Mahzarin Banaji, psychologist: “Our biases were useful in the past, but today they are an obstacle.”

There are biases we're not afraid to express: some prefer Real Madrid and others Barça. But some biases cause shame , like thinking that women are less capable professionally or that black people are more likely to commit crimes. And often, the biases that lead people to choose one person over another for a job are unconscious.

Until the 1990s, there was no name for these ubiquitous prejudices. “Tony Greenwald and I decided to call them implicit biases,” recalls Mahzarin Banaji (Secunderabad, India, 69), who visited Bilbao a few days ago to receive the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences.

Together with Greenwald, she createda test to assess implicit bias . They wanted it to be a tool for self-awareness with which to build a more just society, and it also gave them unpleasant surprises. “On my test, I show a negative bias toward dark-skinned people! That shocked me,” says the Harvard professor.

Question: Today, the idea that there are biases we're not fully aware of is part of popular culture.

Answer: Absolutely! Even an Uber driver in Boston told me, “Oh, I took your test!” It’s already part of the language in the US. Although the Trump administration banned it.

Q. Did they ban the term?

A: Yes. It's on a list of banned words for the federal government and universities. But people still use it.

Q. Doesn't being aware of these implicit biases put us at risk of overanalyzing, of becoming blocked by our doubts about whether we are being fair to other people?

A: It's a risk! That's why I recommend against mandatory diversity training. If you force people to take the test, it's counterproductive. We warn them five times before doing it: "Maybe you shouldn't." It should be voluntary.

Q. Maybe people are bothered by having their instincts questioned and then having someone from Harvard come along and tell them how to think.

A: Yes, I think you're right. I'd say: maybe I'm from Harvard, but I'm not going to tell you anything... unless you want to know.

Q. So you think this knowledge is necessary and has practical implications?

A. Absolutely. I believe you can't be a good leader, you can't lead a team in a multicultural society, if you don't know these facts. It would be like saying, "I don't speak the language of my culture." You can't be competent if you don't speak the language of your culture. Knowing and understanding biases is now part of that language.

Q. But there are very competent leaders, at least in terms of results for their companies, like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, who are among the richest men in the world, and they represent just the opposite.

A: Yes, Elon Musk is a good example. Clearly, certain things happened that led him to become the richest man in the world. If you use that as a measure of success, you would say he's the most successful person in the world. But we're talking about someone who can't even accept his trans daughter . To me, if you can't do that, you're an absolute failure as a human being, or if you choose to support someone with the values that Donald Trump represents. When we talk about someone being "competent," they may be competent in one specific area, but that doesn't mean they're socially or morally intelligent.

Q. You argue that if we understand our biases, we'll be better at choosing the right people for jobs, the most competent ones. If this were true, people who knew and controlled their biases and companies that encouraged those attitudes would be more successful, and this kind of thinking would naturally prevail. But that doesn't seem to be what's happening.

A. Well, yes and no. For starters, even if you're a person who acts without bias, remember that you're operating within a broader culture that has a huge amount of bias.

There are two reasons why one might want to pay attention to our data. The first is that, whatever your value system, it's good for business. I'm a teacher, and I have biases in my classroom. I call on the students sitting in the front row and not those in the back, because I think students who sit in the back aren't good students. So I'm missing those kids' opinions. Now I have someone sitting in the back watching and counting who I call. They say, "Mahzarin, you're calling on the people on the right side of the room a lot more than the people on the left." If I change that, it changes the discussion. So my business—which is education as a teacher—improves because I'm starting to notice that I'm systematically excluding some voices and privileging others, and that's not good for my work. Whether you're an entrepreneur or a teacher, it's good for business. And I think we can prove that.

The second reason is that all human beings, no matter how different we are, want to live in a way in which our behavior is consistent with our values. My values tell me I should be egalitarian. Most people you ask will say, “I want to be fair. I want to be equitable. I want to elect the best person.” If we can show, as our data shows, that our behavior is not consistent with our values, then I think, regardless of whether it's good for business or not, everyone wants to know. That's why I think people come to our website: because they're asking, “Am I behaving the way I want to behave, or is my behavior somehow not aligned with my values?”

Q. Which of your own biases surprised you most?

A. One of them shows that I can't easily associate a woman with a career. And I can't associate a man with the home as quickly and easily as I can the other way around: a man with a career, a woman with a home—that comes easily to me. But a woman with a career, a man with a home—that doesn't come naturally to me. And I have that bias, even though I've always had a career. My mother in India also had a career. Why isn't that reflected? Because the cultural imprint is imprinted on my brain.

I don't like this bias. I've done a lot of work trying to understand what I can do. But for some reason, it doesn't bother me as much as my racial bias bothers me. Black and white. Good and bad. To me, white is good, black is bad. I can't live with that bias. That's what really bothers me.

Q. But biases sometimes help us make decisions more quickly in complicated situations. If you meet someone in a dark alley, the level of alertness isn't the same for men as it is for women. That can be helpful.

A. If we had to take these positions from a political perspective, we would always say that bias is bad, because politically it's not acceptable to say otherwise. But if you're a scientist, you have to look at the data and see when bias can be good.

So let's start with something simple: what is bias? One definition of bias is that it's a departure from neutrality. Imagine there are two things: it could be male and female, but let's say meat and vegetables. Being unbiased would mean I like both equally. But if I lean to one side, I prefer meat; if I lean to the other, I prefer vegetables. If I have a bias toward vegetables, that's very good for my health and probably good for the planet.

So the first point I want to make is that being neutral isn't always the best option. You have to make a choice. In this case, neutrality may not be as good as having a bias toward vegetables (or meat, as the case may be). Now the second point—and this is very important when we're talking about humans, about how we relate as individuals, but also as groups within a culture or between countries—is that many of the biases we have today we evolved to have.

Among our ancestors, long, long ago, those who had a type of biology that allowed them to store sugar and fat survived. Why? Because back then, food was scarce, and if your body could take a little sugar or fat and store it, you could walk 80 kilometers further. And we're alive today because we descend from those people whose bodies could store sugar and fat. But today, that same ability to store sugar and fat is killing us. Because today's world is full of sugar and fat.

I would say that our biases—whether racial, gender, sexuality, disability, or bodily—served a purpose in the past. If groups of people lived on opposite sides of a mountain, and you saw someone from the other group, it was better to run or kill them. Because chances are that encounter wouldn't end well. So, in that context, seeing someone different and treating them as an enemy was adaptive. Today, in the world we live in, if you see someone very different from you, what you should say is, "Where are you from? Can I outsource your people and do business at a lower cost?" What worked in the past is an obstacle today.

And that's why we need to think about biases not in terms of "good" or "bad," but rather ask ourselves: Is this bias useful to me now, in the world I live in? Even though it may have been useful in the past.

Q. Do you think being overly aware of one's own biases can be a disadvantage when confronted with someone who fully relies on their instincts and the beliefs of their group?

A. That's a very good question. The question is: what is my group today? I come from what was once called Persia. Then my people had to flee because they were being persecuted for religious reasons. And then they migrated to India in the 9th century and lived there. Somehow, we've managed to live there for all these centuries as a distinct minority. Then, I pack my bags at 24 years old, with $80 in my pocket, and say, "I'm going to America." Humans have always been on the move. And we're constantly fighting against others and fearing others, but also collaborating with them. That's how trade has worked for centuries.

The first thing is that we tend to have what I call a worm's-eye view of the world, not a bird's-eye view. But if you raise your gaze, if you take a bird's-eye view, and go back in time, even just a few centuries, I would say that today we are less fragmented. It's true that our societies have the problem that we are no longer homogeneous in each country or region. We used to be.

It's an experiment I call the American experiment because, honestly, I think no other country has had laws that allow immigration the way the United States has. That's its strength, or at least we think so. It's an experiment because it goes against human nature. Human nature is: each to his own group. But we say: no, there's something more important. Our ideas matter. Our beliefs matter. Our values matter. And we want to unite because in America, we believe in living without kings.

So in this modern moment, we're saying, for the first time in history, that your religion doesn't matter, the color of your skin shouldn't matter, your gender shouldn't matter, your sexual orientation shouldn't matter, your race shouldn't matter. What should matter is what you think. This is a very difficult transition for us. We're in the early stages. But I think if you look back, we're no worse off than we were 400 years ago or a few thousand years ago.

I think what we're seeing in the United States, and around the world, as the world shifts to the right, is this battle between free and open thought, free and open life, versus the forces of tradition, of orthodoxy, that say, "No, we must go back to the cave." I don't know which side will win, but I think the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice and freedom.

Q. What can academic scientists do in the current situation in the US?

A. Harvard has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on two grounds. One, we're arguing that they can't take away our federal funding. Two, they can't tell us how to run ourselves, nor can they tell us how many foreign students we can accept or what kind. Twenty-four other universities have signed this lawsuit. Not 2,500, just 24. That tells you there's fear. You only have to look at Europe in the 1930s to see that many people remained silent. And I would simply ask those who remain silent today: "Who do you think acted well in Nazi Germany?"