Unconscious bias in friendships

Does unconditional loyalty to our friends help them in the long term?

I work for a large tech company that is big on diversity and is currently focusing on how to reduce unconscious bias in the workplace. By definition, unconscious bias refers to “a bias that we are unaware of and which happens outside of our control.”[1] Generally, unconscious bias is talked about in regards to a professional environment, in leadership or where a social or identity group is concerned.

But recently, I’ve been reflecting on the amount of bias that exists in a day-to-day context, and have come to the conclusion that, ultimately, every time we have an opinion on something it will generally be biased.

We cannot possibly ever have all of the information on a subject or situation we are asked to form an opinion on. Therefore our views are going to be based on the information we have at hand, our own level of involvement in the situation, whether our personal well-being will be affected, and the perspectives from other people that we have been privy to.

To help explain what I mean by unconscious bias in friendships, I will refer to a situation I’ve found myself in lately with a close friend, whereby a series of events has ultimately led to a ‘break-up’ of our friendship. This was devastating, and something I continue to find very hard to accept.

Throughout this time I have confided in several close friends who I am most comfortable talking openly with, and who I know won’t care when I over-analyse the same scenario twenty thousand times. However, interestingly, most of them have never actually met this person I had the falling out with, simply because they don’t live in the same city as me.

While this is completely by chance, what it means is that right away these friends are going to form a relatively biased view of the situation based on my perspective of events, and therefore their advice is not necessarily going to be the most helpful to me. These friends have known me for a very long time. They claim to know the “real me,” and they don’t see how I could have done anything so bad.

But the reality is that none of them were present for any of the interactions between me and my former friend. None of them saw me at my worst, none of the hostile or angry comments I made were directed at them. So, essentially, they cannot relate to this person’s position at all.

I’m not saying that I let them convince me I had done nothing wrong — not at all. In fact, most of them openly agreed that I had made some pretty terrible decisions along the way. But they still didn’t quite understand the other perspective because naturally, as my friend, they were biased to see things from my point of view.

So without even realising it, I let my friends’ biased views shape the way in which I, too, saw the situation. I justified my own behaviour by pointing out all the ways that I had been hurt, despite making many mistakes along the way.

Then, one day, as I recapped on past events with one of our mutual friends, I suddenly found myself hearing the ‘other’ side of the story. This particular friend is one of the most loyal you could come across, but she’s also completely honest and doesn’t just tell people what they want to hear. She was also in a unique position, because she knows both of us extremely well and had enough information to form the most unbiased opinion of anyone I’d spoken to.

I believe as humans we are programmed to see ourselves as the victim in situations where we are left feeling vulnerable, open to judgement from others, or where our character is being questioned. At the very least, we are exceptionally great at justifying any negative behaviour and twisting it to make ourselves look and feel better.

Most people who have a conscience can identify when they have said or done something that is hurtful to someone else, so we deal with this regret by turning to our loved ones and support networks to back up our reasoning and confirm that no, we are not actually terrible people. We have all become so good at it that we don’t even realise we are doing it most of the time.

When we have our loved ones in our ears saying, “You haven’t done anything that bad, don’t be so hard on yourself,” we latch onto this advice because it’s much easier to listen to people who reinforce our behaviour than those who question it.

Being honest with our friends and helping them to see how they could’ve approached a situation more positively is the best way to help, because it forces them to be accountable and potentially learn from their mistakes. You can still be supportive and understanding, but it’s okay to sometimes disagree with how your friend has behaved and offer some constructive advice.

One of the biggest mistakes I made was only talking to people who didn’t really understand the entirety of the situation, and because I had never done anything hurtful towards them personally, they struggled to see where I had gone wrong.

I want to be clear, I’m not trying to say you shouldn’t speak to your friends if they don’t have all of the facts — this isn’t always possible and as humans sometimes we do need to seek comfort and reassurance from our loved ones, even if we are in the wrong. My friends all served different purposes, and I don’t regret speaking to any of them because they are all wonderful and kept me laughing constantly throughout a pretty rough few months. They pulled me up when I was down and they reminded me that I’m not actually a terrible person; I just made a couple of poor choices.

After this particular eye-opening conversation, most of the anger that had built up over several months began to fade. I no longer wanted to place blame or make accusations, and the only emotion I felt was sadness over losing a great friend. It’s because I was able to speak honestly with someone who had the right amount of information and knowledge of the situation to form a view that would only help, not fuel, my emotions. As hard as it was at the time, I honestly think it is the conversation that helped me the most throughout this whole ordeal.

In order to help ourselves develop a well informed perspective of any given situation or issue, we need to consciously try and form an unbiased opinion based on facts, intent and outcome.

Where friendships are concerned, ask yourself if you are likely to be defending someone only because you know their story, the explanations behind their behaviour, and are sympathetic to how the situation has affected them. Try and work out if you have as much information as you need, or if you are only looking at something from one perspective. Try and understand the intent behind someone’s actions, rather than only focusing on the consequences. Consider how much an outcome will affect you personally, because if you have something to lose then it’s likely you’re going to have a different perspective to someone who doesn’t.

At the end of the day, we all have the right to feel sad, hurt and angry. We are also allowed to question the behaviour of others and draw our own conclusions based on how we have been impacted.

But from now on, I will try to take a step back when in a highly sensitive situation, and question whether or not I do have all the facts. Because I now know that someone who is in the same situation as I am will likely have a very different perspective on what has occurred, simply because of this unconscious bias we all continue to expose ourselves to without even realising it. I believe that if we all attempt to look at emotional or difficult situations in an open-minded way without the biases that surround us clouding our judgement, we will inevitably become more compassionate people and better friends to those around us.