As humans, we are hardwired to make quick decisions. This stems from our time on the savannah as hunter-gatherers – hunt or be hunted, fight or flight. Every day we subconsciously make a multitude of decisions: your most recent one was whether to read this article or not.We make decisions so frequently, some sources say that we make up to 35,000 decisions every day – most of the time we don’t even realize we are doing it. The way we think is largely shaped by various unconscious biases which ultimately influence the way we perceive reality.How we were brought up, how we were socialized, our subsequent social groups, our exposure to diversity in society and the media at large are all aspects of bias that feed into our decision-making process and ultimately help us form our judgements.
In an ideal world, the decision to hire a candidate would be based solely on their ability to do the job well. The hire would be approached in an objective, pragmatic way, free from subjectivity and unconscious bias. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and as hard as we try, sometimes we let outside factors cloud our judgement. And the thing is, this unconscious bias happens whether we want it to or not, it’s unconscious.