Implicit stereotype

I'm Richie Allen and you've been listening to the Office London version.

Where do they find callers like David, the gay brown man, who tells us that it's easier for white people to have prejudices that are beneath the surface of their brains than it is for brown people? Because brown people don't have unconscious bias.

If unconscious bias exists, I ain't saying it doesn't.

I'm not convinced of it as a concept.

Familiarity.

And my mate Gina, and she said, familiarity breeds content.

And I began to extrapolate that idea as an idea out to other areas.

And they tell us all the time that we are, you know, we are afflicted with unconscious bias, every one of us.

It makes sense, but they just default to their pattern recognition.

It's an interesting way to think about it because when you don't have objective metric-based data to go off of, you go to whatever your default is.

And whether it's intentional or unconscious biases, it is interesting how much that really plays into these kinds of conversations and hiring conversations, promotion conversations, whether we intend to have it happen or not.

There's an aspect of avoiding discomfort too.

So you go with something that's familiar.

I think funds can choose whichever way they go, but there's just massive opportunity there, huge opportunity to invest in women-led businesses.

Yeah, and it's just that uncomfortable conversation, isn't it? Because people don't like to think that they have an unconscious bias about something, but it's just, you know, it's been ingrained because society has told us that over decades and decades and decades.

And, you know, people do tend to immediately get defensive when they say, no, well, you know...

But here we are.

Here we have the research.

Here we have the data proving that it's actually happening.

We are all driven by unconscious bias.

That's why it's unconscious.

I genuinely don't think there's like some cabal of white men sitting around.

Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily an active it's the unconscious bias that people have because of and the resistance to change and all the things that we're wired for psychologically and the shortcuts our brains use um naturally that allow these these issues to persist and i think it's important to have discussions and and more education for people i'm not in this particular issue on itself but just understanding how human brains work and how people make decisions and what their biases have been more mindful of those because until you're people are aware of anything spot when they're their biases are informing their actions and that it's almost impossible to separate why people are doing things if it's for a biased reason that's unconscious or if it is about like a prejudiced one.

But first that question of understanding where biases come from and how we make decisions is something that not enough people understand in general.

Right.

So I think that she has this innate and sort of really unique ability to just cut through the noise.

And it's really needed on this topic because we are working against a lot of unconscious bias that we all hold towards particular women or women who speak out and um you know we all have these ideas of what you know a perfect victim is supposed to look like and I find that Jen um through her conviction um and she's so articulate and she's so passionate when she speaks you just go oh of course that's how it is and of course why you know she's so clear and just comes from this place of just You know, she has this deep sense of justice and she's always been someone who advocates for people against sort of the structures of power.

And that's, you know, how she's approached this issue as well.

Yeah, I was deeply inspired by Jennifer as a woman and as a lawyer and then how articulate she is in the film, naturally so.

But she was a great vessel to understand.

I want to pull out the point that you mentioned around unconscious bias, which certainly bubbles up to the surface when you watch this film.

And I'm curious for you, Selina, how important do you think it is for us to sit in the uncomfortable while watching your film, you know, in trying to connect with the reality that one in three piece that you mentioned about gender violence against women in the world.

I think that I can really empathize with people who might come to this film unsure of how they feel about some of these cases.

There may be levels of mistrust that certain groups have of the health care system.

And then on the opposite side of that would be implicit bias.

You know, are there, you know, specific aspects of the practitioners, clinicians taking care of these patients who, you know, have not really examined what implicit biases they have? And that's really self-reflection, right? It's a consistent, it's a continuum.

It's not just one time, let me take this course.

Right.

So I have clinicians that listen to my podcast and I'll show patients.

So if someone who's a clinician listening, because I've done these talks before and then someone will come up to me at the end and be like, I know, but that's not what I intend.

I'm like, that's implicit bias.

in film started with a woman.

We're all swimming in cultural unconscious bias.

It's not in translation anymore.

Well, you could direct.

Except, well, what another woman discovered was that people should audition barefoot.

'Cause they can hear the shoes.

We're all swimming in cultural unconscious bias.

W- even if we have had it applied to us-

And then there's just anarchy and panic, but the big, the big players just slide in and slide out.

It's insane, isn't it? I think they call it inco- unconscious bias, what you were talking about.

Bias, unconscious bias.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's it.

Unconscious bias.

And I think it's down to your kind of almost your upbringing, your, where, your, your social upbringing, where, where, what area you're from, you know, whether you're middle class, working class, and stuff like that.

Um, and I find that, I, I find that mind-boggling that in 2026 that's, that still goes off and people judge people by the color of the skin.