Your unconscious biases – Patrick L Schmidt

Your unconscious biases – Patrick L Schmidt

Let’s be honest, we all have biases. Some we are aware of, others not.
In Your unconscious biases: Exploring the mind through art and neuroscience, Patrick L Schmidt addresses the topic of our unconscious biases and how they impact on our relationships with other people. There’s a lot to digest in its 143 pages (apart from the last 10 pages containing notes, index and other info, every left hand page has a relevant illustrative image), but worth it.
The book is the outcome of years of work that Patrick has done with mainly German and American individuals looking to adapt to the other’s culture for reasons of study or business. While these two nationalities are his main focus, anybody trying to understand why and how they react to other people and how they can change those behaviours (if they want), this is a useful book. It’s a book teacher trainers and those teaching courses on inter-personal relationships could find useful – it’s one I would have used had it been around, and I’d known of it, back in my pre-2013 education days. I was also left with thinking a simplified version (not dumbed down though) of the book would work for younger readers and parents trying to understand each other and find common ground. I debated about suggesting it to a highly intelligent (however we define that term) 15-year-old I know, but am not sure their worldy awareness would allow them to take what they need from the ‘adult’ version.
That is not to say Your unconscious biases is a technical, jargon riddled book – it is most defintely not. Patrick has an ability to convey the technical in easy-to-understand terms and to relate concepts to things most people will know of. The book starts by explaining how we react to situations and why we do so – all linked with the brain and its operations. This might seem a rather strange way to go about improving cultural relations, and in some ways it is. However, the strength of the book as far as I’m concerned is understanding how we operate, what we can control and what is more difficult to control.
As someone who has worked cross-culturally all my life both within one country and across countries and cultures, I was left feeling reassured that while my initial reactions to a person or situation might not be what I expect from myself, it’s how I react to them and respond that is important. Understanding why those initial, sometimes jarring, thoughts appear doesn’t change them, instead it allows them to be put into context, turning the past experience (collective memory) into a trigger for change and improved inter-personal and inter-cultural relations. My journey continues… Towards the end of the book, I had a lightbulb moment – this is why Wangarĩ Maathai had the struggles she describes in The challenge for Africa.
Perhaps if a few more people read Your unconscious biases, we might have a bit more understanding of each other leading to a more peaceful world.