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Breaking the Bias Barrier: How Good People Can Become Even Better
In a world where most of us consider ourselves "good people," there exists a troubling disconnect between our intentions and our actions. This gap-between who we aspire to be and who we actually are-forms the foundation of Dolly Chugh's transformative work. As a social psychologist with degrees from Cornell and Harvard and a tenured position at NYU's Stern School of Business, Chugh brings both academic rigor and personal warmth to a question that haunts many well-intentioned people: Why do we sometimes act in ways that contradict our values?
The book has garnered praise from influential figures like Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, who recognize its unique contribution to the conversation about bias and inclusion. Unlike many works that focus solely on systemic solutions, Chugh offers evidence-based strategies for individuals to combat bias in their daily lives. What makes this book particularly powerful is Chugh's willingness to acknowledge her own imperfections-like when she participated in a Black Lives Matter protest while her mind occasionally wandered to Christmas shopping. This authenticity creates a safe space for readers to examine their own contradictions without paralyzing shame.
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The Psychology of "Good-ish" People
We all engage in "identity claiming"-expressing how we see ourselves and want others to perceive us. When this self-image is threatened, we become defensive and sometimes less ethical. Research shows we value self-esteem boosts even more than favorite foods or sexual activities. This creates a pattern where well-meaning "believers" in equality seek affirmation (what Chugh calls "cookies") from marginalized people during crises, ironically acting less like the good allies they mean to be.
The traditional view divides people into "good" or "bad" categories, but Chugh proposes a more nuanced understanding: we're all "good-ish" people who sometimes act inconsistently with our values. Our behavior pivots around our identity, not our ethical standards. I want to see myself as good, which I can accomplish either by actually being good or by convincing myself I'm good despite evidence to the contrary. Our minds automatically fight off threats to our self-image, making it difficult to recognize when we harm others.
This explains why Sarah Weeks, a children's book author, avoided saying her Indian colleague Gita Varadarajan's last name for fear of mispronunciation. When they later collaborated on a book about a boy whose teachers wouldn't attempt his Indian name, Gita attributed this behavior to "arrogance." Sarah was stunned-her issue wasn't caring too little but caring too much about potential embarrassment. This revelation prompted Sarah to actually learn the pronunciation. When she later called Gita using her full name, Gita cried-it was the first time anyone had tried pronouncing her name since moving to America.
Similarly, Lorri Perkins, a naturally empathetic consultant, initially defended herself when discussing systemic racism: "I'm not that white person" and "I don't even think of myself as white." Only when she learned her Black friend avoided the same bucolic roads she loved due to fear of police interactions did Lorri begin questioning what else she didn't know.
These stories illustrate how worrying less about being "good people" paradoxically makes us better people. By redefining a good person as someone trying to be better rather than someone who is always good, we create space for growth and meaningful change.
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Activating a Growth Mindset
Hollywood executive Perrin Chiles approached his first documentary about autism with a growth mindset-believing he could learn and improve rather than assuming he already knew enough. This humility allowed him to create the Emmy-winning "Autism: The Musical" that centered the experiences of children with autism and their parents.
Later, Perrin co-founded Adaptive Studios to revive abandoned Hollywood projects, including "Project Greenlight," a film competition originally created by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Despite its original ethos that "talent can come from anywhere," the show's first three seasons featured mostly white male judges selecting white male winners. This reflected Hollywood's broader "epidemic of invisibility"-only 29% of speaking characters in film are female, people of color are underrepresented, and women direct only 4% of movies.
When controversy erupted over diversity issues during filming, Perrin didn't make the common organizational mistake of treating diversity as "the minority person's problem." Instead, he recognized the problem belonged to everyone. This approach demonstrated leadership that embraces growth rather than fixed mindsets.
In fixed mindsets, we're preoccupied with not being wrong-what Chugh calls the "fixed mindset tax"-which diverts attention from actual problems. With bias issues, we often default to either/or labels (racist/not racist), trying to dodge negative labels rather than acknowledging our blind spots. Builders don't claim "I'm not racist" but rather admit "I have work to do in this area."
After the controversial season, Perrin and his team launched Project Greenlight Digital Studios with Brittany Turner, a Black team member, at the helm. They deliberately re-engineered their approach to "dig into communities that are often silent," recognizing that waiting until after submissions to address diversity was too late. Each contest became an experiment in inclusion, resulting in more diverse winners and a community that now skews female.
The Adaptive team realized they needed authentic partnerships rather than centering themselves. "It's important to center the people who are representatives of that group," Brittany explains. This led to partnerships with organizations like Section II, founded by Allie Esslinger to promote LGBTQ+ representation in film.
When confronted about potentially offensive behavior, watch for fixed mindset responses like defensively declaring "I'm not racist!" A growth mindset instead responds with "I don't really understand what I did wrong, but I would like to" and offers genuine apologies that acknowledge harm rather than saying "sorry you were offended."
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Uncovering Unconscious Bias
Rick Klau, a successful Silicon Valley executive at Google Ventures, considered himself "one of the good guys" who ensured equal opportunities for women and minorities. Like many of us, he was a believer in diversity and inclusion.
When Rick attended an unconscious bias training, he was "spooked" to discover he associated women with family and men with career, contradicting his explicit egalitarian beliefs. Like 75% of people, his implicit biases didn't match his conscious values. These unconscious associations can affect hiring decisions, whose potential we bet on, and whose ideas we value, especially under stress or time pressure.
Rick took his unconscious bias work further by recording training sessions and posting them publicly on YouTube. He encouraged others to take the Implicit Association Test, study their contacts, and analyze their calendars. Through articles and social media, Rick shared both his progress and slipups, taking a strong stand that everyone could improve.
While diversity efforts face challenges-studies show diversity can cause discomfort, rougher interactions, less trust, and lower cohesion-the economic and performance advantages are increasingly clear. Women-run organizations prove more profitable, and racially diverse teams demonstrate higher performance. Organizations valuing inclusion show greater innovation, creativity, employee retention, recruiting success, and bottom-line results.
Beyond adding different perspectives, diversity changes how everyone works: people process information more thoroughly, share unique insights more readily, and generate more complex thinking. Yet while the business case for diversity is substantial, relying exclusively on it can be problematic. For many, including Rick, the moral case for diversity ultimately proves most compelling and reliable.
To begin addressing unconscious bias, take the Implicit Association Test at Harvard's website. With a growth mindset, you might choose tests that make you anxious because you care deeply about those issues. Conduct a self-audit by assuming your IAT results are accurate, then identify where these biases might influence your behavior. While we can't easily delete unconscious biases, we can implement corrective measures, like not calling on too many men consecutively in class.
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Understanding Systemic Privilege
When white Americans are reminded of racial advantages, they tend to report having had harder childhoods-what researchers call the "hard-knock life effect." This psychological response occurs when people fear their advantages will be viewed as unearned. We more easily remember our disadvantages than our advantages, essentially rewriting our personal histories without changing the events themselves.
The hard-knock life effect reveals our tendency to distinguish between group advantage and personal advantage. We can acknowledge our group's privilege while simultaneously believing we personally faced significant hardships. We focus on our divorce (personal disadvantage) without considering how race might have made that experience even harder (group advantage).
Privilege extends beyond race to many systems that create advantages for some groups and disadvantages for others. Examples include workplace dress codes affecting Sikh men, unpredictable healthcare appointments impacting hourly workers, school events during workdays disadvantaging certain children, and office norms around displaying family photos creating challenges for LGBTQ+ employees.
Debby Irving's headwinds and tailwinds metaphor explains these systemic differences. Headwinds make life harder for some groups, requiring more effort, while tailwinds propel others forward unnoticed. This invisibility leads us to vilify those facing headwinds, confusing equality (treating everyone the same) with equity (giving people what they need considering their headwinds).
Consider the GI Bill's impact on generational wealth. Of the first 67,000 GI Bill mortgages, fewer than 100 went to non-whites. Neighborhoods were "greenlined" or "redlined," with developers explicitly prohibiting non-white residents. Computer simulations demonstrate how small advantages compound dramatically over time-even a 1% performance rating advantage creates massive disparities after multiple promotion cycles.
Studies confirm these accumulated advantages-research by Demos found individual choices cannot erase centuries of accumulated wealth differences. At current rates, it would take Black families 228 years to amass the same wealth white families have now.
This selective telling of history makes racial gaps appear to emerge naturally in a meritocracy rather than from documented headwinds. Ta-Nehisi Coates's "The Case for Reparations" provides a comprehensive overview of what African Americans have faced across three generations, with a withering conclusion: "To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slave owner is patriotism a la carte."
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Recognizing Our Blind Spots
When Kimberly Davis, a Black woman and National Hockey League executive VP, attended a networking event for female executives, she approached three different groups to introduce herself. None acknowledged her presence-she went completely unseen, likely not deliberately by all, but because she didn't fit their worldview of what an executive looks like.
Our minds systematically miss what's right in front of us. Like students who fail to notice a woman with an umbrella walking through a basketball game when focused on counting passes, we see what we expect to see. This "bounded awareness"-our tendency to overlook readily available information-isn't just about information overload. We're motivated to see certain things and not others.
The belief that America is a meritocracy-where success is equally accessible to everyone regardless of background-powerfully shapes our perception. Studies show we judge research more favorably when it confirms this belief. We also dramatically underestimate wealth inequality, perceiving a distribution closer to our ideals than reality.
When we only perceive what we expect, we create psychological echo chambers reinforced by social and media echo chambers we willfully choose. Research shows most Americans build homogeneous networks-75% of whites, 65% of blacks, and 46% of Hispanics have networks composed exclusively of their own race. The average white person's network is 91% white and only 1% black, while the average black person's network is 83% black and 8% white.
To counter confirmation bias and truly hear marginalized voices, Chugh offers four principles for respectful engagement. First, recognize when people are speaking more freely than usual-that bristling feeling signals rare access to authentic thoughts. Second, resist the urge to jump in with your perspective when feeling threatened-avoid hijacking discussions. Third, notice your judgments about how others express themselves and challenge your instinct to "tone police." Fourth, even if you disagree with a statement, assume it's partially true and imagine what that means rather than immediately generating counterarguments.
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Using Ordinary Privilege for Good
When Christopher Owens was tagged for the twenty-seventh time by white friends asking him to explain racism to others online, he'd had enough. "This is the new racism: You didn't start it, but you for damn sure aren't willing to stop it," he posted. His frustration highlighted a common pattern where marginalized individuals are repeatedly asked to educate others about their experiences, creating an additional emotional burden. Research confirms Christopher's instinct that his white friends would actually be more effective confronting racism themselves, as their privilege grants them both credibility and protection from backlash.
Ordinary privilege is the part of our identity we think least about because we don't need to-like briefly noticing being able-bodied when staying in a wheelchair-accessible hotel room. Whether it's walking ability, whiteness, straightness, economic mobility, Christianity, or English fluency, society is structured around these identities, making them invisible to those who possess them while constantly reminding others of their difference from the norm. This invisibility often manifests in everyday situations: able-bodied people rarely think about curb heights, straight couples don't consider whether it's safe to hold hands in public, and native English speakers don't worry about understanding medical instructions.
Research consistently shows that ordinary privilege grants influence in both personal and professional contexts. Studies reveal that female and nonwhite executives are rated worse by bosses when promoting diversity, while white male executives face no penalty and are often praised for the same actions. When confronting racial stereotypes, white people are judged less negatively than Black people making identical points, receiving more positive responses and facing fewer accusations of being "angry" or "biased." Even online, an experiment showed that high-status white male accounts could reduce racial slurs from harassers by 50%, while other confronters were either ignored or faced increased harassment.
Most people don't get involved in issues that don't directly affect them because they lack "psychological standing"-the feeling that it's legitimate for them to engage. Research showed women were twice as likely as men to volunteer for gender initiatives, but when messaging explicitly gave men psychological standing, participation equalized. This phenomenon extends beyond gender issues - straight allies often hesitate to speak up for LGBTQ+ rights, and able-bodied people may feel uncomfortable advocating for disability access.
Subha Barry, former diversity head at major corporations, encourages sharing diversity work among multiple people, including those with ordinary privilege. She compares effective organizations to birds flying in V formation-the lead bird cuts through headwinds, creating a jet stream for others, but crucially, the lead position rotates. This rotation prevents burnout and ensures that the burden of creating change doesn't fall solely on marginalized groups. Organizations shouldn't rely solely on those already facing headwinds to lead diversity efforts, as this approach both overburdens certain individuals and fails to leverage the influence that comes with privilege. Successful diversity initiatives often involve privileged individuals using their status to amplify marginalized voices and challenge systemic barriers.
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Choosing Willful Awareness
Kyle and Kevin Ferreira van Leer, a couple with different racial backgrounds, became catalysts for challenging deeply held assumptions about racism within Kyle's white family. Kyle's mother Jodi Picoult, despite being a bestselling author known for tackling controversial subjects like school shootings, abortion, and medical ethics through exhaustively researched narratives, had conspicuously never addressed race in her work. This blind spot extended beyond her writing into her personal understanding of racial dynamics in America.
Kevin's invitation to an antiracism workshop proved transformative for Jodi. There, she encountered firsthand accounts from people of color that fundamentally challenged her previous understanding of racism. Rather than confirming her expectations about racism as primarily involving obvious acts of discrimination, she was confronted with the subtle yet pervasive nature of systemic racism and her own unwitting participation in it. The workshop exposed how seemingly neutral systems and institutions perpetuate racial inequities, even without explicit racist intent.
As Jodi began examining her past through this new lens, previously unremarkable memories took on deeper significance. Her grandmother's casual use of racial slurs at family gatherings, which had been awkwardly ignored rather than confronted, now stood out as a clear example of normalized racism. Her college's superficial approach to diversity - focused more on statistics than genuine inclusion - revealed itself as tokenism. Perhaps most significantly, she recognized how her successful publishing career had benefited from an industry historically structured to favor white voices and perspectives.
Psychological research demonstrates that people typically resist information that challenges their moral self-image, particularly regarding issues they consider themselves enlightened about. This defensive response can manifest in various ways: some people retreat into denial, others rationalize through "color-blind" ideologies, and many cling more tightly to meritocratic beliefs that suggest success is purely earned rather than influenced by systemic advantages. However, some individuals, like Jodi, choose the path of "willful awareness," actively working to understand and redefine their relationship with whiteness.
When questioned about maintaining this difficult awareness through uncomfortable realizations, Jodi emphasized the importance of "grace" - not in religious terms, but as a compassionate approach to growth and learning. This conception of grace acknowledges that everyone begins their journey of understanding from different starting points, that mistakes and missteps are an inevitable part of the learning process, and that the willingness to engage with difficult conversations matters more than achieving perfect understanding immediately.
Jodi's novel Small Great Things reflects this journey through its portrayal of a white attorney representing a Black nurse in a racially charged case. The attorney's growing recognition of her own unconscious biases mirrors Jodi's personal evolution, presenting not a white savior narrative but rather a "white learner" story. The novel specifically challenges well-meaning white readers who might consider themselves free from racism to examine their own complicity in systemic racial inequities. Its impact has been significant, with many readers and critics drawing parallels to To Kill a Mockingbird, though with a more nuanced understanding of racism's contemporary manifestations.
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From Believer to Builder
Research confirms that confronting bias matters, even when uncomfortable. People who react defensively when called out still demonstrate less biased behavior afterward-like "planting seeds in a garden you never get to see." Just one person violating a norm can weaken its hold, making others less willing to tolerate racism. When multiple people challenge a norm, the effect strengthens.
Our mindset about others' capacity for growth determines whether we confront prejudice. Having a framework helps guide heat-of-the-moment decisions about whom to engage (and whom not to), why we're engaging (changing behavior or norms), how to engage (showing our growth mindset), where and when (immediately or later, publicly or privately), and what to say (humanize or factualize).
Susan Lucia Annunzio's 20/60/20 rule challenges the idea that change efforts must convert everyone. The rule identifies three groups: the "easy 20" who are ready for change, the "stuck 20" who resist change, and the "middle 60" who are influenced by social norms. Focus energy on the middle group rather than trying to convince the resistant 20 percent.
Consultant David Johnson engages his senior manager who believes some women are being promoted beyond their merit. Rather than directly confronting him, David adds perspectives about implicit bias and structural barriers women face. Though uncertain of his impact, David knows his manager is listening, even if stubborn. His goal isn't to win arguments but to keep the conversation going.
Bassey Ikpi, a mental health advocate, uses personal connections to educate others about marginalized groups. When confronting homophobia, she asks, "How would you feel if your daughter married a closeted gay man?" With a white police officer coaching her son, she humanized her fears by asking him to imagine her brothers-whom he knew and liked-being pulled over and shot. The officer admitted he'd never considered that her brothers would be "the people who got pulled over."
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Building a Better World Together
Rabbi Eric Solomon began his leadership at Beth Meyer Synagogue in Raleigh by reaching out to Imam Mohammed Baianonie, inviting him to his installation ceremony. This unprecedented gesture led to a decade-long relationship between the Jewish and Muslim communities. Rabbi Solomon learned key lessons about offering support: first, listen deeply to what others need rather than imposing solutions; second, acknowledge the inner conflict that arises when hearing perspectives different from your own.
One of the hardest aspects of showing support is sitting with someone else's pain when we can do nothing to fix it. Many people say nothing in difficult times, but silence is often the wrong choice. When showing support: acknowledge it's okay to be tongue-tied; keep the focus on the other person rather than your own emotions; let go of needing affirmation; don't minimize the situation; and offer specific help rather than vague statements.
Those creating "light" often undermine those creating "heat," dismissing them as "too angry" or "too radical." Civil rights leader Joseph McNeil, one of the four students who led the Woolworth's lunch counter sit-ins in 1960, had finally said "No more time for talking. It is time to do something" after experiencing countless humiliations in the Jim Crow South. We often misremember civil rights protests as spontaneous individual acts rather than organized movements, which leads to misinterpreting modern protests like Black Lives Matter.
Despite his iconic status, Joe McNeil remains humble and committed to growth. When asked about gay rights during a lecture, he admitted "This is an area where I am learning" and actively sought to educate himself. "The stuff of being a good person is hard," he reflects, acknowledging that finding the right balance between incremental and sweeping change is an individual choice.
The author concludes that while not everyone will be an activist like Joe, all can support such leaders through awareness, engagement, and amplifying their work. Looking back, McNeil's only regret was not engaging more with silent observers: "I would have given them the opportunity to be better human beings, too."
In the end, becoming the person you mean to be isn't about achieving perfection-it's about embracing the journey of growth, recognizing your blind spots, and using whatever privilege you have to build a more just and inclusive world. By redefining what it means to be "good" from a fixed state to an ongoing process, we free ourselves to make meaningful progress, one small action at a time.
