Unconscious Biases - The Hidden Brain
September 15, 2015
Hosted by Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Being human includes having biases. Bias originates in the evolutionary inclination to distinguish “friend” (someone like members of my group) from “foe” (someone different from my group) in order to survive. It is a fundamental way that our minds process information, allowing us to stay safe and to navigate through a cacophony of stimuli at a reasonable pace. Our background and experiences create the lenses through which we see, interpret, and judge the world. (Prejudice is judging before knowing much.) Our natural tendency is to see the world as we are, not as it is. When we are busy and distracted or feel guilty about our biases, it is more likely that we will make decisions and take actions unconsciously. Eric Peterson teaches how to pause, notice, and analyze our unconscious judgments and their sources, and so make conscious decisions about how we behave as individuals and as members of organizations.
Family Matters
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Our goal is to share good ideas about helping all kinds of families handle the challenges and problems that are common in today’s world. We seek to help people heal, grow, and thrive in a culture in which marriage, parenting, and other family relationships are under great stress.
We will feature experts on a variety of family matters. Topics may include building and maintaining healthy relationships, family mediation, divorcing with minimal damage, strengthening marriages, LGBT families, forming and maintaining stepfamilies, single parents, creating constructive separation agreements, addiction, preventing or ending abuse, and other Family Matters.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D is an author, speaker, professional family mediator, Director of Colin Family Mediation Group, and a Founding Member of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM).
Having survived a nightmarish divorce, Dr. Colin actively supports divorce reform efforts, teaching people how to take a lot of the pain, financial cost, acrimony, and trauma out of divorce. She also loves learning and teaching about building healthy relationships and solving family problems long before anyone has a reason to consider divorce. She has been a foster parent, a married parent, a divorced single parent, and a remarried stepparent.
Formerly a research psychologist studying attachment and other aspects of human development, Dr. Colin has been providing family mediation services since 1999. She specializes in helping couples and ex-couples develop co-parenting plans and financial agreements that support their children’s security, self-confidence, and healthy development as well as their own adult well-being.
Dr. Colin has published two books, “Human Attachment" and "The Guide to Low-Cost Divorce in Virginia: How to Do It Yourself.” She has also written a variety of articles published in journals and on the Internet.