What does bias mean? What does it really mean? It might seem an easy word to say but the problem comes when asked the meaning of the word bias. Many people will go on beating around the bush and telling you many more examples rather than giving you the clear definition of bias. Let’s go straight to the point and clear the air by defining the term bias. Bias can be defined as a preconception in favor or an inclination in favor of something or against something, compared to the other. 

According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, bias is a strong feeling in favour of or against one group of people or one side in an argument, often not based on fair judgment. Other do refer to bias as favoritism, prejudice, partisanship, discrimination, inclination or partiality. Bias always comes with the refusal to look at the position advantages of the alternate points of view. People or Individuals are usually biased against or towards another person, a species, a race, a political party. A tribe, a community, a religion, a class and a group.

What Does Bias Mean ?

Biased As It’s Called

On the other side another question may pop out what does biased mean? Have you ever passed somewhere and hear people say, you are biased, stop being biased! It has a similar meaning to the previous meaning but biased is an adjective which is the unjustly prejudiced feeling for someone or against something. Biased can be described as being one sided, not having that open mind during making decisions or lacking that neutral viewpoint. Bias comes out in many forms. 

There are more or less other aspects of bias that have been overlooked. Some of the aspects of forms of bias are Political bias, economic bias, educational bias, Cultural bias, Inductive bias, racism, media bias, sexism, tribalism, speciesism, medical bias, regionalism, sensationalism, religious bias, Funding bias, and bias of an estimator. All this answer the question what does bias mean?

Political Bias

Political bias has always been a boast or characteristic of the mass media after printing press was invented. The disbursal of the ancient printing equipment bared media production to a specified count of people. It was discovered by historians that published often attended to the interests of those powerful social groups in the society. Even if we try to dismiss, communication in human beings takes place in a particular setting, between people or groups, through a medium and they are all politically, socially, economically and historically. 

This particular situation is nether good or bad. You still ask yourself what does bias mean, then understand this. Bias is a very small word that groups up the collective influences of the whole setting of the message. Politicians are surely biased or so in an over manner. They belong to political parties or get hitched with policies and different ideologies. As they may think that their ideologies are common sense, they later get to understand that they are speaking from a political viewpoint.

Media Bias

This is actually the prejudice of journalists, news reports and producers within the media industry in the selection of news, stories and events to report about and the way they are or will be covered. What does bias mean in the media context? It implies the permeating and far-flung bias interfering with the standards of Journalism, instead of the angle of an individual journalist or an article. The degree and direction to which media bias has taken is disputed in various countries. Some practical disadvantages to media neutrality are unfitness of journalists to report all the facts and stories, and the necessity that picked out facts to be connected into a consistent narrative. Since they find it out of question to describe everything, selectively is destiny. The state’s influence, including open and close censorship, biases mass media of some countries. 

Commercial forces the effect in a one-sided presentation including ownership of the sources of news, staff selection, and orientation towards a particular audience, advertiser’s pressure and concentration of ownership of the media. From this you still want to ask yourself what does bias mean, I think you have seen the examples?

Racism

The word racism goes hand in hand with the question what does biased mean. From the definition of racism we get to know that it consists of various and frequently related ideologies focused on race. That answers what being biased is. Advanced versions are frequently based in social percepts of biological deviations between individuals. They can take the form of political systems, beliefs, and social actions that consider various races to be grouped as inherently inferior or inferior to one another, based on the assumed divided inheritable qualities, traits or abilities. In psychology the definition might include consciously cancerous forms of discrimination. Other definitions may include preferential beliefs based on ethnic, caste, cultural, national and religious stereotypes. 

This all answers what was asked before which is what does bias mean. Other people view racism as prejudice plus power.

Cultural Bias

Many people do fall in this category of biasness. It is the mental process of judging developments by standards underlying someone’s culture. Numerous forms bias do exist that concern cultural norms of linguistic, location of body parts, acceptability of evidence, concepts of justice and different taboos. Cultural bias does extend to more areas in this global world. Normal people imagine other people as primarily the same, not importantly the same and affiliated to unlike groups and unsimilar land. The unjust handling of a person is based entirely on language use. Language use may admit the person’s indigenous language or other features of the individual’s speech, such as the size of vocabulary, the syntax and an accent. All this are all classified into our main question which is what does bias mean.

Sexism

You can imagine an environment where people from the two gender are biased to each other, it will definitely be a cruel world. How will we survive, how will we live with the gender animosity amongst ourselves. Gender discrimination as it is sometimes called discrimination based on gender and sex. It affects both women and men, but especially the effect is felt more on women. Sexism has been linked severally to gender roles and stereotypes. It may also include the feeling that one’s gender is in itself higher up than the other. Extreme gender discrimination may surrogate rape, sexual harassment and other classes of sexual violence. 

To elaborate more on what does bias mean we get an example of sexism. We have experienced honor killing in many parts of the world. Most of the victims were predominantly women. Most honor killing do occur when or because of the denial to enter into a set up marriage, keeping a kinship disapprove of, becoming rape victims or even homosexuality.

Tribalism

Tribalism is a state of encouraging and being organized in tribes. It is also a cultural term that refers to a way of thinking and behaving in which individuals are more patriotic to their tribe than to their peers, their state or any other socio-economic group or class.

Sensationalism

This is a type of editorial bias in mass media in which some topics in developing stories are over-hyped so as to increase the readership of viewership of its audience. It may also include telling stories about unimportant matters and stories that do not shape the whole society and prejudiced presentations of topics that are newsworthy, in a fiddling manner apart from the standards of professional journalism. Who said all this is not included in the definition what does bias mean. 

  Some other tactics may include being obtuse, being exceptionally controversial, appealing to emotions and being self-centered.

Religious Discrimination

Religious bias involves addressing someone or a person discriminatively because of his or her religious background and belief. The written law usually protects people from all and different religious background who include both traditionally and organized Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism. Religious bias may also involve addressing someone other than the person of your religion in a malicious manner. There is also a type of religious bias in textbooks and it is often observed in countries where religion plays a very dominant role.

Bias in education

Who said that there isn’t any prejudice and discrimination on our education system? Educational bias refers to the comprehended or the actual bias in the educational system. It is going to form the basis of the discussion behind what does bias mean. Most of the content in our school textbooks has frequently become an area or issue of debate. This is because most of their target audience often the young individuals.

Biasness Is a Disease That Should Be Treated

Being bias is really affecting our behaviors, our growth and development. Biasness is really eating up all our opportunities and resources. Just like corruption it should be faced out amicably through various strategies that are well executed. From the various forms and classes of bias. We mentioned about it in the tips section.

Tips
  • By being objective as a writer, a journalist or a politician.
  • Always be just and fair in everything you do.
  • Award points and honors on the basis of merit and not due to other affiliations.
  • Always do exploratory research so as to avoid alternate information error.
  • In a survey always allow all respondents to take part and gain knowledge from it.
  • Accept and respect everyone for who they are, where they come from and what they do.
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