Reflecting on the Word Association Activity

In the previous Word Association activity, consider whether you:

• surprised yourself with unconscious bias (i.e. you had overly positive or negative stereotypes about the various ‘groups’);
• examined conscious bias in yourself or others (i.e. “society thinks ‘this’ or ‘that’ about these ‘groups’ and I agree/disagree”); or
• didn’t have much of a reaction at all.

Regardless of your reactions to the words presented, it is important to begin to think about the way we quickly judge others and how fast our mind works when it comes to bias.

If you were conscious of any bias, then how quickly did it take you to become aware of your bias?

Questions like this are important to ask yourself- particularly for people that interact with others in any capacity in the workplace, whether that be work colleagues, contractors, customers, business partners or other stakeholders.