CDT Unconscious Bias & Microaggressions 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is unconscious bias in the context of diversity training?
- Deliberate prejudice that individuals knowingly act upon
- Attitudes or stereotypes that affect decisions without conscious awareness (Correct answer)
- Explicit policies that disadvantage minority groups
- A legal term for workplace discrimination
Correct answer: Attitudes or stereotypes that affect decisions without conscious awareness
Unconscious bias refers to attitudes or stereotypes that influence our decisions, actions, and understanding without conscious awareness.
Question 2: Which type of unconscious bias involves favoring people who share similar backgrounds, interests, or experiences as oneself?
- Confirmation bias
- Attribution bias
- Affinity bias (Correct answer)
- Halo effect
Correct answer: Affinity bias
Affinity bias is the tendency to favor and connect more with people who are similar to oneself in background, interests, or appearance.
Question 3: The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was developed primarily to measure which of the following?
- Explicit racial prejudice in hiring decisions
- The strength of associations between concepts and evaluations in memory (Correct answer)
- An individual's cultural competence level
- Organizational diversity climate
Correct answer: The strength of associations between concepts and evaluations in memory
The IAT measures the strength of automatic associations between concepts (e.g., race, gender) and evaluations (good/bad) or stereotypes in memory.
Question 4: Confirmation bias in workplace settings most often manifests as:
- Evaluating all candidates using standardized criteria
- Seeking out information that confirms pre-existing beliefs about individuals (Correct answer)
- Overestimating the abilities of unfamiliar candidates
- Applying consistent standards across all performance reviews
Correct answer: Seeking out information that confirms pre-existing beliefs about individuals
Confirmation bias leads people to seek, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms their pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses.
Question 5: The 'halo effect' in performance evaluations occurs when:
- A negative trait causes an overall negative assessment of an employee
- A single positive trait leads to an overall positive assessment of an employee (Correct answer)
- Managers treat all employees equally regardless of performance
- Evaluators focus exclusively on recent behavior
Correct answer: A single positive trait leads to an overall positive assessment of an employee
The halo effect occurs when one positive characteristic of a person influences the overall perception of that person in a favorable direction.
Question 6: Attribution bias in diversity contexts typically refers to the tendency to:
- Attribute the successes of majority group members to luck and minority members to skill
- Attribute majority members' failures to personal factors and minority members' failures to situational factors
- Attribute minority members' successes to situational factors while attributing majority members' successes to personal ability (Correct answer)
- Attribute all workplace outcomes equally across demographic groups
Correct answer: Attribute minority members' successes to situational factors while attributing majority members' successes to personal ability
Attribution bias often leads evaluators to credit majority group successes to internal traits (skill, intelligence) while crediting minority successes to external factors (luck, affirmative action).
Question 7: Which strategy is MOST effective for a diversity trainer helping participants recognize their own unconscious biases?
- Delivering a lecture on bias statistics and data
- Telling participants which specific biases they hold
- Facilitating self-reflective exercises and structured debriefs (Correct answer)
- Requiring participants to sign a pledge against discrimination
Correct answer: Facilitating self-reflective exercises and structured debriefs
Self-reflective exercises and structured debriefs allow participants to personally explore and discover their own biases, which is more effective than being told what to believe.
CDT Unconscious Bias & Microaggressions 1
What is unconscious bias in the context of diversity training?