What is Affinity Bias?
I was not so long ago at a committee meeting and was having lunch with a group of colleagues. The conversation was about how do we make decisions about the choice of fellows for our programs when they are all so highly qualified? Having a great fellow is a delight, having an average fellow is fine but having someone who really is not a good fit, can be miserable. So it’s really important to make the best possible decision!
Most candidates are excellent on paper and most of them are also really good on camera. So how do you make the decision? One of the people at the table said “If everything checks out, I pick the person that I would like to have beer with”… I had a visceral reaction to this statement because in my personal experience, I was never the person that someone would want to “have a beer with”, and yet, here I am told that that’s one of the criteria for a fellowship program! It doesn’t seem fair or the right criteria to have to measure up to. But… when I personally worked with fellows, I sure enjoyed working with the ones that “I would hang out with”, it was a better collaboration, smoother communication, more engagement… etc. So what’s going on with this??
I’ve summarized my thoughts on this in my recently published article on how to navigate through Affinity Bias in order to create amazing teams in the Management in Healthcare Journal. I have collaborated on this article with my friend and colleague, Dr. Mary Rensel whom I met while I was working at the Cleveland Clinic. We both have realized the insidious and universal ways in which affinity bias operates. In essence, human connections are based on trust. Trust is an assumption about someone’s character and intentions and when it’s present, we are willing to cooperate, share, be more open and we feel safe. Our brain has developed ways to tell who to trust and who not to. The most instinctual and powerful way that we develop trust is based on affinity bias. That’s the bias secondary to how much in common with have with someone. People who are similar to us, are simply more trustworthy! Even if the similarity is based on superficial characteristics that are in no way indicators of our behavior, we are willing to trust them and the positive loop of trust -> sharing -> more trust -> cooperation… starts.
Affinity bias can be very detrimental when unhinged in social relationships (whether that means that you pick someone or not pick someone for your team). My fellowship spot shouldn’t be based on my similarity to the interviewees, but based on qualities that make me a good team-player, a responsible professional, etc. It is very painful being a part of a group in which you don’t feel that you belong, because you don’t go out to have beer together after hours. If we intentionally worked with the awareness of our affinity bias and how it’s affecting our decisions about people, we would create fantastic teams with people that we might not initially ‘feel’ that we would want to have beer with.. but who knows, after a while, we might realize that this collaboration is even better than beer.