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Sway

Unravelling Unconscious Bias

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Sway

By: Pragya Agarwal
Narrated by: Aysha Kala
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About this listen

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

‘Passionate and urgent.’ Guardian, Book of the Week
‘A must-read for all.’ Stylist, best new books for 2020
‘Cogently argued and intensely persuasive. Groundbreaking Work.’ Waterstones, best new books of April
'Impressive and much-needed.' Financial Times, Best Business Books April to June
'Admirably detailed.' Prospect Magazine
‘Practical, useful, readable and essential for the times we are living in.’ Nikesh Shukla
‘An eye-opening book that I hope will be widely read.’ Angela Saini
'If you think you don't need to read this book, you really need to read this book.' Jane Garvey
'An eye-opening book looking at unconscious bias. Meticulously researched and well written. It will make you think hard about the judgements you make. An essential read for our times.' Kavita Puri, BBC Journalist and author

For the first time, behavioural and data scientist, activist and writer Dr Pragya Agarwal unravels the way our implicit or 'unintentional' biases affect the way we communicate and perceive the world, how they affect our decision-making, and how they reinforce and perpetuate systemic and structural inequalities.

Sway is a thoroughly researched and comprehensive look at unconscious bias and how it impacts day-to-day life, from job interviews to romantic relationships to saving for retirement. It covers a huge number of sensitive topics – sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, colourism – with tact, and combines statistics with stories to paint a fuller picture and enhance understanding. Throughout, Pragya clearly delineates theories with a solid grounding in science, answering questions such as: do our roots for prejudice lie in our evolutionary past? What happens in our brains when we are biased? 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 book will enables us to open our eyes to our own biases in a scientific and non-judgmental way.©2020 Pragya Agarwal (P)2020 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Gender Studies Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Racism & Discrimination Social Psychology & Interactions Social Sciences Thought-Provoking Young Adult Equality Mental Health

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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)
All stars
Most relevant  
I found myself buying a hard copy of the book so I follow the content better and highlight and make notes. This is a well researched, brilliantly informative and surprising easy to follow book. I personally liked all the footnotes because they answered my queries around where the information was taken from and I will be looking some of them up to read in full where possible. This was a extremely thought provoking book that made me reflect on how I do things and that in my view is always positive.

A great book!

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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.

Eyes Open

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

Thought provoking

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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.

Every human should read this!!

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It’s a massive topic that was covered in depth. Really interesting to learn how much of our biases, unconscious or otherwise, are a product of the world we live in and the behaviours and biases of those around us. Ends with a useful epilogue of how we can start to tackle our own biases, both personally and in the workplace.

At times it was heavy going, with detailed background science, and felt a lot like a text book.

Important, eye-opening and interesting read

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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.

Lot of good with a lot of bad

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

A relief!

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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)

Interesting

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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!

Fascinating

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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.

Mostly good. Let down by feminist ideology.

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