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  • Sway

  • Unravelling Unconscious Bias
  • By: Pragya Agarwal
  • Narrated by: Aysha Kala
  • Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (82 ratings)
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Sway

By: Pragya Agarwal
Narrated by: Aysha Kala
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Summary

Bloomsbury presents Sway by Pragya Agarwal, read by Aysha Kala.

Included in Stylist Magazine's Guide to 2020's Best Non-Fiction Books.

One of The Bookseller's Editor's Choice picks for April 2020.

Have you ever been told to smile more, been teased about your accent or had your name pronounced incorrectly? If so, you’ve probably already faced bias in your everyday life.

We like to believe that we are all fair-minded and egalitarian, but we all carry biases that we might not even be aware of. We might believe that we live in a post-racial society, but racial tension and inequality is pernicious and pervasive. We might believe that gender inequality is a thing of the past, but it is still ubiquitous.

Unconscious bias has become a frequently used term in our vocabulary, but there are still so many myths around it. For the first time, behavioural scientist, activist and writer Dr Pragya Agarwal unravels the way our implicit or ‘unintentional’ biases affect the way we communicate and perceive the world and how they affect our decision-making, even in life-and-death situations. She takes a unique inter-disciplinary approach combining case studies, personal experience, interviews and real world stories underpinned by scientific theories and research. She covers a wide range of implicit biases in depth, including age-ism, appearance, accents, sexism and aversive racism. Throughout, Pragya answers questions such as: do our roots for prejudice lie in our evolutionary past? What happens in our brains when our biases are activated? How has bias affected technology? If we don’t know about it, are we really responsible for it?

At a time when partisan political ideologies are taking centre stage and we struggle to make sense of who we are and who we want to be, it is crucial that we understand why we act the way we do. This audiobook will enable you to reflect and consider the forces that shape us all, opening your eyes to your own biases in a scientific and non-judgmental way.

©2020 Pragya Agarwal (P)2020 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic reviews

"An important look at one of the issues facing Western society today. This book exposes the insidiousness of unconscious bias and offers us a way to change the way we think that is practical, useful, readable and essential for the times we are living in. You need to read this book and think about the way you live and how you view others." (Nikesh Shukla, author and editor of The Good Immigrant, screenwriter and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature)

"If you think you don't need to read this book, you really need to read this book." (Jane Garvey, presenter, BBC Radio 4)

"An exhaustive, brilliantly researched survey of bias and how it seeps so easily into our everyday thoughts and actions. An eye-opening book that I hope will be widely read." (Angela Saini, science journalist and author of Superior and Inferior)

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I had hoped for more

When the books discusses unconscious bias it is interesting. When it strays into social justice territory it quickly gets tedious. Also tedious are the author's personal anecdotes about encountering racism in university departments, as if all departments are like this. It also had me wondering where she studied - and when. I could hardly believe the remarks that people are alleged to have said to her. Perhaps they did, but it is not indicative of higher education in general. Instances of cherry-picking the data also stood out. For example, a claim is made that a stereotype of Chinese males perpetuated in movies is that they are effeminate. Offered as evidence are "Fu Manchu" and "Charlie Chan", characters from movies made some 80 years ago, while more recent examples of Chinese males portrayed in cinema - as hyper-masculine in many instances - such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat, are completely ignored. Surely an example of confirmation bias (ironically, confirmation bias is mentioned in the book). If you read, or listen to, this you'll also become aware of the endless hedging, e.g. can, could, might etc, in the paragraphs. Usually a good thing, in that conclusions are not being given with 100% certainty. Here some of it feels like a desperate stretch, like someone rolling out dough until eventually it's so thin the holes start to show. This seems to be a thing with academics, reaching for possibilities no matter how remote they might be. On the whole, I remain interested in the subject matter, although I'm hoping I will find it less seemingly agenda-driven and better handled elsewhere.

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25 people found this helpful

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Interesting

This wasn't actually what I was after, but after I'd started, I got hooked and saw it through until the end. Sway is very academic and maybe more suited to someone coming to this from a research angle, rather than a casual reader. Covers our biases of race, sex, age and even accents. Very interesting section on how social media and A.I are amplifying the existing biases.
(Just in case anyone from the publishers reads this the epilogue seems to be repeated twice)

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6 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars

Bored

wanted to learn about bias but this book is just too much, too complicated and dull

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6 people found this helpful

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Mostly good. Let down by feminist ideology.

Struggled to finish. It is quite astonishing how the social sciences continue to assert that there are no innate gender differences. She mentions a quite extensive list of psychological, scientific and medical disciplines that have shown empirically that there are many differences between males and females, she then counters these claims by calling them sexist.

It is essentially feminist activism and ideology over empirical evidence.

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5 people found this helpful

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Every human should read this!!

So many insights, facts, helpful references...
I work in Talent Acquisition and provide (basic) training on Unconscious Bias as part of Hiring best practice. This book gave me such inspiration in that regard, but equally important for life in general!! Certainly worth investing your time in listening. I’m sure I’ll be revisiting some if not all on a fairly regular basis (until I can rattle off the stats and examples in an instant!). Oh and also really appreciated it being so up to date, this made a huge difference to many of the references.

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4 people found this helpful

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Lot of good with a lot of bad

Gender studies - guilty until proven innocent. This prevalent opinion of the author that joking with race/gender/ethnicity etc. just reinforces stereotypes is an assumption of ill intent and just plain wrong.

Humour is here to point out the extreme siliness of being a bigot and thats what brings people together and makes it funny. This atmosphere of "anyone who jokes about anything has hidden evil intent, even if you dont know it" just permeates through the whole book, and is a catastrophic and catastrophizing way of thinking for the whole human race which paradoxically makes our biases even more polarizing and I wish to be controversial just to annoy these mind and conscience lawyers of today.

Otherwise the chapter on AI and how it inputs our cognitive biases, why and how it is dangerous for the humankind is a good read. But if you cant stomach someone constantly conscience lawyering you and telling you how you should watch your every word otherwise its going to be a butterfly effect of racism/sexism/bigotry I'd just skip it, theres far better science backed books out there that dont try to shove their mind totalitarism down your throat with their OPINIONS.

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2 people found this helpful

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A relief!

This book is a must read, and an opportunity to understand how others see you, but more importantly how you see others.

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2 people found this helpful

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Thought provoking

I thoroughly enjoyed the book.it provoked my understanding of unconscious bias.
I loved it

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating

What an enlightening read! This book is extremely well researched, giving detailed insight into all manner of biases and how they affect both ourselves and those around us.
I would have liked a little more expansion on how we can use all this knowledge to effect positive change. The book goes into a lot of detail on the evidence for bias but offers less in the way of practical examples (though there are anecdotes from the author’s experiences which are very useful). Perhaps a follow up book isneeded!

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Eyes Open

This book has a fundamentally important message. The world is not as it seems. If you believe the hype, if you think you understand the essence of others by looking at their racial, ethnic or gender characteristics. Then you are wrong. A great read for anybody who wants to understand the nature of humans and our experience of one another.

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