This is Philosophy Bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.

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Will your judgment about the quality of the interview that follows

be shaped by the fact that the interviewee is female.

Sadly, even if you think of yourself as a feminist, the evidence is that it might well prejudice you at an unconscious level.

So what are the philosophical implications of what's called implicit bias?

Is it one explanation for why there are so few women in philosophy?

Here's Jennifer Saul from the University of Sheffield.

Jenny Saul, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Hi it's good to be here. The topic we're going to focus on today is implicit bias. What is that? That's a difficult question. The way

I'm going to be using the term is to refer to a collection of largely unconscious associations that psychologists have shown over the last few decades,

pretty much all humans are prone to.

And these are unconscious associations that affect how we perceive, interact with, and evaluate members of social groups

in our societies.

In particular, I'm especially interested in a way that they affect our interactions with

members of groups that are stigmatized in our societies.

Which groups these are will vary from society to society.

Exactly what the associations are will vary from society to society, but it seems that pretty much all human beings

are prone to these unconscious associations which are really quite disturbing and which

they may be totally unaware of.

...