Bias Ledger

I have a colleague who is biased against almost everything and everyone. His bias it seems is unbiased. At some point I have heard him express his ire against all age groups, genders, nationalities, income groups, religions and races, except his own. Only the tightly honed demographic to which he belongs and is the de facto leader is exempt from his negativity.

Many people’s biases are subtle enough that we don’t notice them. With my colleague I can tick them off as he talks. When a situation occurs, say in the news, or in the workplace, he stacks his internal ledger to fit his bias even before he has the facts. For instance, if I was to tell him about the incompetence of someone I was dealing with, he would say something like, ‘Oh I bet he’s a millennial’, or ‘Must be an American’. The interesting thing is that when the facts run counter to his presuppositions, he brushes them off without a second thought. If I tell him that it was in fact a 50-year-old Englishman, he still believes it was a millennial American. He doesn’t rebalance the ledger to match the facts. In other words, his bias is reinforced even when the facts run counter to his bias.