After experiencing gender discrimination — a type of bias — in his own life, a teen developed a game to counter the problem.
PHOENIX, Ariz. — After one too many experiences with bias, Prerna Magon, 18, had had enough. The teen decided to do something about it. But directly confronting people’s intolerance usually doesn’t make them change their ways. In fact, this often makes them defensive and angry. So Magon decided to disguise a new bias-busting program as a role-playing game. By having fun and telling a story, teens who play his game became a little less biased without even realizing it.
Magon just graduated from the Police DAV Public School in Jalandhar, India. He had always been interested in psychology, a study of the mind. But the inspiration for his project came when he switched high schools.
Magon's physical traits meant he was labeled a girl at birth. But Magon realized that he was a boy. In an attempt to fit in, this transgender student had attended school as a girl. Only a couple of students knew that Magon identified as a boy.
Gender: When the body and brain disagree
Then, he says, “Somebody outed me when I became head of the student council.” When members of the council found out that Magon was transgender, he notes, “They took my post away.” The council members told him “I could not represent their school.”
Magon transferred to a new school for his senior year. And it was here that he started to design a game to see if he could change people’s implicit biases. These are prejudices that people hold without knowing it. For example, someone might implicitly associate nursing or teaching with women. But both men and women can be teachers or nurses.
The challenge in dealing with implicit biases is that people don’t tend to know they hold them. Yet “they come up in your day-to-day decision-making,” Magon says. “You don’t even realize you’re making a biased decision a lot of the time.” People might automatically assume a scientist is a man, or an artist is a woman.
Magon didn’t want to just tell people they were being biased. After all, everyone wants to think they are fair. Confronting them about bias, he notes, “can lead to resentment.” But if people are just playing a game or telling a story, Magon reasoned, they might change their biases without realizing it.
