The Impact of Affinity Bias

In October 2021, I came across an Instagram post from author Luvvie Ajayi, which talked about paying black people the same as anyone else. The post then sparked my thoughts about how I behave when paying others for goods or services. How biases might influence my approach to who I spend £££ with and how much I value their expertise.

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Has your first thought about someone ever been that they're too young to be in that role or earning that amount of money? Or have you immediately assumed that because someone is smartly dressed, they are the most senior person in the room? Do you feel more comfortable buying products or services from someone who looks like you? These are examples of our biases affecting how we treat others. We can judge people more harshly based on their differences from us.

The BBC wrote an article about how biases can allow certain groups the opportunity of ‘failing up’ whereas other groups are not granted the chance to make the same mistakes. It's all down to the marvel of bias and, in this case, Affinity Bias which is the tendency to get along ‘better’ with people who are similar to us.

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Our biases trip us up. We might believe we stand against discrimination, but our ingrained biases let us down. From that ‘feeling’ you get about not wanting to hire someone with a different background or giving a person more chances to recover from mistakes because they are similar to you because you’ve been through the same journey. It can be our biases leading the decisions and, subsequently, our actions towards others. Remember that we all have biases that play a large part in how we treat others…even when we think we are being fair.

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If we all have biases (which we do), and if we don't get uncomfortable with understanding our biases (which we should), how will we ever know when our biases affect our decisions? As ever, I continue to consider my actions towards others, and I only invite you to do the same.

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