The Vicious Circle of Bias
- Georgina Brown (hershe)
- Aug 21
- 3 min read
How do we break the loop?
At BARDO we talk a lot about bias in the brain — because it’s true: most bias starts as a shortcut in the brain’s predictive machinery. Your brain is trying to save time, keep you safe, and not explode under the weight of 11 million bits of information per second (yes, that’s how much data you’re subconsciously processing, according to researchers like Timothy Wilson at UVA).
But here's the kicker.
Bias doesn’t stay in the brain.
It doesn’t curl up in your amygdala like a quiet cat and stay out of trouble.
No — it gets out.
It shapes systems.
And then those systems reshape us right back.
This is the loop that no EDI strategy should ignore
Brains create systems.
Systems retrain brains.
And unless we interrupt this cycle, bias becomes self-replicating.
Let’s get into the science — and the solution.
From Synapse to System: The Birth of a Bias
Imagine a hiring manager. Their brain — like all of ours — uses schemas, mental maps that simplify the world. These are lightning-fast pattern recognitions shaped by experience, culture, media, and upbringing. In milliseconds, their brain decides who “looks like a leader.”
It’s not conscious. It’s not evil. It’s efficient — and it’s also flawed.
So they hire a clone of themselves. Again.
That’s a brain at work.
But then — here’s where it goes systemic — their choice becomes a norm. Others follow it. Leadership starts to look the same. Language starts to narrow. Opportunities start to cluster.
And that’s how a shortcut in one person’s prefrontal cortex becomes a structural barrier baked into the business.
“Neurons that fire together wire together.”— Carla Shatz, Stanford neuroscientist
Now expand that across recruitment policies, board appointments, media representation, school and university curriculums, business systems, and economic assumptions. Voila: a biased world that looks completely normal to the brain that made it.
The Architecture of Inequity — Built by the Brain
Here’s the trap: your brain gets used to the patterns it sees.
When you work in an organisation where:
All the execs are men.
All the senior leaders went to the same school.
Neurodivergent employees have to “mask” to survive.
…then those patterns become familiar.
And familiar feels safe. Even if it’s not fair. Even if it’s wildly unrepresentative.
This is habituation — the neurological term for when the brain stops noticing a stimulus because it sees it so often.
“The brain is a prediction machine. It doesn’t just respond to the world — it anticipates it.”— Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, psychologist and neuroscientist
Which means if we keep feeding the brain homogeneity, hierarchy, and hostility to difference, it wires itself accordingly.
Systems become set. And our synapses? They just keep reinforcing the same song.
Breaking the Loop: Bias, Brains and Brave Design
So how do we not become robots of our own making?
First, we acknowledge the full cycle:
Brains built the system.
Systems reward those brains.
And any “other” brain has to adapt — or burn out.
The solution isn’t just in bias training (though yes, awareness matters).The solution is in designing systems that rewire the brain.
That’s the core of NIMM — the NeuroInclusive Maturity Model.
We don’t just ask people to "do better."We change the cues.We create repetition.We shift reward structures.We embed NeuroNudges — small, repeated, low-threat experiences that reshape what the brain sees as “normal,” “safe,” and “valuable.”
It’s inclusion as infrastructure — not aspiration.
Watch Out for the Deficit Model
One final thing. Because we’ve all seen this one coming:
“Marginalised people just need coaching to be more confident.”
“Let’s run a workshop on resilience.”
Nope.
That’s the deficit model — and it’s outdated, inaccurate, and frankly exhausting.
If we only focus on changing the individual, especially those already navigating exclusion, we ignore the system that’s doing the excluding.
Neuroscience tells us:
“You can't build new synapses in a hostile environment.”— Probably not Hippocrates, but let’s pretend.
Inclusion means we don’t just change people.
We change context.
We don’t just ask for different behaviours.
We create the safety for those behaviours to emerge.
The NIMM Way: From Individual to Infrastructure
NIMM helps organisations:
Create systems that work with the brain, not against it.
Replace bias-amplifying habits with neural rewiring tools.
Shift from awareness → agency → action → automation.
Because yes, inclusion starts in the brain.
But it has to live in the systems.
And the best part? The brain is plastic. Systems are too.
We just need the right nudges in the right places.
It’s not about perfection.
It’s about progress that sticks — from the inside out.
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