Implicit bias towards people with disability in Australia (with Dr Chrissy Antonopoulos)

[00:00:05] Bronwyn: Hey, mental workers. You're listening to the Mental Work podcast, the podcast about working in mental health for early career mental health workers. I'm your host, Bronwyn Milkins, and today we are talking about implicit bias toward people with disability in Australia.

As mental health workers, we often pride ourselves on being inclusive. But what if biases that lay beneath the surface are shaping our interactions with people with disability in ways that we can't see? In this episode, we unpack a new Australian study that investigated implicit bias towards people with disability and the relationship between that and our personal values. We explore the findings of the study, what they may mean for your clinical practice, workplace culture, and personal values.

Here to help us out with this topic is our guest and first author on the published article, Dr Chrissy Antonopoulos. Hi, Chrissy.

[00:00:51] Chrissy: Hi, Bronwyn.

[00:00:53] Bronwyn: Yeah, well, thank you. How are you going?

[00:00:55] Chrissy: Good. Good.

[00:00:56] Bronwyn: It's such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Could you please start us off by telling listeners who you are?

[00:01:01] Chrissy: So, yeah. So I am Chrissy. Um, I am a psychologist, a registered psychologist, and a lecturer. I'm also a researcher, and I have a few different businesses at the moment working in private practice and also a consulting business.

[00:01:17] Bronwyn: Awesome. The article we're gonna be talking about today came from your PhD, but I'm interested in how you came to be in this topic of implicit bias towards people with disability.

[00:01:28] Chrissy: Yeah, so it was a very personal topic to me, and my whole PhD was based on my own experiences. So I am a, um, I'm a woman who's legally blind. Um, I lost my vision about, oh, I started losing it about 10, 10 to 15 years ago now. Um, I'm also neuro divergent. I'm ADHD. Um, but the biggest impact on my life has been, um, losing my vision. So I lost it in about three or four years to the point of legal blindness from a, a genetic condition that I'd had all my life. But what I really noticed was that there was a huge difference between my life and my experiences pre blindness and then post blindness and just the discrimination and the stigma that came with that. And the biggest thing I noticed was in employment.

So, prior to losing my vision, I had no issues finding work. I was studying at the time. This was pre-psych as well. Um, and then once I became vision impaired and I, I didn't have as many support needs as I do now. I have a guide dog now, back then I didn't, um, hadn't even started using a white cane yet, but the, I noticed huge difference in the way I was being treated. I'd been fired from jobs when I disclosed. Um. When I disclosed in interviews, um, or when I'd been on trials for jobs, I wouldn't get the job. Um, and just all these little things kept coming up and I was like, what is going on?

And I think I hadn't quite started psychology yet, or no, I would've actually started psychology by then, and I thought implicit bias, like this is things that people don't even realize they're doing it. People were freaking out when I was telling them. And then me being me, I had to research it and prove it. And I'd spoken to all my other friends that I'd made who had disabilities and everyone was saying the same thing. So that experience and the experience of others led to six years of my life researching implicit bias.

[00:03:18] Bronwyn: Those experiences that you are describing firstly are really horrendous. I guess I just wanted to emphasize getting fired and having that discrimination, sounds really awful.

[00:03:28] Chrissy: Mm. Yeah, it was. I wasn't expecting it. And having not had a disability, you know, majority of my life, still I have, it's been more time without a disability, I wasn't sure what to expect. And going into those professional experiences, I was still fairly, well, I was young and I didn't know that it was going to be so difficult, and I didn't know all the facts and the stats about like, if you disclose, your less likely to get a job.

So it was shocking and it was hard and it really took a toll on my mental health, but I had to kind of flip it and turn it into something positive, which is why I ended up doing the research and becoming a psychologist and everything that's led me down.

[00:04:09] Bronwyn: Yeah, totally. It's understandable that you'd wanna, I guess, have some way of making this meaningful and contributing. I'm wondering why you chose implicit bias, specifically because the things you're describing, like they sound a lot like explicit bias. And then hopefully we can explain the difference to listeners about what's implicit and explicit in this answer.

[00:04:28] Chrissy: Yes, yes. So broadly explicit are the biases that we know we have. So when we say we acknowledge that, oh, I, I feel uncomfortable hiring someone with a disability or whatever it might be. Um, implicit or unconscious bias is, uh, the biases that we. All have that. We don't know that we have, we're unaware of them, they're in our unconscious. Um, and they affect things like, um, decision making. It affects choices we make if it affects the way we might word things to other people, um, the language we use.

So it's very, it can be subtle, it can be quite overt as well. But I guess in the experiences that I was having, I don't think people realized what they were doing. So the overt firing thing, I think that was probably, they knew a bit more. But um, in other situations, for example, I was in an interview once and they asked me a question at the end of, um, the interview, and I had already been working in the workplace at the time, so they knew me and they knew I had a vision impairment at the time... they asked if I had a medical condition and I was kind of thinking, this is weird. And it got me totally, unexpected, and so I didn't really know what to do. It was the first time it had happened, and afterwards I reflected on that and I did speak to them and I said, why was this being asked? And they said, oh, we asked everybody that question. And I said, but did you ask everybody because you already knew I had a disability, like why? Why was that in? So those are the unconscious things. Why did they choose to ask that question? What were they looking for in that answer? They wouldn't have asked it otherwise. So that's kind of a not the most easiest way to, I guess, show that what the difference between unconscious and conscious, but yeah, it, it, what we think is explicit is often implicit.

[00:06:16] Bronwyn: A lot of people would resonate with the example that you just gave. Like for myself, I have a person who doesn't have a disability and I've never been asked whether I have a medical condition in a job interview. And so when you're telling story, I'm automatically like, that's really weird, um, that she's being asked that question. And so I actually think it does highlight quite well. I'm like, why else would they ask that question unless they had some sort of bias.

[00:06:37] Chrissy: It's a, it's a weird, yeah, it is a weird question, and just for clarification, the role was purely administrative, sitting at a desk. There was nothing physical or visual that I wasn't already doing, so there wasn't, you know, a precursor for that to, to check if you have a medical condition. Like there was no heavy lifting.

Um, so yeah, it is those, those questions. Another example that I often give about unconscious biases. Pre losing my vision, I'd get asked, what do you do for work? Really natural question when you meet someone. If someone, now, not everybody, but a lot of the time, if someone knows that you have a disability, they'll ask you, do you work? Because that unconscious bias there is that you have a disability, therefore you don't work. So that's a really common one that I notice now.

[00:07:26] Bronwyn: I'm just wondering, like, what's the toll of this, because what you're describing, it sounds like there's several kind of microaggressions here happening, and you've encountered them with fair frequency, and I'm just wondering what the toll on you is?

[00:07:41] Chrissy: It's tiring, it's exhausting. It's... It's like every day is some degree or some element of a fight or proving yourself or explaining yourself. So. takes its toll in terms of, you know, there's days where I'm, I'm quite a fighter, I'm quite feisty. I will... very open with my experiences, so I will talk about them, explain to people, but then there's days where I'm exhausted and I'm like, I just can't deal with that. I just wanna go to the shop. And I don't wanna have people go, oh, why have you got a guide dog? Are you training her? Why you don't look blind? What's wrong with you? And or, you know, anything that comes with that being told. To leave because you've got a dog that happens at least, you know, once a week you go in somewhere and they're like, oh, you need to, you've got a dog, the dog needs to go out. I'm like, it's a guide dog. She's gotta harness clearly, it's exhausting.

[00:08:33] Bronwyn: it, it really sounds like it, and I can really hear your passion and also the impact and I guess your motivation to do your PhD on this whole subject area. Maybe before we get into this study, could you tell us more broadly what your PhD was about? Like was it about implicit bias specifically or something else, like more broadly?

[00:08:50] Chrissy: So my PhD was on implicit bias towards people with disability, personal values in the context of employment. So, broadly I did, um, a mixed methods PhD, so I did both qualitative and quantitative. I started with a meta-analysis, um, on implicit bias, so what we already knew, and then moved into a qualitative study where I interviewed employers about what they thought about hiring people with disability, which was really interesting. There was a stark contrast, um, between those with and without experience. And then that informed the later stages. So then I did a big, um, quantitative that involved the implicit bias work, creating the measures to, um, measure the implicit bias, and then looking at it in a broader context of employment.

[00:09:39] Bronwyn: That's awesome. Yeah, I saw in the intro of your study, which was recently published that it kind of seems like the current study we're about to talk about which links to personal values was a natural extension of that one where you interviewed employers, is that right?

[00:09:53] Chrissy: Yeah, so the interview, interview study was, um, we did that first, so that informed the, implicit bias study, I guess, going into that qualitative work... I knew that there was going to be some degree of implicit bias coming up because of all my experiences and the experiences of other people that they had shared with me. And what I really liked about the qualitative work, which I was a total quantitative person coming into my PhD and my supervisor suggested, oh, why don't we do a mixed methods? I was like, ugh, like I'm not a qual person and I'm so glad I did it 'cause I love qualitative work now.

But, what it was really cool was that you can actually use your positionality within the study and the context. So I could use my identity as a disabled person, um, to unpack what was going on and my interpretations of what people were saying which, we could really kind of get into those implicit biases because experience them, I could see them, 'cause once you see them you can't unsee them. And so that kind of led into the next work, and what came up with the values. 'cause going into the PhD, I didn't know I was going to end up doing this whole work on personal values, but that came up in the qualitative part. So, um, we kept up with that. There was some other things as well around emotions. Um, but yeah, we have some issues finding a way to measure that. So that's a, a post PhD project at the moment.

[00:11:18] Bronwyn: Wow, that's so cool. And I totally share your love of qualitative research. I was also trained in quant research, and now I'm primarily a qualitative researcher. And it's so interesting, and I love that our backgrounds and our perspectives are viewed as a strength in qualitative research. So it's like an asset that we can view participants' responses through this lens and really co-construct information. It's really cool, isn't it?

[00:11:43] Chrissy: That's the, and that's what I think I didn't really understand. And I guess when you go into qualitative with a quantitative background, especially coming through psych undergrad, it's all very heavily quant, think, oh, it's not as high a level of evidence, or it's not, you know, as valued as quantitative, but it is so valuable and there's so much detail and nuance and new insights and perspective. And you can capture the lived experience in it. And yeah, I'm all for it. I love it.

[00:12:11] Bronwyn: Yeah. What surprised you with that analysis that you did of the employer interviews?

[00:12:17] Chrissy: What surprised me the most, um, there was a really clear difference between people who had hired and who hadn't hired. So overall, everybody was very open to hiring people with disability. They all said, yes, we will, we want to hire, which is our explicit attitudes. So the attitudes that we, we, we know we have, but then there was all these buts that were coming up.

So, um, there was people that expressed feeling very uncomfortable. There was people exper, um, that would say they were experiencing fear or, um, other stuff were off put by, um, for example, targeting people with disability and job ads. So there was a lot of emotion that came up in there. And that was, I think, surprising, um, to a degree because people felt really, um, unsure about hiring. They wanted to hire, but then a lot of it tied into their own personal experiences. So it wasn't just, I don't know how to hire, it was like, I don't, I don't know how to act in front of people with disability, I feel weird. Um. It was a very personal thing. Um, so that was interesting.

And I guess the values, so one of the interesting things that came up was that idea of the right thing to do, and everybody across the board said that it's the right thing to do to hire people with disability, but when you actually unpack it, it was also a barrier because it's becomes a little bit more tokenistic. It's that, well, I have to hire... it's the right thing to do because. People with disability are less fortunate and they have a hard time.

So unpacking that from my own lived experience was what was interesting because other people coming in with like, oh, that's a great thing. Everybody really wants to do the right thing, but when you think about it, it's actually not, it's not beneficial because you're not really hiring someone because they're the best person or, or whatnot. It's that I feel like I, I wanna do it because it's the right thing to do. I'm a benevolent person, which comes a bit up.

[00:14:14] Bronwyn: And I guess like as a person with disability, you wouldn't wanna be sitting here being like, I'm here because it's making this person feel good.

[00:14:22] Chrissy: No. And that's, there was, that came up as well. There was people with disability in the part of the research and there was a lot of talk about being, um, felt that things were tokenistic. So me being a part of a panel was tokenistic. I was just here to tick a box and that comes up a lot.

[00:14:37] Bronwyn: Uh, that's such a shame. Such really interesting findings, and I guess that leads in perfectly to implicit bias. So in this study you conducted with your colleagues, Nicole Sugden and Anthony Saliba, um, you developed two implicit bias measures and they were to measure stereotypes; incompetence, and coldness. Could you just walk us through what those measures are and the, you have this matrix of like, if someone views you as incompetent warmth, and that's like per like, okay. You explain it. I'm like, gonna butcher it.

[00:15:08] Chrissy: Yeah, yeah, So firstly, the way we measure implicit bias is using the implicit association test, and that's a cognitive task. It's, um, a memory, not a memory, sorry, we match, so we, we match, um, combinations, combinations of words and what that, um, tells us is that when we match words together that we're more comfortable with, that are familiar, we generally match them quicker. When there's words or pictures or images, however we do it, um, that are unfamiliar or uncomfortable for us, we take longer to match them.

So we do a fancy calculation and we can kind of measure where people's implicit bias sits. And this has been, um, research now for over 20 years. So this implicit association test in all sorts of different spaces started in racial discrimination, it's moved literally everywhere.

Um, so that was the tests. We went with stereotypes, um, as opposed to attitudes. So attitudes are when we think, um, something's good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, whereas a stereotype, we attribute certain characteristics, like as you said, incompetent and cold.

And then underpinning that because as you know, everything PhD has to be un- underpinned by something... It's called the stereotype content model. So there's different, um, combinations of competence, incompetence, warmth, coldness, and they give you the stereotype content. So, um, high competence and high warmth is what we term our ingroup. So people that we're comfortable with people that are like us. Then you've got, um, low competence and high warmth... That's what we call paternalistic. So older people... um, older people, uh, children, paternalistic. And-

[00:16:54] Bronwyn: This is kind of like the attitude of like, oh, isn't it nice that you're outside? That kind of thing.

[00:16:59] Chrissy: yeah, it's that, oh, they're so, they're so cute, warm and friendly and oh, older people are. So, you know, those we have, you know, that, you know, we attribute those childlike things. Um, so that's your high... I always, I always confuse myself that, so we get the low competence, high warmth.

Yeah, so then we've got high competence, low warmth, and that is our competitive outgroup. So people that we view as competitive with us, but they're not like us, so they're highly competent, but they're cold people. And then we've got our low competence, low warmth, which is our, um, contempt stereotype. So, we view people with pity, with disgust, um, we kind of stereotype them as the worst people in in society. That's our low competence, low warmth.

[00:17:45] Bronwyn: So who were the participants in the study?

[00:17:49] Chrissy: There was 146 from memory exactly around that. Um, who took part and, uh, it was people from all around Australia. It was a convenience sample. So, um, whoever we could get to complete the study, it was quite complicated to get people to complete because it was a longer survey, and doing the implicit association tests took a bit of time. Um, so we got kind of who we wanted to get, whoever we could get to do the study.

[00:18:17] Bronwyn: Totally, and what were the main findings?

[00:18:22] Chrissy: So I think the most important, um, and the most validating for a lot of people with disability was the results on the implicit association test. So this was the first data collected in Australia on implicit bias towards people with disability. And what we found was 80.1% of people negatively implicitly stereotype people with disability as incompetent. Then 74.7% negatively implicitly stereotype people with disability as cold. So four out of five, almost everybody. A lot of people negatively, uh, implicitly thought people with disability are incompetent and cold, which is our, um, contempt stereotype.

Was it shocking to you how high it was or was it, does, did that resonate experiences and what you know, other people with disability experience?

I- it wasn't shocking because I knew it was going to be high. Um, I know when I looked at the data, I was like, yes. Like I, we've proved it. We've shown that it's here because you do get told a lot. Oh, no, we're not biased.

[00:19:30] Bronwyn: Yeah.

[00:19:31] Chrissy: Or no I'm like, yes, there's bias, but I think what. I wasn't as prepared for was the, the such high bias in both incompetent and cold. And that stereotype of disgust that kind of got me a little bit and upset me I think when I was first going through the data and I was like, wow, this actually is really bad. And reflecting on what that meant and then starting to look at it from that perspective, everything that was going on in, in the community, I was like, okay, now this all makes sense, and it's, it's quite sad.

[00:20:04] Bronwyn: It is sad and it is upsetting, like yeah, the degree of the, I guess, the strength of the implicit biases.

[00:20:12] Chrissy: Yeah. Yeah. And I actually, when originally we, when we started collecting the data, we were trying to get a representative sample of, of the Australian population, but it was just really hard and the bias was actually sitting higher. So I'm curious as to whether, if we got a, a gen-, like a representative sample, where it would actually sit, because when you measure the bias, you've got, um, either no bias, slight bias, moderate or ,strong. So ours sat in the, the moderate, um, but there were some groups that were leaning towards being that more strong bias. So if we could do it again, which hopefully we can at some point, it'd be interesting to see how it sits as a more representative sample.

[00:20:55] Bronwyn: Totally. And so I'm interested how these results on the implicit attitude test correlated with people's personal values. Could you just tell us the personal values, I guess that came out as most strongly related with people's implicit biases?

[00:21:10] Chrissy: Yeah. So, um, we looked at them separately between the incompetent implicit bias and the cold implicit bias. So the incompetent implicit bias, people who value universalism, which is your caring about, um, others, caring about others that are different from us, so not just people that are like us, um, that people that have the sense of, um, fairness, equality, justice... They had lower, um, negative implicit biases associating people with disability as incompetent.

But, the important thing is that there was still negative bias. So while it might not have been as strong, it was still there. So that was what was associated with, um, the incompetence, IAT and then also with the competence, um, implicit association tests, we had people who valued security society, which is those kind of conservative values. So maintaining the status quo, um, not wanting change. All our structures are fine, that people that valued that had higher negative biases, which kind of makes sense.

Then with the cold, um, implicit association tests, people who valued, um, self enhancement, which includes, um, power, um, dominance and sense of achievement, had lower scores on the implicit association test for coldness, which sounded a little bit counterintuitive because why would people who value power, dominance, achievement have lower negative bias?

[00:22:45] Bronwyn: Yeah, I remember reading this in the paper and and interested in how explained this.

[00:22:52] Chrissy: Yeah. So then when you look at it in the stereotype content model perspective, they probably have higher, um, bias that people with disability are incompetent, but then maybe they're more warm, which takes us to that paternalistic stereotype. So if, if you're like helping people that are less fortunate and those poor disabled people, I feel a sense of power or achievement.

And you know, there is that power dynamic in there that. You know, we're kind of, um, helping or, or we're kind of doing a good job. So I think that's what happened there, which is really interesting that that kind of showed up there.

[00:23:28] Bronwyn: That's really interesting. I find that really interesting the way you just explained it, because how I was thinking about it as you explained it, I was like, oh, is that a bit like a savior complex? It's like I'm such a good person for coming in here and helping out the poor disabled folks. Is that kind of what it is?

[00:23:42] Chrissy: Yeah, that's what it feels like. It feels like that, like, you know, the, the savior complex and it's like that, um, you know, that that kind of inspiration thing, like where I'm helping the disabled person live their life and I'm helping them walk again, or I'm helping them see again, and it's like, oh, it's a bit ick.

[00:23:59] Bronwyn: Yeah, totally. That's really interesting. And yeah, it's like, 'cause you don't, you wouldn't capture these explicitly, like if you were asking people their explicit attitudes, like do you get a sense of power from, from, you know, hiring disabled people, they'd be like, no, of course not. What are you talking about?

[00:24:15] Chrissy: Exactly. That's why I love implicit bias because it's, it's picking up what's there, but it's either we are not aware, it's hard to admit. We don't wanna say that we are biased, but we all have biases and it's okay to have biases, but we just don't want them to be negatively affecting others or showing up in situations that are quite important, like hiring, like, um, diagnosis and treatment and all of those sorts of things.

[00:24:43] Bronwyn: Yeah, so these are really interesting findings. I'm interested in what conclusions you draw from these findings in. Particular, I noticed in your discussion section you were talking about the Royal Disability Commission. Could you just take us through that?

[00:24:56] Chrissy: Yeah, so I guess with the findings... We can use them to unpack what's going on, um, at a more systemic level as well. So with the disability role commission, the findings, there was a lot of splits between the commissioners on things like ending segregation, um, and transitioning everyone to open employment, which is where everybody is in an employment... people with disability, people without a disability, we're all kind of together.

So that was a bit contentious in the Disability Royal Commission, and I think a lot of it can be attributed to, or some of it at least, um, the underlying implicit biases of people making decisions and people within policy. And I think that's what this highlights, is that we might not know that, but why are we having these... why do we think this should be a certain way? What are my biases here? And the same thing with, um, the NDIS and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the way that that is presented in media, um, publicly, I, I'm sure everybody has seen it, that the NDIS and those fraudsters there's so much fraud and disabled people are taking advantage and going on holidays and have private jets and all this ridiculousness, but that basically is showing what this implicit stereotype of disgust is what's happening here is that people think that we're the scum of the earth, that we're taking advantage of everything... that is exactly what these findings show, um, that this is an implicit thing, and you can kind of see how it's coming out in media and in policy and all of those sorts of things.

[00:26:32] Bronwyn: Well, it's so true when you make that connection there and it's quite... when I hear that, I'm like, that's pretty scary that that's the way that that could go as well. Like we, like, I personally don't want a society where we are blaming disabled people, um, and saying that they're rorting systems and stuff when they need genuine support. Um, yeah, that's seems like a bad direction to me.

[00:26:57] Chrissy: And that's the thing. What's so important about talking about unconscious implicit biases, because they're there, they're influencing systems, we know that, and we need to be able to challenge them. We need to be able to know when they're coming up and when they're affecting the way we're talking about things, the way we're reporting things, the decisions we're making.

[00:27:16] Bronwyn: Totally. So most of the listeners to this podcast are early career clinicians, and I'm interested to hear from you, how might implicit bias impact the therapeutic relationship or our clinical settings, or more broadly, healthcare interactions?

[00:27:32] Chrissy: Yeah, so there's quite a bit of research on how implicit bias affects healthcare settings and health professionals. Um, so it shows that unconscious biases, implicit biases, they affect the decisions that we make as health professionals, the way we treat our clients. There's differences in the way that we might plan or that we might, um, share information with our clients. So it really underpins everything we do, um, and that's why I think it's an important part of investigating where, where am I sitting here, how am I feeling about this? Because you know, as we said, we all kind of think we don't have a bias, but it's likely that something's showing up somewhere.

[00:28:15] Bronwyn: Yeah, absolutely. And, like you said, like we like to think we don't have a bias, but I've actually done a few of the IAT tests on the website, like the different ones and it was really shocking to me, like what I had like slightly or moderate negative biases for, 'cause they would completely differ to what I would explicitly say. And so yeah, it just really brought home to me like how much our implicit biases can shape our, in particular, our clinical interactions and what we do.

So I guess based on that, there are lots of early career clinicians who say they want to be inclusive, much like the employers, and they're like, we wanna hire people with disability, but I guess they might feel overwhelmed or unsure where to start. What can clinicians do to be genuinely inclusive?

[00:28:57] Chrissy: Yeah, I think it starts with discussions and starting to unpack our biases. As psychologists, we are awesome at reflective practices, so embedding some unconscious bias questions within that is really good. Also having supervision ideally with someone, if you're looking at specifically disability, a supervisor who has lived experience of disability. There's a lot of us around now, a lot of more people are talking about it, which is really exciting.

So connecting with, um, somebody who has that experience and talking, talking it through in a safe place. So we wanna look at our unconscious biases, we wanna look at our emotions, the way we feel when we're working with someone with a disability. So if you have a client who comes in and they are disabled, how did you feel when they came in? What assumptions did you make? That's a really big one to think about. What assumptions have I made here about this person? Because they have a disability. It might be about their relationships, it might be about their friendships, or it might be about their education or their ability to work or their ability to look after themselves. So that's a really big one.

I- if there's one takeaway it is to think about those assumptions that we make, 'cause I think they can be the most damaging, is how we, how we assume just because someone has a disability, the way that they might interact or live their life.

[00:30:21] Bronwyn: absolutely. As you were speaking, I was thinking about organizations that may explicitly say that they, wanna work well with people with disability, but then when you actually work for those organizations sometimes, and this is just a general observation, they might not, uh, walk the talk, I guess. So they may display attitudes that are like paternalistic or speak about participants in the case of NDIS in ways that just aren't quite right. How do you recommend early careers clinicians can manage that, I guess stay steady in the face of organizational implicit bias.

[00:30:58] Chrissy: Mm. That's tough-

[00:31:01] Bronwyn: Yeah.

[00:31:02] Chrissy: You know what, I've got an-, I'm not answers, suggestions for everything, but I think it is having the conversations like I'm all about, let's talk about it, let's unpack it. And organizations can be some of the hardest ones because they underpin, you know, a lot of the work we do. And even in psychology, I've had a lot of barriers to get to where I am today being told I can't because of my disability. So changing structures is, is a big thing.

But I guess as an early career psychologist, um, when you do feel comfortable to question any sort of decisions that come up encourage, I guess, training, so bringing in people with lived experiences, a lot of different, um, trainers who might do different areas of training around disability awareness, for example, kind of nudging our organizations if, if we don't feel kind of comfortable, point blank, calling it out, of course. Um, and then if we can sort of start to create that culture from within, I think that's how we can start to make more broader change.

[00:32:05] Bronwyn: Totally. No, that's really important. I really love how you emphasize reflective practice as well. Like you said, it's a skill that psychs... You know, it's well developed and it's really something that we can use. And seeking out supervision from supervisors who have a disability can also be really helpful.

Is there anything else that we haven't touched on either from your study or implicit bias towards people with disability that you want listeners to know about?

[00:32:30] Chrissy: Um. I think it's to be curious, um, curious towards what implicit biases you might have. Because as you said, sometimes it's not what we think and there are ways to explore that, whether that be to take an implicit association test or start to ask the questions and have really honest conversations in a space where you feel safe to. Um, that's really important as well because, you know, nobody wants to openly admit they have a bias towards a particular group of people, but we wanna know that we're doing what we can to not let our biases affect people with disability.

And I think, the other main thing I really would like people to think about is the language we use when we talk to people with disability or about people with disability. Um, that can make a huge difference, especially in a therapeutic setting. So it comes back to those assumptions, thinking about what assumptions are we making when we're phrasing certain questions? Like that example I gave about, do you work thinking about the questions we ask? Another one I often got asked was when in a relationship, people generally say, how's your partner? How's your husband, whatever... I would get asked, are you still with your partner? Like, that's so weird!

[00:33:49] Bronwyn: Wow. so that'd be jarring.

[00:33:54] Chrissy: It's weird. And it comes up not just personally, but professionally when I've sought help as well. Um. The assumptions that people make about, for example, parenting or relationships, and really to think about before you answer, what are the assumptions I'm making here with the response I'm giving? And I think it's really important to know where our biases lie, what we think about people with disability, what they can and can't do. Unpacking that so that when we have someone in the room with us, you know, it might be a few sentences that we say can really stick with someone. And they might get that all the time.

[00:34:30] Bronwyn: Yeah, absolutely. And I was just thinking for listeners who live with a disability and you know, some of the experiences you're describing, I'm willing to bet that they've faced them too, um, what do you think is important for them to know when, as they're, I guess, going through their careers as psychs?

[00:34:46] Chrissy: Mm. There's so much I could say on this because I, I found, I found it so difficult going through psychology. Um, and just know that there's others with a disability out there. There's lots of us now, we're really keen to support you if there is any hurdles. So I know, you know, for me, I had a lot of issues with, um, making things accessible, with perceptions about whether I could meet competencies.

So if there is ever difficulties, please reach out to any of us, um, who have a disability and who are working as a psychologist. Because there's always a way, and I think that's the motto I live by, is there's always a way, no matter what your experience is, or if you have a disability, that you can do something... within reason. I'm not gonna be driving a Ferrari down the street anytime soon. But you know what, maybe I will in a paddock one day. I dunno. But yeah, there's always a way and I think just, um, connecting with people who have shared experiences, it can be really powerful.

[00:35:48] Bronwyn: Absoluitely, like yeah, know that you're not alone and you don't have to face it alone.

[00:35:53] Chrissy: Absolutely.

[00:35:55] Bronwyn: Chrissy, this has been an awesome conversation. I've really enjoyed speaking to you and unpacking this topic, and I, I just love the findings and the thoroughness of your PhD research. It's such a valuable contribution to the literature.

[00:36:05] Chrissy: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

[00:36:08] Bronwyn: What do you hope listeners will take away from our conversation today? I know we kind of just talked about it, but if there is a, a main thing.

[00:36:14] Chrissy: Mm-hmm... main thing... One thing, but it's probably not going to be one thing. I can

[00:36:21] Bronwyn: Yeah, that's right.

[00:36:23] Chrissy: Multiple things to think about. I think be curious. Start to explore your implicit biases and think about your assumptions that you make, not just about people with disability, but towards people in general.

[00:36:34] Bronwyn: Perfect. If listeners wanna learn more about you or get in touch, where can they find you?

[00:36:41] Chrissy: Um, I do have an Instagram that I'm really slack with posting on, but it's um, The_Blind_Psychologist. Pretty easy to remember. So you can find me there. I do check it so you can catch me there. And I also have, um, started my new consulting business, so Beyond Bias Consulting, as well, and that's all about the implicit bias stuff. So if you wanna talk about that, feel free to send me an email. I love to talk about this stuff.

[00:37:08] Bronwyn: Awesome. I'll make sure those links get into the show notes and thank you so much again, Chrissy, for coming on. It's been really interesting and yeah, so good. Thank you.

[00:37:17] Chrissy: Thank you.

[00:37:18] Bronwyn: Listeners, if you found this episode helpful or know somebody who should hear this episode, please put it in their ears. It's the best way to get podcasts out there. You can also leave a rating or review.

And that's a wrap thanks for listening to Mental Work. I'm Bronwyn Milkins, have a good one, and catch you next time. Bye.