"Instead of waiting for the other person to discover the value in themselves, it is better to take the initiative to look inside and look for matching points."
Good text 3930 words | 6 min read
Written by Timothy Maurice Webster, behavioral psychology writer and podcaster
Diversity and inclusion require a hacker mindset. At the level of personal leadership, a better understanding of how the brain works can help you build more diverse and inclusive relationships.
While business and political leaders are working to design more egalitarian workplaces and social cultures, some insights in behavioral science will help you break through the barriers to exclusion you currently face and ensure you have a worldview that is as inclusive as possible.
1 Refresh your cognition
To be inclusive, social media is a great entry point. All social media platform algorithms are designed to maintain user stickiness to the platform, rather than encouraging diversity and inclusion.
Social psychologist Kenneth Gergen sounded the alarm back in 1991, arguing that technology could limit the ability of the human brain to think independently.
In The Saturated Self, he depicts an Orwellian world in which large tech companies compress us to the level of "multiphrenia," that is, leaving only the fragmented self at the mercy of technology, to the point where individual abilities are lost.
"I am united, therefore I am", his sentence was changed from Descartes' famous saying "I think, therefore I am". However, Gegen did not expect that he would accurately predict what our world would look like 30 years from now.
When it comes to social media, you can start with your Netflix account.
Netflix's mission statement is: "We are committed to providing best-in-class service to our customers, providing valuable partnerships to our suppliers, providing investors with the prospect of sustained profitable growth, and providing employees with the lure of great success." ”
But neither in this manifesto nor on their websites can find the phrase: "We want to encourage you to watch content that thinks beyond cultural and ethnic nature." ”
In fact, the main thrust of Netflix's mission, like all other platforms, is to assure investors that they will continue to grow profitably. It requires users to spend as much time as possible browsing the content they offer, rather than the content of their competitors. Algorithms can contribute to a company's mission at this point.
When I logged into my Netflix account on Friday night and started browsing streaming, the system was designed to make it easy for me to use, and I was able to find content that met my emotional needs almost effortlessly.
If I want to spice up comedy, I can just click on Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. At this point, Netflix started showing me more similar comedians — which basically meant that I would see recommendations from black comedians in the United States.
Before I knew it, I found myself in a closed group of comedians of the same kind. But what if I wanted to watch white comedians like Jerry Seinfeld or Bill Burr perform?
It is in this way that technology makes our worldview narrow. Once I have an emotional attachment to the platform, the system expects me to keep clicking on its recommended content and abandoning higher-level pursuits, such as showing me other comedians from different cultures, to broaden my horizons.
Social media algorithms are designed to trigger a sense of relaxation in familiar mode. They do everything they can to prevent us from spending precious mental energy on critical thinking.
However, because I realized that there was a bias in the system, I went into hacking mode. I'll take the initiative to browse through a list of white, Hispanic, and Asian comedians, click Play, and drag the Watch button until the video finishes. This takes less than a few minutes, but it is equivalent to overturning the narrow goal of the algorithm.
The platform began to show me a variety of choices that I wouldn't have thought of—the algorithms that led to a whole new world of patterns were opened up, and more diverse choices were presented to me.
In the field of professional social networking, we can apply similar hacking thinking to LinkedIn.
I found that when I attended certain events and added a large number of white or black people as new contacts, the content that the system showed me also changed. So I started reaching out to people from different backgrounds to make sure the system realized that I wanted to continue to receive diverse content. It was in this way that I "hacked" their system and balanced what was displayed.
Let's examine how many of the users who follow ourselves and who follow LinkedIn platform have background differences from ourselves, so that we may be able to find clues that the system suppresses our desire for inclusion.
As we spend more and more time on these platforms, we lose not only our personal perception, but also the deep underlying values that come with multiple perspectives.
2 Inner and outer groups
The main attraction of predictable calculations and patterns — what I call "homogeneous patterns" — is that our brains always expect pattern matching. The brain works efficiently according to an algorithmic design, following a specific set of rules and calculations to evaluate, understand, and optimize patterns.
Its goal is to use as little energy as possible to achieve this goal — what behavioral psychologists call cognitive load.
To make sure we can get through each challenging day safely, our brains store patterns: 2 plus 2 equals how much, what a toothbrush is for, what to do when seeing a stop sign, and so on. With these patterns, the brain can cope with ordinary daily tasks with relative ease.
At a basic level, doing so would weaken our viability. But our brains work this way so that we have a better chance of competing in the wild. When our ancestors roamed the savannahs, facing risks such as being preyed upon by carnivores, it was critical to be able to discern who was behind us, which animals were safe, and which sounds meant we could continue to play fearlessly.
To maximize the probability of survival, we divide people into in-group and out-group. It was a concept pioneered by Polish social psychologist Henri Tajfel and his colleagues in the course of studying social identity theory.
Teffer found that people tend to approach and connect with groups with similar characteristics to themselves (whether they speak the same language or follow the same religion). The main reason people form groups within them is to create a network of trust that withstands as little resistance or energy output as possible.
The inner group not only improves the efficiency of communication, but also unconsciously enhances people's sense of security and belonging. If someone wears the same hat as us, or wears a necklace with familiar religious symbols, our brain produces calming and pleasurable chemicals that form some sort of emotional bond.
When we see clothing that contradicts the values and beliefs of the inner group, our brains release stress chemicals that warn us of the presence of some kind of threat and classify the wearer as an outer group.
Most of these chemical reactions are subconscious, so they don't become the focus of our attention: we rarely ask ourselves why we are willing to approach or reject someone or a group.
While this unconscious formation of tribal groups is largely harmless and very natural, negative stereotypes are reinforced once group classification is institutionalized through policy and practice.
Members of the outer group often fall into a kind of thinking trap, that is, the belief that 100% of the members of the inner group will intentionally alienate people outside the circle. Of course, it is incumbent upon us to resolutely resist unjust mass behaviour, such as racism or any other form of prejudice and injustice.
But, in my personal experience—consulting with leaders and being in an out-of-group for most of their careers—most members of the inner group are typically very open to building close ties with dissidents. The question is how to make that connection.
3 Pattern recognition practices
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, I was invited by an insurance company to do a roadshow to encourage clients to invest some of their investments in their personal estate plans. The roadshow was held in the beautiful South Africa.
In the face of almost all the groups we come into contact with, as an African-American man, I can be classified as a member of the outside group to some extent. As a foreigner, I can't share the multilingualism and cultures we've come into contact with. When confronted with a predominantly black audience, my American label became a point of difference again.
In Durban, only 3 out of 200 guests were not Indians. In Pretoria, south Africa's administrative capital, I was speaking in front of an audience of about 275 white women. When the host introduced me, there were very few applauders. When I stood on the podium, I smiled and began to think about how to achieve inclusivity.
My job is to show people that even though I'm part of an outside group, we have more in common than they can imagine. I use the first few minutes of the lecture to build a connection and association pattern.
Learning about the importance of a white Farming Community in South Africa, I began to share my personal experience of growing up on a farm and the values that farm life taught me. After highlighting other patterns that connect us to each other, I felt the tension in the room dissipate. In the end, the event was a great success.
By understanding the power of associative patterns and how to trigger the release of associative chemicals in the brain, it is possible to build social connections across the apparent divide between different experiences or backgrounds. This does not mean "flattering" to inner groups or high-ranking people, but to know how to use one's own values and experiences to trigger pattern recognition and bonding.
The following two principles of behavioral science are particularly useful for achieving inclusion.
Values binding
The concept of binding was popularized and popularized by BJ Fogg, a social scientist and founder of Standford's Persuasive Technology Lab.
Fogg's concept of binding means that we can match the small behavior habits we like with something we don't like or don't want to change.
To give a simple example: I hate push-ups and love running. So I told myself that I could only run after I had done push-ups. In this way, I accepted the push-up activity in a completely different way. We can apply the same principle when it comes to binding values to groups we don't know well with or don't get along with.
For example, when you're dealing with a member of a mainstream group and you're not doing a good job, you can assess their values and then tie the timing of contact and connection to lunch, golf, or other activities you enjoy.
Binding behavior builds a pattern that you must follow in order to quantify the outcome of the engagement and ultimately increase the likelihood of a close connection.
Emotional bank account deposits
Maya Angelou once said, "People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will not forget how you made them feel." "By comparing relationships to some kind of emotional bank account, we can think about how to build credit. Sending handwritten thank-you notes instead of sending emails is the equivalent of "saving money" on an emotional account.
These details can greatly improve your situation in the inner/outer groups. When you're trying to connect with other groups, intentionally saving emotionally is one of the most effective ways to show yourself that you understand the public opinion of that group. This strategy can also dispel the anxiety that arises when accepting outsiders into intimate groups.
Understanding how the human brain recognizes patterns, and how the dynamics of groups inside and outside develop and change, provides us with the basis for rethinking the way we interact with each other. Instead of waiting for the other person to discover the value in themselves, it is better to look at your own inner and look for data points that can match others. Be inclusive and get started now!
The original text of "Beware! We're getting more and more closed."
Published in the August/September 2021 issue of Business Review
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