Understanding Discrimination and Bias
Experiences with discrimination and bias can lead to poor self-image, elevated levels of stress, and other harmful consequences that affect our mental health. For this reason, it’s important to understand what discrimination and bias look like, how they affect people’s behavior, and how to take care of ourselves when we encounter them.
Discrimination is the unjust treatment of people based on the groups or classes they belong to. Often, discrimination stems from biases or ignorance: when we fear or misunderstand someone who is different from us, we treat them differently.
Discrimination and bias happen at a personal level, of course, but they reflect larger social biases and norms. Because of this, it is common to unintentionally pick up stereotypes and misunderstandings that exist around us when we are young. Since we grow up with it and it can feel “normal,” it’s sometimes hard to step back and see all the ways prejudice and false assumptions about people impact us. You may not recognize that certain beliefs you have about people around you are based on stereotypes you’ve grown up with. On the other hand, people may make false assumptions about you based on your identity, which could cause you to experience discrimination or other obstacles that make it difficult to achieve your goals.
Understanding Discrimination
People can discriminate against others due to one or more characteristics, including but not limited to age, race, gender, and weight. Even characteristics that are not immediately visible or apparent to other people, such as religion, immigration status, sexual orientation, disability, income, or where you live can make a person the focus of discrimination. People who are parents or are pregnant may also experience discrimination by others.
There are many negative impacts of discrimination. Because of discrimination, people may be denied a quality education, opportunities for career advancement, proper medical care, or access to housing and other basic necessities. Laws surrounding marriage and adoption may also impact some whether and how people start families. Some discrimination is subtle and experienced by people on a daily basis, negatively impacting daily functioning. It can have serious impacts on people’s mental health and also contributes to worse physical health. In short, discrimination stops people from living to their full potential.
Understanding Bias
Part of the way our brains make sense of the world is by putting things into categories. The tendency to sort into groups and to order these groups is inherent: by five years old, children can sort people into groups based on age, gender, and race. This is not enough, in and of itself, to lead to bias, however.
Bias arises when we notice that certain characteristics — for example, race, or gender, accent, or age — are associated with having more or less status, power, resources, or respect from others. We might pick up these perceptions from our families, through our own experiences, and from the culture around us.
When we see that people with certain characteristics are more likely to have power and resources in a society, we may make unconscious judgments about people or groups who don’t have those characteristics. We may even incorrectly assume that people in those groups tend to be less deserving than others. In many cases, what we hear from our families, communities, or larger social groups or what we see on TV or social media can reinforce these assumptions.
This way of attaching social value to particular characteristics is what leads to bias: a disproportionate preference for (or, on the other hand, an aversion to) an idea or a group of people, usually in a way that is close-minded or unfair. This, in turn, can create discriminatory behaviors, practices, and institutional policies.
How Bias Affects Behavior
When we evaluate another person, deem them “acceptable” or “unacceptable,” and then treat them according to how we see them, we are being biased. Sometimes, we make a clear and conscious judgment about groups of people based on their identity. This is called “explicit bias.” Examples of explicit bias include:
- Consciously using language that is derogatory, disrespectful, a slur, or otherwise insulting when speaking about people with different identities
- Reacting angrily or disrespectfully to someone speaking another language, speaking with an accent, or wearing a piece of clothing that is significant to their culture, religion, or ethnicity because of your own negative feelings about what it means to be part of that culture, religion, or ethnicity
- Treating a person with a disability like they are unintelligent or immature, or being overtly condescending
- Bullying or excluding someone from social activities because they are different from you, either because of your own biases or because you want to belong to the “in” group
Unconscious Attitudes That Affect Behavior
While some examples of bias are explicit and easy to spot, others are more subtle and harder to recognize. These occur when we have an unconscious or immediate thought about a person or group that goes directly against our conscious beliefs. These thoughts, sometimes called “implicit bias,” come from natural tendencies coupled with what we learn and observe starting at a very young age.
We are often biased in favor of people or groups we see as familiar (which makes us think of them as “safe”), and biased against groups we have learned to see as unsafe or “strange.” These often unconscious associations can shape our attitudes and comfort levels around people we perceive as different, and can in turn affect how we treat them.
Examples of unconscious bias include:
- Preferring to socialize with people who look like you or or have similar identities to yours, without noticing that you tend to do this
- Reflexively feeling discomfort when you are around individuals or groups with certain characteristics (for example race, nationality, sexual orientation, or gender), even though you do not know anything about them as people
- Automatically changing how you speak to others, like classmates or coworkers, who are different from you
- Regularly showing more respect or giving preferential treatment to certain people because they have particular characteristics
- Having a negative opinion about someone — for example, assuming someone is unhealthy or unintelligent — based on their race, age, gender, income level, accent, or other characteristics, — without any personal knowledge of them as an individual
What makes it even more confusing is that being a victim of discrimination does not keep us from making negative assumptions about others based on their identity; seeing and addressing unconscious bias takes conscious effort.
Discriminatory Practices by Institutions
It is largely illegal in the US and many other countries for institutions, such as businesses, schools, and government agencies, to discriminate against people because of their backgrounds or identities. However, unconscious bias may lead to discriminatory practices in institutions. These include:
- Passing someone (or whole groups of people) over for a promotion based on their gender, sex, age, race, or parental status
- A server being slower and less responsive to someone at a restaurant because they perceive them as different and less important than other customers
- Using derogatory “jokes” or slurs in the workplace about someone’s ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or where they’re from
- Being hesitant to sell or rent a home to someone based on their disability, race, religion, or family status
A person’s unconscious bias, which is more subtle, can lead to more obvious bias and discrimination. If you hear or see something at school or work that makes you uncomfortable, you might wonder if it is an example of bias — and it may be. Understanding and responding to bias requires that we all pay closer attention to our own actions and the actions of others.
What is the Link Between Discrimination and Mental Health?
As we grow up, many of us receive messages, sometimes subtle and sometimes explicit, that we are less intelligent, skilled, kind, or worthy than others, solely based on one characteristic. These discriminatory messages about how our fundamental worth is tied to aspects of our identity can lead to poor self-image, elevated levels of stress, and other harmful consequences. For example, research shows that:
- LGBTQIA+ youth are more likely than their peers to face isolation and rejection from family, difficulties in the school system, and housing instability. Discrimination against LGBTQIA+ youth increases their risk of depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts,,and self-injury.
- Racial discrimination in healthcare, schooling, and the criminal justice system makes it harder for people of color to receive proper medical care, education, and resources. All of these barriers have negative impacts on physical and mental health.
- Low- income children, Black children, and children living in poverty experience higher levels of harsh school discipline, including more frequent and longer suspensions, than their white peers who engage in the same behaviors.
- Older adults and people with disabilities are more likely to experience discrimination at work and in healthcare, both of which are associated with depression, low self-image, and overall poor health.
If you have experienced bias and/or outright discrimination, learning how to cope with and respond to this can help alleviate some of the negative effects of these behaviors.
Believing Harmful Messages About Your Identity
Sometimes, the harmful messages we hear become part of how we act towards ourselves and people like us—that’s called internalized bias. For example, a person of color may have internalized racism, where they begin to believe and accept the stereotypes and beliefs about themselves based on their identity, and hold harmful attitudes about others with the same identity.
Internalized bias has very strong negative impacts on a person’s mental and physical health. Research shows that people who have internalized racism have an increased risk of anxiety and depression and suffer from lower self-esteem.
Bias and Empathy
Most of the conversation around discrimination and mental health is focused on people who face discrimination. But since we all have our own biases, it’s also important to examine how perpetuating discrimination can impact our mental health.
People who discriminate against others are likely to have low empathy, but individuals with higher levels of empathy and emotional intelligence show lower rates of prejudice.. This means they have difficulty seeing or recognizing the value of other people’s perspectives. Having conversations about bias and reflecting on our own preconceived notions of others can help us gain cognitive empathy and unlearn harmful stereotypes and improve our mental health.
How to Unlearn Biases
Forming biases starts early, and parents and other trusted adults often wait to have tough conversations about discrimination until far after children have formed unconscious biases and stereotypes about others. Sometimes the adults in our lives still hold their own biased opinions. So it’s not easy to unlearn biases, but it is important for our mental health and our relationships with others. Here are some helpful steps to identify and unlearn biases:
- Check your biases. One way to check your own biases is to imagine people in different occupations. What do you see when you imagine a doctor, a teacher, or a scientist? Seeing where your brain goes automatically can help you recognize what you assume about others based on very little information.
- Show concern. Once you’re aware of your biases, learning how your biases can harm others is an important part of practicing empathy. This empathy and concern can help motivate you to learn more about the causes and effects discrimination.
- Replace your biases. One study shows that actively imagining someone you’ve stereotyped as the opposite of that stereotype may help you “retrain” yourself away from negative biases. Actively deciding to replace stereotypical thinking is more likely to rewire your thoughts in the long term.
- Educate yourself. Discrimination stems from lack of information. Learning about or experiencing other cultures, ethnicities, abilities, and identities can help you unlearn your biases and learn to appreciate people’s differences.
Unlearning biases can be a long process, especially because discrimination happens every day in ways big and small. But it’s an important one if we want to improve ourselves and our society.
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