Implicit Bias

We all have implicit cognitive bias. Our experiences, environment, and observations produce symbols, patterns, and stereotypes that shape our opinions and actions. Many of us have an implicit bias against the elderly, against obese people, people of particular ethnic or racial groups, and more. One of the principal foci of this book is that there is widespread implicit bias in Global Philanthropy, whereby we subconsciously assign certain roles to individuals, researchers, philanthropists, technology innovators, and others from the Global North and different roles to individuals, particularly of color, from the Global South.

To test your implicit biases, please visit http://implicit.harvard.edu and take some of their tests and simulations. We strongly recommend the following podcast on the implicit bias from Hidden Brain: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/20/880379282/the-mind-of-the-village-understanding-our-implicit-biase

The following heuristic device illustrates our principal thesis on the ubiquity of implicit bias in Global Philanthropy.