As a foreigner living in Spain, I sometimes need to write my name down for people as they don’t know how to spell it. Recently, in a place, I do that, along with my ID number. I pass the paper and the person behind the counter says: “They write badly in your country.”
This is an excellent example of the unconscious bias called Implicit Stereotypes, in other words, the tendency to overgeneralise. It is also, obviously, a harmless episode with no more consequences than a smile on my face and subject matter for my blog
However, think about some of the more pernicious examples of Implicit Stereotype bias. What’s more, systemic biases in society have to start somewhere.
(I am pleasingly more aware of this as I am in the middle of running a training programme online on Unconscious Bias for an organisation. It’s fascinating).
