13 Implicit Biases That Torpedo Your Personal Growth

I hate realizing I’m wrong.

It’s embarrassing. It’s humbling. It makes me feel like I’ve failed somehow. And it’s completely necessary if I want to grow.

I was reminded of that fact recently when I read a post highlighting author and speaker Brian McLaren’s work on implicit biases (you can read the full post here). Implicit biases are subconscious beliefs we hold about life, ourselves, and other people that impact our worldview.

The insidious nature of implicit biases are that they wield tremendous power over our lives, yet we don’t even know they exist. It’s like looking through tinted sunglasses that distort the color of everything we see, but we don’t know we’re wearing them. We’re convinced we’re seeing things as they really are.

As I read this post, it did more than convict me of my own implicit biases (Comfort Bias – ouch). It helped me understand how reasonable, intelligent people can be so divided on so many issues—political, cultural, social, religious, you name it. We’re looking at the same facts but seeing very different things, in large part because of our implicit biases.

Check out the list of common biases that Brian McLaren outlines below. Can you look at yourself honestly enough to see yours? He writes:

“People can’t see what they can’t see. Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion. No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them, unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias. . . .

Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.

Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.”*

So how about you? What biases have tripped you up in the past? Which might be affecting you now? Take an honest look in the mirror. Acknowledge what you see. Forgive yourself. Read / listen to (podcasts or news outlets) / talk with people who have a different perspective. Commit to having your beliefs, words, and actions match your renewed awareness. If you do, you’ll help heal our social divide, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

* From Brian McLaren, Why Don’t They Get It? Overcoming Bias in Others (and Yourself) (Self-published: 2019), e-book, as shared by Richard Rohr in his daily meditation March 1, 2021 for the Center for Action and Contemplation at cac.org.