The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights

We start each and every training with this image We start each and every training with this image. You see what looks like a chess board with a cilinder placed on top. There are white squares and black ones. One is marked A en one B. As everyone can clearly see square marked A is clearly the same colour as square marked B.  Explanation: There is nothing wrong with your eyes, it’s your brain. Our brain interprets everything we see, including people, without us realizing. The training is designed to give people an insight into how the brain works. It constantly makes decisions for us, without us realizing. We think we are objective individuals, able to assess people. But the truth is, we are poor judges. 2

Explanation of how this can happen: your brain knows A is surrounded by white squares and B is surrounded by black squares. The brain filters out the shadow caused by the cylinder. The context therefor determines what you consiously see: A is darker than B. When in fact, A and B are exactly the same colour. 3

Why a training on stereotype awareness? Prevention of discrimination As an NHRI/equality body you can approach discrimination in a broad sense Experience from handling cases: Most people don’t want to discriminate People lack knowledge on how the brain works Legislation alone is not sufficient As an equality body we have a lot of experience dealing with discrimination cases. We have always focussed more or less on the legal side of discrimination. Ofcours there were campagnes on awareness, but they mainly focussed on what social psychologists call explicit stereotypes. Now ofcourse this is also a part of the problem, but what people don’t realise is how much the implicit side plays a role in forming these explicit stereotypes. Also we noticed how grief-stricken not only the people who complain are, but also the people who are complained against. And as wonderful as it is that there is a legal system in place to make it possible for people to complain, wouldn’t it be much better if we were able to prevent discrimination from happening, knowing that we don’t always realise that we do it?

Content of the training Theory: how it works illustrated with many examples of research Experience: Harvard Implicit Association Test (IAT) and other exercises Appliance to daily work: what does this new knowledge mean for the recruitement procedures? The training is designed to be very interactive and is not meant to be a lecture. We go into how implicit stereotypes influence your daily life and work and confront people with their behaviour towards certain groups. The IAT is essential in our opinion to give people an insight into how their brain works and what the effects are. This is illustrated by many exercises. Eg the one with the oranges.

Future of the training Developping one especially focussing on disability Monitoring follow up Sharing of best practises

How about your implicit stereotypes? Harvard Implicit (IAT) – globally used Associate charactaristics with groups Time factor indicator for implicite, hidden stereotyping https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ Wie kent ‘m? @ Demonstraties en/of zelf maken Impliciete Associatie Test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/netherlands/

Everybody needs to understand that taking this training doesn’t mean you are suddenly no longer not going to discriminate. If anything, it might even make it worse. The fact that you know you unconsiously discriminate is not enough. It is just the first step in understanding why discrimination happens. You need to take active steps to really prevent discrimination from happening, like look into the possibilities of making job applications completely anonymous, so the information doesn’t influence your judgement. Another thing to warn about is that efforts to eliminate effects of implicit bias can never come down to taking one action. It can’t be only anonymous applications. Especially if that measure leads to inviting different applicants than before, you know something happens in the brain and you will need to look at the job interview aswell in order to ensure stereotypes you’ve carefully eliminated in the first part of of the recruitement don’t have an effect later on in the interview.

Any questions? Thank you for your attention! If you have any questions at a later stage, please contact us at: info@mensenrechten.nl