This is the 10% Happier Podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Ola, my fellow suffering beings, we get lectured a lot about how our unconscious bias contributes

to unfairness and inequality.

And that's true.

Bias is a real problem in education, healthcare, and in the workplace.

But our biases are also a problem for us.

They cause us not to see the world clearly, which can lead us to make suboptimal decisions

and can also create all sorts of problems in our work and personal relationships, which

can make us pretty deeply unhappy.

In other words, there is a self-interested case for taking a hard look at your biases.

I want to acknowledge up front here that there are some of you who do not like this subject.

I get notes pretty much every time we tackle bias on the show about how I'm too woke or whatever.

And I get it.

Maybe this subject makes us feel defensive, like we're being accused of being a bad person,

or maybe we've sat through one to many ham-handed, mandatory corporate diversity training sessions,

or maybe we're just tired of this subject.

So today, we're going to take a very different approach.

We're going to talk about why we evolved to have biases, what the science says about

how we can shave them down, and, and this is key, why doing so can make us happier.

Jessica Nordell is an award-winning author, science writer and speaker.

Her book, The End of Bias of Beginning, The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious

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