It is increasingly acknowledged that humans frequently perceive their environment on the basis of stereotypes of which they are often not aware. Although such biases allow you to react fast to new information, they can also negatively affect your judgement of and cooperation with other people – as well as other people’s evaluation of and collaboration with you. In order to mitigate our own biases towards others and other persons’ unconscious biases towards you, we need to have a critical look at the way biases function and what we can do to counteract their effects.

In this workshop, we will examine what unconscious biases are and how their undesired effects can be interrupted. Important topics will thus be:

• the reasons for and effects of unconscious bias
• types of biases in general and especially in a professional context
• their impact on our (working) life and interactions based on scientific studies
• alternate modes of action to prevent undesired effects