"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 center 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."

An interesting concept - looking forward to reading.

This is both an important book and one that is very well researched and clearly presented. Must read!

A thorough, well-researched, and well-written book about how our biases and prejudices govern our daily decisions, choices, and behaviors. Dr Agarwal's personal stories of dealing with biases as a woman of color in the science field and living in Britain also bring many of her points home. Despite its heft, this is a riveting, immersive, and accessible read.

This book is a really important read, especially with all that is going on in the world now. It was well researched and contained a lot of thought provoking information on how biases affect us every day both in how others perceive us and how we may look at and act towards others.

The author explains how unintentional bias are hardwired into our subconscious and how they influence our lives and decisions. This was a really interesting read.

It can feel as if we've simultaneously made leaps and bounds in tackling social justice and dismantling damaging prejudices, yet numerous current events point to many steps taken backward and disheartening deficits. <i>Sway</i> is a cogent statement that we need more knowledge, more research, and more attention paid to how our biases, both explicit and implicit, manifest in problematic individual and societal behavior. Pragya Agarwal's heavily researched book is broad in its reach, but it coalesces on a largely hidden and difficult to make concrete subject—implicit bias, or unconscious attitudes towards certain characteristics which, in turn, greatly influence our judgements and decisions.

This book has made me hyper-cognizant of the sundry ways that bias creeps into our daily lives. I was familiar with a number of these biases with varying degrees of exposure, as many others will also be. Agarwal explores race, gender, political partisanship, age, names, accents, and artificial intelligence. She mentions renowned cognitive psychologists like Tversky and Kahneman who were influential in the field of heuristics and decision-making, but also expands upon more recent investigative examples to highlight the existence of biased behavior. One of the most valuable parts of this book is how she places many of these well-traversed subject areas in a modern framework and unabashedly critiques experimental design or the significance of results.

Other more "pop" psychology books, like <i>Blink</i>, <i>The Undoing Project</i>, or <i>21 Lessons for the 21st Century</i> are quicker and easier to digest, delving into many parallel or identical studies and topics; in comparison, <i>Sway</i> offers a more sprawling buffet of all biases. It can be eye-opening, yet also feel like a lot to digest when you are desperately trying to juggle your running list of negativity bias, truth bias, confirmation bias, frequency bias, position bias (these are just a few; there are many more). The book is inevitably jargon-heavy because the author chooses to present such a vast quantity of different biases and their associated technical terms. Earlier in the book, the footnotes felt unnecessary or excessive and the neurobiology parts were dense to the point of devolving into alphabet soup. This resolved about a third of the way into the book, paving the way for more compelling research studies and some well-positioned personal anecdotes about her experience as an Indian woman, scientist, person of color, immigrant, and mother. Biases are inherently intersectional, and Agarwal sets out to make sure we recognize the myriad avenues in which implicit and explicit attitudes differentially affect individuals. Stereotypes persist as much as we strive to recognize individuality and equity, and it's startling how much we <i>still</i>, but arguable as unconsciously, allow them to influence our judgements and decisions once we take a closer look at the data.

Just because it's hard to put a finger on our hidden biases and unconscious behaviors, <i>Sway</i> emphasizes that we have no excuse to discount how the silent and unseen can be just as pernicious in forming irrational and debilitating views of the "other." What seems hidden ends up manifesting in external behaviors and thoughts, with sometimes tragic consequences. Agarwal relies on a moral argument to advocate for acting to confront our internal biases, as they have ramifications for childhood development, career advancement, family, mental health, and even a matter of life or death.

Knowing is ultimately only half the battle. In terms of actionable items, Agarwal provides less prescriptive points than I would've preferred. Where she excels at providing a detailed groundwork that uncovers the multiple levels of biases, she does not address improving implicit biases with the same verve. She advocates for ensuring that biases are addressed early on, as racial and appearance preferences can develop in five year olds and even younger. Greater interpersonal contact, be it intergenerational for countering ageism or diverse for countering racism, is also crucial. These are familiar pieces of advice, but <i>Sway</i> makes clear that we should not be complacent in thinking we've done even <i>nearly</i> enough to combat bias.

We who want to believe that we are not prejudiced and not biased are ultimately wishful thinkers. Agarwal has compiled a bulwark of psychological studies, both landmark historical studies and more recent discoveries, and analyzes them with a clear scientific voice. She has certainly set forth a compelling work forth that demands our attention to look internally for hope of enacting personal and societal change.

Many thanks to Netgalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

I loved how much detail was packed into this book. Also, it's not just statistics. It's a lot of anecdotical evidence as well.

(I wish the PDF was of better quality in terms of formatting; I would often get confused by the footnotes that would appear in the middle of the page I was reading.)

This book hits hard with the statistical data in the first sections. I felt as though I was reading a school textbook. This may be great for some, such as those using this for scholastic writing/professional development, but was too much for me. The book proses many challenges we face in regards to unconscious bias, but doesn't offer as many solutions as I would've liked to see. I am interested to learn more about the author's proposed solutions to the challenges they describe in great detail.

If you're looking for a comprehensive catalog of biases and maybe why they occur, this is what you're looking for. It is extremely well written. It was too much info for me. I did learn a lot (which is probably the point; one can't change without awareness), but I was seeking ways/solutions to overcome it. This is too-briefly addressed at the end. So it is a mixed bag for me. Kudos to the author for helping raise awareness and the publisher for supporting her.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!