Bias In Blindspot

The idea of a subconscious mind with thoughts the conscious mind is unaware of has been around for a long time. Popularized by Sigmund Freud’s research on psychoanalysis, his theory focused on the idea that everyone has thoughts and urges in their subconscious mind that never make it to the conscious mind for them to be acted on. The book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, explores a similar idea in terms of unconscious bias and preferences present in everyone. The book also examines the relationship between our unconscious bias and our behavior. During Launch into Loras and the ropes course, some of these biases were present and affected the behavior of the group.
For the most part, I only judged others based on their perceived abilities …show more content…
For example, the first obstacle of the day lacked a clear plan due to undefined roles and a lack of communication. At the next obstacle, the rope swing, it took longer than it should have to decide on a plan as most of the group wasn’t aware that one person had completed the obstacle before and knew what plan worked. When the plans were being discussed, I noticed her beginnig to get frustrated, but did not say anything, instead waiting for the other leaders to decide. If we had listened to her at the beginning, we could have completed the obstacle much faster. This relates to the presence of bias based on gender roles discussed above. At the rope swing, there were three guys trying to decide how to get the rope so we could all swing across. The two choices discussed were throwing a shoe at the rope, causing it to swing back towards the group, or having someone try to jump from the side, catch the rope, and swing back. The one girl who had experience with the obstacle tried to tell the group we should throw the shoe, but she was initially ignored. It wasn’t until one of the guys just threw his shoe that the group stuck to that method, and it worked. As the day wore on, the bias seemed to decrease as we learned how to better work together. For example, good communication was key on the obstacle in which we were supposed to walk with the two boards as “skis”. Although we struggled to move forward at first, we soon figured out a system that worked. If that had been the first obstacle we attempted, there would have been more communication programs leading to less successful walking with the boards. I also thought that communication was better on the obstacle where we blindly followed one another along a rope around trees as well as the “web” obstacle. On the obstacle in which we had to blindly follow one another along the rope, we had to trust the person in front of us to stay on the path and