Online Encyclopedia
Systemic bias
A systemic bias is a bias which is endemic in a system – especially a human system – making it tend to err consistently in a certain direction. The analogous problem in non-human systems is usually called systemic error. These can be contrasted with random error, in that it is not just a matter of inaccurate results or readings, but results that are inaccurate in a particular, consistent way.
Systemic vs. random
An example of systemic error would be a thermometer that always read three degrees colder than the actual temperature, whereas one that gave random values within five degrees of the actual temperature would have random error.
Once detected, systemic effects are easier to account for than random effects: in the example just given, if you know that your thermometer always reads three degrees below the correct value, you can simply make a systemic correction by adding three degrees to all readings; there is no equally simple correction for random error.
On the other hand, the phenomenon of scattered readings resulting from random error calls more attention to itself than the mutually consistent incorrect results of a biased system.
Bias in human institutions
One might refer, for example, to the systemic bias of a particular institution in devaluing contributions by women or ethnic minorities. For example, a poetry competition that was consistently won by white men would be subject to reasonable suspicion of a systemic bias: there is no inherent reason to believe that white men would consistently be the best poets. Such a bias could be deliberate on the part of the participants or entirely unconscious.
As in the thermometer example given above, the existence and causes of systemic bias may be difficult to detect; for example, the poetry contest just mooted might be judged by a pool drawn from its own previous winners: after all, who better to judge a poetry contest than prize-winning poets? However, it might be that in addition to choosing for poetic skill, they are also inclined to choose people with whom they have values in common, either about poetry or about other matters, resulting in a continuous stream of prizewinning white male poets. In this case, the bias could arise from either conscious or unconscious defense of gender and racial interests or simply from their shared point of view; in either case, it results in a biased representation of the reality they are describing in terms of quality of poets and poetry.
Because cognitive bias is inherent in the experiences, loyalties, and relationships of people in their daily lives, it cannot be eliminated by education or training, but awareness of biases can be enhanced, allowing for the adoption of compensating correction mechanisms. For example, the theory behind affirmative action in the United States is precisely to counter systemic biases in matters of gender, race, and ethnicity, by opening up institutional participation to people with a wider range of backgrounds, and hence presumably a wider range of points of view.
External links
- Wikipedia's "wikipedia namespace" contains several pages related to systemic bias in the Wikipedia project. Among these are: