you, in the sense of efficiency for example, then the routine, in quotation marks, takes precedence at this point. But if that brings the danger that you say, with that I’d override certain things, so to speak, or not even consider them in the first place, how important is it to you that this one person, where it could be confirmed that it’s actually different, how important is it to you to let them come into play in your work process? And against this background you could, for example, also make decisions. For example, we’ve had, we had, let me give an example, we had recently at some point, I told you once, we had a lot of applications, we get relatively many applications, and there are certainly serious applications among them too, up to the point where we talked about it or thought about it, we weren’t even aware of the problem at all. We got a lot of applications and at some point said, well, it’s kind of dumb if we don’t respond to it at all, it would be nice if we could build a bridge somehow, so these people get a chance somewhere, even if they don’t get hired by us, because that just doesn’t fit against the background of our work structure. Because with us there’s no one who works in a permanently employed mode. And then we had conversations, found a possibility, and then started, with the applications that came in, mind you always unsolicited applications, to say, hey, sorry, not possible with us, but here we might have a contact who could help you. Take a look at this page, and if that’s something for you, apply there. After we went this route, we suddenly noticed, oh, now the applications have somehow multiplied rapidly, and then we got the idea to look more closely and found out, oh, some of these don’t seem to be real applications at all. I emphasize some. There are still real applications among them. But part of the applications aren’t real, but fake. So they get generated by a bot and sent in, for whatever background, whatever the goal behind it is. So, now I can think about it. So if we respond to these messages, the obvious effect is that we get even more applications, because the bot realizes we reacted. So now I can weigh things and consider, what’s important to us for the work process? Is it bad now if a few sincere applications are among them, which slip through now because I don’t react to them at all? Or is it more important to me that I don’t get flooded even more by the bot somehow? And that would be, for example, a weighing-up story now, where I can consider what’s more important in this context for our work process, for our context, or in perception outward and so on. So various factors that play a role here, against the background of which I can then make a corresponding decision. But that has nothing to do with me now saying the goal is somehow to make unconscious bias into conscious bias and override everything. We won’t manage that at all, and that can’t be the goal either, and it also can’t be the goal to override any routines and so on and completely replace them and re-evaluate a new aspect every time etc. and make new decisions, because then we also wouldn’t get ahead. Then we’d only be dealing with weighing things up and decisions.
Sabine, does that help you here?
Yes, thank you for the explanation. I understood that. You still have to accept a bit of a gap, but at least you think a bit more about it sometimes. So the room was really helpful for me again in that regard. Maybe that can also be my closing word. Thank you for the clarification and tolerance.
Great, thank you so much. Jürgen, I think you wanted to follow up, and then you can gladly bring in your closing word for today too already.
I’ll gladly do that, and it fits well too, because I’d like to address again what you addressed. Basically, the preselection is also a topic for scientific work in general. The preselection of what I look at, which questions I ask, and which information I include. And I’d like to briefly outline for you, at the end, and this should also be my closing word, one of my favorite experiments in this area, to make clear what power this unconscious bias has over us. Namely, this experiment has entered the literature under the name “Florida Experiment.” And at a, I think it was, I don’t remember anymore, at which university, they formed two groups of students and gave them the task of combining word groups, each consisting of five adjectives and verbs, into a four-word group. So make four out of five, two groups with different word groups. One word group composition was completely free of choice regarding the experiment goal. And the other group had to structure and shorten word groups that contained terms referencing old people, or let them reference that. Namely terms like bald, wrinkles, and also, in the American context, Florida, which is a synonym there in America for the retiree’s paradise. And these groups then had a certain amount of time to shorten these word groups from 5 to 4. And after they’d finished their work, and now comes the decisive point in this experiment, and this is so striking for me, they had these two groups of students walk to another room, for another experiment, and measured the time these groups needed to go from one place to another. And then it turns out, after repeated, so profound scientific work, after repeated repetition, that the group that had this word selection with a more or less latent reference to old people walked significantly slower to this room. That’s the Florida Experiment, and that’s the mental bridge for me now from you, from your hint again, Yasemin, the choice of words, the choice of language, steering of a conversation, how unconsciously but powerfully it affects our behavior and we don’t even perceive what’s actually happening to us. Thank you for listening and thank you for this room. I think there’d be so much more to say about this, so many words to exchange, but I think it’ll in a certain sense always find a continuation. Thanks to all of you, and have a nice day.
Yes, great. Thank you so much.
Marc?
I also think that was a great room and a great topic, and the topic is so important that I’d wish for a continuation here too. And finally I’d like to say, many people, when we have machines, whether it’s a car or something else, we bring them for inspection once a year, to check them. And I’ve learned for myself, or try to learn for myself, that I can also do a system check for my brain. Quite simply too, by asking myself, can I even think something different for every topic at all? What happens to me then, if I think something different? What could that be good for? And to address Sabine, I don’t do that with every incident of course, otherwise I’d never finish my work. But once every half year, or at least once a year, I can think about certain topics, like at an inspection, and ask myself why I think that, and whether it’s also possible to reach a new or different insight. I wish you a good start to the day.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. I also find it great how much has come together again today. I’d like to build one more bridge before we round off the room today, namely toward AI. Because artificial intelligence is also something like, well, I mean, there’s a lot of discussion, how dangerous is that, or how dangerous can that become for us. The internet was also discussed accordingly years ago. Today it’s AI that we discuss. Here I’d like to give a hint in the context of unconscious bias. It’s not the machine that has unconscious bias, but it’s us humans who, so to speak, feed the machines, or the systems, accordingly. So whether that’s the internet, here information from the net gets drawn on to deliver corresponding answers when we’ve formulated questions. That means, here too, right or wrong answers and so on have a lot to do with what the AI finds and gets made accessible in the net. And here too, both the problem and the solution are, again, the human being. That means, we feed the internet. The information gets picked up and something gets made from that, so to speak, and provided to us again. And especially such aspects, in the context of both AI and quite generally, the algorithms that also run in the background on social media platforms, maybe in application processes and so on, get used, of course ultimately have an effect too, also in the direction of, or can have an effect in the direction of, discrimination and so on. However, it’s really important here to sensitize once more that it’s not the systems per se that do that, but that it’s the human being. So if we have certain images that we carry with us as unconscious bias, so to speak, that accompany us, spread through the net through our articles, through our blog posts, through our websites and so on, and we do that, we all do that. So that’s not the others, we do that. Then, on the other hand, we shouldn’t be surprised, so to speak, if there are such challenges then. But they have nothing to do with the system that’s being used here, or with the technology being used here. And nevertheless we of course still have to be sensitized to this, to dock onto exactly this point and check again and make corrections and so on if necessary. That’s not meant as a free pass for that, but that this differentiation gets made clear and conscious again here too, that these systems don’t draw on something, or the technology doesn’t draw on something, but again draw on something that’s produced by humans, and based on that, so to speak, act here too and give us answers etc. or steer processes. That means, we may always keep working on ourselves, to be able to refine such processes and such shapings as optimally as possible, to be able to improve them, to make sure that as far as possible no discrimination takes place. I gladly emphasize that with “as far as possible,” because there we’re back at this aspect of illusion. We also mustn’t fall into this illusion, following the motto that we could override all of that and so on. Humans as a species are capable of reflecting on a lot, and against the background of these reflections, making many conscious decisions. That’s something unique, something great, that we can use. Nevertheless, we too, through our genetics, through the shaping of our brain, hit our limits at one point or another, to accept that too, and against this background to accept it. So also courage to accept gaps. We’ll also make mistakes. But every mistake, every unconscious bias we can prevent, in quotation marks, that we can override, at one point or another, is one unconscious bias more that we’ve consciously gone against, so to speak, in the sense of achieving something good with it, in quotation marks, whatever the goal is that we’re tackling there at that point. So in that sense, the human being is the relevant lever and factor that can influence in one direction as well as the other, and at the points where we hit limits in the automatism of how our brain functions, we need processes and structures, which again the human being, so to speak, has to tackle, quite consciously and deliberately, to be able to override such aspects as far as possible. Even if we won’t be able to completely eliminate it, we can, through this awareness that I let certain goals be achieved here through certain instruments, procedures etc., become sensitized to this, and against this background check routines, check work processes, check certain things in everyday life. All the way to, we can also implement such techniques for ourselves, do such exercises, that in certain processes, for example, where I notice I have challenges there, and maybe always the same trap, or such, at least viewed from outside, I could, for example, also always ask myself the question, I could also make that a process, to say, do I want to shape it this way or that way? Is this such a case again? Do I maybe need to talk to someone about it before I take on such a case? What can I recognize this case by. So that you really think again in the direction of implementing processes, implementing structures and processes that serve me as a tool, for example to recognize that faster and handle it accordingly. And then we’re back at what Marc said earlier too. We can of course not do that everywhere and with everything. So it’s important to make a weighing-up beforehand. Where do I want that, where do I not want that, because it has a corresponding relevance for me. And at the other points I may also simply let my unconscious bias have its way.
In that sense, I hope everyone could take something away for themselves today. I think there were really, really great aspects, really impulses too, to think about and let resonate. And what Ulla brought in again, if unconscious bias influences scientific studies, yes, definitely. So in science that’s a topic, a big topic, because when we conduct research, we of course already have unconscious bias with which we also pick up questions, what gets researched at all in the first place, decisions already get made against the background of our unconscious bias about what we even want to research. That means, these are topics that concern us against the background of certain experiences, the constellation of how questionnaires get put together, such surveys that take place. You’ll always notice this too, especially with such surveys that aren’t highly scientific, but maybe as a survey from a company or something, some kind of questioning or such. Sometimes you sit in front of it and have the feeling, well, now I have to check one of five somehow here, but actually I’d need another field for myself. And this other field just doesn’t exist at this point. That’s because the person who worked out this form didn’t even think that there might be further possibilities here and so on. And all these things also get addressed in science, looked at critically too, and tried to override as much as possible. And yes, humans are human, fallible at this point. And we may accept that too. And that’s also what makes us who we are. And I don’t find that bad either, but it’s only bad, in quotation marks, if we’re not aware of it at all, just walk around blindly, but if we become aware of it and work on it, in quotation marks, even if we can’t completely dissolve it, I think that’s already a lot achieved.
And in that spirit I thank you all so, so much for this great room today. Tomorrow we have our expert talk with Andreas Bellof. I’m already totally looking forward to that too. It starts at 8 o’clock on the topic of empowerment and sovereignty. Because now we want to slowly move in the direction of self-empowerment. Yes, now we’ve had a lot following the motto of power and violence, also very much regarding positive and negative, but also a lot from outside, so to speak. But how is it actually, if we now think of the whole thing again in the direction of self-empowerment? So what share of steering can I take on here? We’ve had this in some examples already, power isn’t just exercised on me from outside, but it also has something to do with how I respond to it, in quotation marks. So I also have the possibility of a certain self-efficacy here. What exactly does that mean? And we’ll now gradually step into this topic, successively, via empowerment and sovereignty, then continue with resilience in dealing with power and violence, and on Saturday then self-empowerment. On Sunday I’ve decided, education and power. I said we’ll definitely include that. I don’t find it quite fitting either before or after, somehow. That’s why I decided we’ll embed it on Sunday into the digital campfire, part 4. And then I’ll bring a few examples, but keep them relatively brief, so we also still have extensive time with your examples, thoughts, to set this reflection framework again, which we normally have Monday through Saturday, so that we make a combination of it, to make sure we also pick up this topic as a room topic again under power and violence, and that it finds its place here accordingly at this point.
Wonderful, I’m glad too that a thumbs up is coming as a signal that this works for you. And on Monday we’ll do the power of attractiveness, and then move into the summary and reflection. And I’m really looking forward to that too, especially against the background that we’ve also had ChatGPT do quite a bit here, as already mentioned earlier, and I’d like to pick up your feedback too. So not just the overall topic wrap-up, but also the reflection, to look together at what insights we take from this format, what experiences we’ve had, and how we evaluate them together too, from the different perspectives. So I’m really looking forward to the coming days, and hope to be able to welcome you again tomorrow morning at eight for the expert talk with Andreas Bellof. Until then.
