Emotions and preconceptions in the workplace: how not to be influenced

Working on the emotions produced by subtle prejudices in the workplace becomes essential to appreciate the merit and potential of people beyond preconception: it is not so much what we feel but what we do with our emotions that is important.

Do you get along well with people who share your views and tend to avoid individuals or groups that make you feel uncomfortable? Beware of confirmation bias, that is, the tendency to refer to perspectives that feed into your pre-existing views: 'Did you see that? That's proven proof that I'm right'. This bias may lead you to interact poorly with people who are different from you. Its roots may be the confidence bias, which leads you to think that you have never been wrong after all, and the self-referentiality bias: 'When things go right it is all my fault, when things go wrong it is the fault of others'.

If you believe that first impressions are often the ones that count, beware of Gabler's fallacy, i.e. the tendency to give relevance to what happened in the past. If you have made a negative judgement in the past, you may tend to make a negative judgement in the present, even in spite of the positive performance of the moment: 'It only takes me a few seconds to realise what a person is like'. This fallacy may prevent you from considering that people whom you initially assessed negatively, for example because of a lack of basic training or because they have a different educational background from you, are acquiring skills that contradict the 'first impression'.

If you feel envy of other people's characteristics that you think you do not have, beware of bias by contrast, which leads you to appreciate characteristics opposite to your own. You may overestimate traits in other people that you recognise as opposites. If you had an introverted personality, you might by this bias judge extroverted types to be more confident. If you were a woman, you might misjudge men to be more capable of leadership. If you were homosexual or bisexual, you might erroneously think that a heterosexual person always feels very confident.

If you believe that in making a decision most people of common sense would think like you, beware of the projection bias, which leads you to imagine that most people think like you. By generalising you run the risk of thinking that all people in your community share the same view of others. For example, all men treat or see women in the same way, or all women treat or see men in the same way: 'You know, we men/women think like that'.