Kunst am Bau Vasarely Keramikwand

Confronting Unconscious Bias

The Ruhr-Universität addresses the diversity of all its status groups, as well as the opportunities and challenges it brings, in a self-critical and constructive manner.

The Unconscious Bias Project opens up a complementary perspective on diversity and asks how prejudices and assumptions about people and groups come about, how we can reflect on them, and what we can do to mitigate their effects.

Lecture Series

Everyday bias

Unconscious biases are part of all human perception and judgment processes. They allow us to resort to "cognitive shortcuts" in everyday life and thus simplify numerous situations in which we need to process social information quickly. This helps our ability to act, but also makes our judgment prone to error.

Many different biases have been described, some of which can lead to the systematic disadvantage of individuals and groups. These include, for example, the well-known affinity bias, which leads members of selection committees to prefer applicants according to unconsciously perceived similarities. Unconscious bias can thus weaken the principle of merit-based selection.

Inform, discuss, and learn

Dealing with unconscious bias means critically questioning processes of perception and judgment and making them less prone to error. To this end, the Ruhr-Universität creates discussion spaces and training opportunities and provides information materials as well as suggestions for exchange.

In this way we want to

create awareness and sensitivity for the effects of prejudice and misjudgement.
promote open, critical and trusting discourse at the RUB.
expand options for action for all stakeholders and status groups.

Resources and offers

On this page you will gradually find more and more learning resources on the topic of Unconscious Bias – research-based and adapted to the working context of higher education.

In particular, the project will produce:

two short videos for a first approach to the concept of (Unconscious) Bias.
an e-learning tool to acquire in-depth knowledge.
training formats for researchers, research managers, and leadership staff.
a lecture series with interdisciplinary perspectives on unconscious bias, which is open to all members of the RUB as well as external interested parties.

Lecture Series

Resources will initially be developed in German and gradually translated into English.

Why the Unconscious Bias Approach?

The concept goes beyond approaching diversity and discrimination primarily with a view to disadvantage. This can also lead to perceiving minorities as deficient or in competition for resources. Instead, the entire university community - including individuals and groups with power and privilege - is called upon to develop bias literacy: a (self-)critical, constructive approach to prejudice and stereotypes.