Reviews

Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias by Pragya Agarwal

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seclement's review against another edition

5.0

When I first started reading this book, I felt that maybe I had made a mistake in choosing a book that covers so many topics that I have already read about. It felt like just the bits and pieces from other books about psychology, cognitive errors, and bias from the many books I have read on the topic. But as I progressed I saw that this really is a full primer on the topic; a great one stop shop for those who haven’t read other books in the genre and a comprehensive summary of the research for those of us who have. Like with controversial articles, I made the grave error of reading the comments and regret it. I was absolutely astonished (but not astonished at all) to see so many people with privilege commenting about how they liked the first bit of the book, but didn’t like the later chapters (which tend to be about race, gender, accents, etc...) because they felt it was too “woke” and too “anecdotal”. A few things. The author actually does a brilliant job of weaving together narrative and fact. She covers how she does this in the beginning. Several books on the exact same topic by white men do the same thing, and yet their reviews do not complain that the book is woke, nor do they complain that the book uses anecdotes because (presumably) the people reading the book agree with or relate to the anecdotes. The anecdotes in this book are clearly illustrative and she never claims them as a replacement of fact. That’s what makes a good popular science book. When you see that other reviewers complain the book is too dense with research, you can perhaps start to understand the conundrum she was in when writing it. I think the balance was good. Was it perfect? Of course not. But if your complaint is that she weaved her own narrative or others’ throughout the book to illustrate the implications of fact, then you must have missed the bits about neuroscience and narrative. We think in stories. If you don’t like the stories because they don’t confirm yours, well...that’s the point. It’s meant to help you to see things from a different perspective.

The main criticism I have for the book - that others have expressed as well - is it spends far too little time on solutions. But the reality is this: we don’t have solutions. This research is in its infancy, and so, too, are solutions. She clearly wanted to have solutions that were evidence based, and the thinness of these in this book is not suggestive of her failings as an author, but a clear signal that this is an area where we actually need a lot more work. The mere fact that the current solution that is most common (I.e. these unconscious bias quizzes) are not replicable or particularly useful should tell you a lot. As the awareness of these issues grows, the fact is that we still don’t know what to do to address them. This book is the start of a conversation, and a comprehensive one at that. It is not a handbook to solve these complex and pervasive issues, nor does she ever promise it to be.

madhamster's review against another edition

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5.0

I have taken unconscious bias training in the past, but this is above and beyond anything else I've read in the past.
Because of the depth, more areas of potential bias are covered and considered. Not just race and gender, but also age, weight, height, accent, political party...