Biases Are Not Limited to Social Justice Issues

Biases impact far more than issues pertaining to social justice and social injustice, or what I tend to refer to as civil rights categories. If one looks up the word bias in the dictionary, what they will find is that it tends to be some variation of “an unfair personal opinion that influences your judgment.” Unfair personal opinions (those which are not impartial or free from preconceived opinions) do not only involve civil rights categories. The human brain works such that people form ideas and opinions about everything before they possess sufficient information and have given them enough thought. As such, biases are preferences and opinions, which are not the product of thorough research and thoughtful analysis.

There are also over 180 cognitive biases that interfere with or impair people’s thinking. However, those are cognitive biases. Eliminate the word cognitive before biases, and the word biases is not limited to those specific types of biases. As such, referring to biases, rather than specifically cognitive biases, does not mean that the biases themselves are a form of impaired thinking, even though they may well be caused by cognitive biases. However, left unchecked, biases lead to impaired thinking. Humans cannot prevent the cognitive biases themselves because of how our brains work; yet, we can keep our biases in check, to the extent possible, whether or not those biases stem from our cognitive biases.

Programs and articles on bias tend to focus on different types of cognitive biases and their impact on social justice or injustice issues. That itself creates a bias in that it causes people to significantly limit that which they think of biases and their impact, which is harmful and prevents people from engaging in introspection and developing their emotional self-awareness, the very foundation of emotional intelligence.

The central theme throughout my published work from my very first article, titled Marital Russian Roulette and published in September of 2008, has been bias. When I was sought out to submit an article on bias for the Journal of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers' first edition devoted to bias, I was informed that I was approached for just that reason. I was specifically asked to write an article on bias in family law, which involved the biases of attorneys, expert witnesses, mediators, and judges. I was not advised to limit my article to civil rights categories or cognitive biases, and I did not limit it to such things. Furthermore, I added biases held by the public at large and by lawmakers because they all play a role in the amplification of biases.

My article, "The Amplification of Bias in Family Law and Its Impact," was published in 2020 and was first cited in a dissenting opinion by the Kansas Supreme Court as the first authority on judicial bias and parenting choices. That article has been cited and utilized in a variety of ways because I worked very hard not to limit its applicability, even though it was published in a family law publication.

I was later invited to write the lead article for the bias edition of Family Advocate Magazine, a publication of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association, and was advised that I was approached because of the prior article and the fact that it was cited in that Supreme Court opinion. Once again, I was asked to write a similar type of article because of its broad applicability. That article was published in the Winter 2022 edition of Family Advocate and is titled Unchecked Biases in Family Law Are Pervasive and Harmful.

Earlier this year, I learned that "The Amplification of Bias in Family Law and Its Impact" was part of the curriculum in at least one law school class in 2022. I reached out to the professor who had assigned it as required reading in her law school class, we exchanged a few emails, and then had a long phone conversation. She told me that she assigned my article for the following reason:

As family law involves the most personal decisions any of us will ever make, people tend to have a lot of opinions.... Not only do we all have our own thoughts and opinions on most of these matters, but we also all carry our own biases on the matter.... There’s this bias that most of us are aware of with regard to things like gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., but there is also a bias in how we talk about the law and pursuing advocacy. I’m always searching for a way to talk about this—because I think it’s important for professionalism/professional responsibility—without seeming overly preachy. With that lens, I assigned your article.... I found that the article provided a good window to humanize the people involved. Divorces are messy! People aren’t just “crazy” or trying to find a way to make money in most cases. There are a lot of emotions, and attorneys (and judges) have to learn how to deal with that."

She also let me know that her students were surprised when they read it because they expected it to have been about civil rights categories. She described their reaction as follows:

We discussed the article on our first day of class. Some of the students were shocked that they read an article with 'bias' in the title and that was the content. Though, I will say the article was a great set up for class.

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She also read my subsequent article and informed me that she would likely be including that as part of her law school curriculum in the future.

For the past several years, I have been invited by the professors teaching Introduction to Negotiations at Loyola Law School to participate when they cover the following topic: Negotiator Identity and Negotiation Context: The Effects of Gender, Race, and National Culture. The first couple of times, I was part of a panel that was covering the topic of bias as it pertained specifically to civil rights categories. The professors then decided to take a different approach and asked me to lead the topic on my own, which I have now done for the past two semesters. After approaching the topic more broadly, the two professors decided that having me continue presenting the topic in such a manner “would be a good idea.” As I understand it, I expect to be teaching it again next semester.

Last week, I led a discussion on bias at a monthly meeting of CEOs and addressed the topic in a broad manner, as I tend to do. After the program, I was informed that it caught at least a few of them by surprise because they assumed a program on bias would pertain to civil rights categories.

Earlier this year, a forensic psychologist gave a presentation on bias to family law attorneys in Los Angeles County, California. As I understand it, the presentation was limited to civil rights categories, with one exception. He also discussed biases lawyers have against individuals who are self-represented.

As a result of such limited discussions of biases, I am regularly told by a great many people, even those who work within the social justice field, that they disagree with that which I consider bias. I am also questioned about my statement that “the more life experience people have, the more biases they tend to possess.” I have been asked to provide proof to support such a statement by people who tell me they suspect the statement is not true. I am also told that infinite appears to be an exaggeration and that it is highly doubtful that “all human beings possess infinite numbers of biases.”

Circling back, the longer we live and the more experiences we have, the more ideas and opinions we form on basically everything, the vast majority of which are not based upon thorough research and thoughtful analysis. As such, is it really an exaggeration to state that human beings have infinite numbers of biases? Requesting proof of that reminds me of requesting proof that human beings walk upright. Researchers do not tend to research the obvious.

It might behoove those who educate others about bias to stop biasing people about bias.