Seminar on unconscious bias and signing of the Estonian Diversity Charter

20 new signatories will join the Charter and professor for Business Psychology, Matthias Spörrle will talk about the essence and effects of unconscious bias at workplace. The event is free of charge and open to all. Working languages of the seminar are Estonian and English, simultaneous interpretation available.

Seminar Agenda

12.30-13.00 Registration, welcome coffee
13.00-13.30 Welcome speeches

13.30-14.45 Professor Matthias Spörrle: Unconscious bias – How peripheral and evaluation-irrelevant information systematically biases our decisions, why we are not aware of this, and what we can do about it.

14.45-15.00 Coffee break
15.00-16.00 Signing of the charter

Please register to participate here, for more information:

Kelly Grossthal
Estonian Diveristy Charter
kelly.grossthal@ttu.ee

More on Prof. Matthias Spörrle’s speech:

Unconscious bias – How peripheral and evaluation-irrelevant information systematically biases our decisions, why we are not aware of this, and what we can do about it.

Humans have evolved to be efficient (i.e., quick) social decision makers in terms of simple selection decisions. These simple and straightforward decision processes are not very helpful when it comes to the complex and information-laden decisions in present-day organizational settings. In order to deal with these decisional challenges we often rely on simple decision short-cuts, which are generally based on task-irrelevant and peripheral information (e.g., the biological sex of the person being evaluated or the current mood state of the evaluating person). In this workshop discussion we first address how these mental processes are working within us and how they help us to categorize our social environment. Next, we deal with the disadvantages of these processes and discuss how these mechanisms can distract us from optimized organizational decisions. Finally, we address the possibilities of the individual as well as the organization in order to reduce the negative effects of these mental short-cuts when it comes to personnel evaluation and selection decisions. We elaborate several measures which can be taken in order to help people to come to optimized organizational decisions.

About the speaker:

Prof. Matthias Spörrle is currently enrolled as Professor for Business Psychology at the University of Applied Management, as Fellow Professor at the Chair of Strategy and Organization at the TU of Munich, and as Assistant Professor at the Private University Castle Seeburg. In his research he focuses on the systematic influence of peripheral Information, such as current mood states of the evaluator or external characteristics of the person evaluated, on management and consumer decisions. Prof. Spörrle has studied psychology in Munich and did his PhD in emotion research. In his vocational trainings he focuses on human beings as biased decision makers and addresses organizational possibilities to improve decision processes.

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