Quotes About Bias

The average person believes that they are better than the average person.

differences in behavior arise not because of differences in how men and women are, but in how men and women are treated. This is what the evidence shows: women are less likely to get useful feedback, their mistakes are judged more harshly and remembered longer, their behavior is scrutinized more carefully, and their colleagues are less likely to share vital information with them. When women speak, they're more likely to be interrupted or ignored.

This book explores a central question: what if these two observations - that most leaders are bad and that most leaders are male - are casually linked?

the under-representation of women in leadership was not due to their lack of ability or motivation, but due to our inability to detect incompetence in men.

The result is a pathologic system that rewards men for their incompetence while punishing women for their competence.

Since we all want better leaders, we should not lower our standards when we select women, but we should raise them when we select men.

People will passionately defend the qualities of leaders they deem charismatic, just as they would blindly defend a person they are in love with: with no concern for facts or objective evidence in support of their views.

When people make up their minds about you, they only see you one way, which is the easy way for them.

If I had rescued a child from drowning, the national press would no doubt have headlined the story "Benn grabs child."

You asked how I'd define prejudice. That's it. Making assumptions about people you've never met.

When you've got the virgin and the whore sitting next to each other, they're likely to judge each other harshly.

He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil, and one of the worst kinds of devils, for it shuts out the truth, and often leads to ruinous error.

Because history is told by the victors. Everything else falls away.

The fundamental attribution error is simply this: human beings tend to falsely attribute the negative behaviors of others to their character (an internal attribution), while they attribute their own negative behaviors to their environment (an external attribution).

we like to believe that we do bad things because of the situations we are in, but somehow we easily come to the conclusion that others do bad things because they are predisposed to being bad. (Similarly

There is so much ignorant prejudice against bees in a dining-room.

Whereas I had not meant anything so illiberal as a national reflexion, of course; only that I hated Papists.

It is a habit common among all classes of people to condone the faults of their own kind but to be severe with those of others.

Don't ever accuse me of being objective.

The Nice Girl Culture teaches [women] not to interrupt other people and to wait to speak until called upon. Unfortunately, these are little-girl behaviors that do not translate into the modern world of work. Women tend to be quieter in meetings where men are present. When they let the men do most of the talking, the men will naturally get most of the credit.

Othello's error is also an example of how preconceptions can bias a lie catcher's judgments. Othello is convinced before this scene that Desdemona is unfaithful.

Facts are almost irrelevant to most people. We make decisions based on emotion and then justify them later with whatever facts we can scrounge up in our defense.

A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.

A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest. - Paraphrased from The Boxer