Kurs: From Affinity Bias to Zero Sum Bias (open talk)

When evaluating people in the university context like students or applicants, we face various challenges when taking tenets like excellence as well as diversity seriously and acting accordingly. One important factor in the process of perceiving and evaluating individuals is how our brain tricks us with implicit biases – on the individual or on the group level. For instance, the more we like people, the better we evaluate them or the likelier we hire them, if they are similar to us (affinity or similarity bias); a lot of information go unrecognized (focus of attention bias), or stereotypes about social groups (women, men, professors, …) can distort the perception and the evaluation of an applicant’s performance record. Additionally, group dynamics and biases can impact team processes and the respective decision making (e.g., authority bias, conformity effects). In this talk, not only various examples of unconscious individual and group biases, as they can happen in the university context, are presented, but also strategies and how these biases can be reduced are offered and discussed. 

Methods

This Talk (45 mins plus 45 mins discussion) is aimed at everybody interested in gender and diversity issues at university. Insights from current research will be presented and framed in the university context.

TUM executive leaders (professors and administration department heads) can join the consecutive workshop for in-depth application of the presented concepts in their everyday working and research environment.

Date

June 30, 2022, 11.30 am - 1:00 pm

The speaker

Dr. Lisa Horvath