Stereotype replacement helps to combat racial and gender bias.
Practice 'facing' your biases with EQ Daily for Chrome.
Many of our daily decisions are driven by unconscious stereotypes, such as the gender or ethnic background that comes to mind when we picture a "Scientist" or a "Leader". Trying to fight these stereotypes directly, by endeavouring to be "more objective" is a beautiful goal - but science has shown that it doesn't work. Additionally, by saying we do not see difference, we perpetuate an idea of false consciousness that leads to a permanent loop of underlying bias. Instead, EQ recognizes that we all need to actively work to replace these stereotypes.
EQ Daily Heroes is one of the many tools EQ Labs has developed which work to foster an inclusive workplace through active recognition that subtly puts you 'face-to-face' with your biases. We humans subscribe to a variety of inherent and implicit stereotypes which threaten workplace diversity. These subconscious stereotypes also undermine the potential performances of people who look, think, act and speak differently than the subjugated norm (man as the breadwinner, woman as bread/home-maker, etc.). The threat of these stereotypes is harmful to underrepresented minorities in the workplace, to managers and coworkers, and to YOU.
EQ Daily allows you to learn to mitigate the effects of the biases and helps all levels within the workforce reflect on such. The diverse people highlighted throughout the daily hero index allows you to see a wide variety of people in diverse roles. The threats of stereotypes often hinder people's potential and subscribe normativity to situations. By prompting you to see a diverse legion of role models, we hope EQ’s Daily Heroes inspire habitual mitigation of your biases and further offers you opportunities to challenge normative descriptions of success.
Driven by science and data, EQ Labs attempts to combat workplace discrimination through tech applications that can be embedded within your daily tasks, like opening your web browser. EQ Daily is an easy-to-download browser extension that works independently and in correlation with our other EQ tools to allow you to practice diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) habits by simply opening your chrome application.Our extension replaces your home browser screen with an image of a daily hero with some brief background information accompanying such. Image replacement has a science behind it, and allows you to see how overtime your worldview can be shaped by bias, and re-shaped by exposure to diversity.
Through installing EQ Lab’s Daily extension you take the first step to mitigate your biases of race, ethnicity, gender and various other secondary forms of stigma. Curated by multiple EQ team members, we try to enforce that what defines a hero is as diverse as the heroes themselves!
What EQ Daily does:
- Displays a series of “Daily Heroes” (individuals in job roles which challenge stereotypes, on new tabs and within new browser windows)
- Allows you to see different role models in various fields
- Imagery followed by a brief description to highlight the journey these individuals have gone on and their mission
- Links to more information on the hero and their work to allow you to explore on your own
- Helps you to notice your biases,
- Expand your ideas of success, and
- Recognize potential
Why this tool?
Facial expressions, feature remembrance and perception of others make up integral parts of our world-views. As human beings, we are extremely social and communicative beings, construction of facial recognition habits is significant in our everyday lives. Over time humans developed sophisticated mental processing mechanisms to analyze others by their facial configurations and expressions; rationally, humans developed these associations and patterns to make sense of the world.
Subconsciously, over time our brains built up connections between faces and the types of people we associated with certain features, skin tones, textures etc. Similarly, our brains habitually connect social groups and particular sets of perceived immutable and inherent qualities, producing and reproducing biases over time. This further generates numerous issues in the workplace, influencing the decision making process, and negatively impacts communication strategies.
To take the initial step to become an inclusive, diverse and equitable working culture, we have to address this learning process and unlearn our biases. We have searched for and analyzed the best studies to come with an efficient strategy to challenge facial-recognition biases. The result of this research? EQ Daily.
