Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

The four acts in Chapter 3 providing a striking backdrop for the next few chapters. The first act explores “whether the association between black people and crime is so powerful in the minds of Americans that it can influence what we see and what we ignore” (58). Eberhardt describes a study in which half the participants were primed by exposure to words such as “apprehend,” “arrest,” “capture,” and “shoot” (59). When then presented with a white face and a Black face, those who were given this primer were more likely to look at Black faces. Those who were not were more likely to look at the white face. The study shows how Black individuals are placed in a situation of both high visibility, revealed in their misdirected association with crime, and invisibility, revealed in a closer attention to the white faces when no primer was given.

Chapter 4 explores racial profiling and the effect it can have on law enforcement. The number of victims of racial profiling and mistreatment from the police in Oakland was extremely high. In one analysis of 28,000 different police stops in Oakland, researchers found that the percentages were disproportionately weighted toward Black people and that Black people were more likely to be searched, handcuffed, and arrested. Eberhardt shares stories about police officers who recognize how implicit bias and stereotyping influenced their own perceptions of Black individuals as anecdotal evidence.

The story about the officer who heard the descriptor “MALE BLACK” on the radio day in and day out is particularly telling. This influence affected how he perceived Black people, particularly Black men, on the street. He found his attention veering far more often toward Black men, so much so that even his friends noticed the change. In this case, attentional bias influenced where the officer’s eyes went and why. The officer’s attention bias means he targets more Black men; targeting more Black men suggests that the other officers will hear more reports of “suspicious” Black men on the radio, perpetuating the cycle and creating a bias-centered environment.

As well as making Black men targets, the emphasis placed upon the link between Black people and crime means that the spotlight is on the small percentage of those who do engage in violent crime. This renders the law-abiding Black people in the community invisible on the stage of discourse.

Eberhardt describes the now-famous demonstration of attentional bias developed by cognitive psychologists named Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. Participants were asked to count the number of passes in a basketball game. Their focus was so directed toward counting passes that they failed to notice the presence of a man in a gorilla suit walking into the frame, beating his chest, and walking out again. In Chapter 6, Eberhardt revisits this study with a team of researchers. Participants were asked to do everything in the same way, except they were given a list of names to sort through before they watched the video and counted passes. Half the group were given stereotypical white names and the other half were given stereotypical Black names. Those who were given stereotypical Black names before watching the video were more likely to notice the gorilla in the video, a confirmation of the racist Black-ape association and another example of attentional bias.

The second act explores research which shows how the physicality of Black individuals is more likely to be perceived and judged incorrectly. Studies show that race distorts people’s perception of body size. In one study, people were asked to rate the physical characteristics of young white and young Black men. When participants perceived the bodies to be of Black men, they were more likely to rate the bodies as taller and heavier. They also believed that the capacity of the Black men’s bodies had a higher potentiality for causing harm.

The third act connects the ideas that because individuals might see Black bodies as more threatening, they might also perceive Black body movements as more threatening as well. In a data analysis of New York City police stops, it was determined by Eberhardt and her colleague Rebecca Hetey that half the stops were for what was characterized as “furtive movement” with a high percentage of these stops performed on Black individuals (63). They also found that, in these interactions, Black people were more likely to be frisked and subjected to physical force, despite the facts that Black people were less likely to have a weapon than white people and that furtive movement resulted in the possession of a weapon less than 1% of the time. Eberhardt argues that the idea of “furtive movement” is too vague to be free from influence by bias. In the case of Terence Crutcher, Officer Shelby saw a Black man walking slowly away from her as a sign of a potential threat.

Chapter 5 reiterates these ideas by introducing Eberhardt’s own experiences with being stopped by a police officer. Without explanation for the stop or the actions that were to follow, the police officer demanded that Eberhardt and her coworker leave the car so that it could be towed. When she refused, the officer called in for back-up and escalated the interaction, resulting in the forcible removal of Eberhardt from the car and several small injuries. It did not matter that Eberhardt was about to walk with extreme honors the next day in a commencement ceremony at an ivy league school or that she was on her way home from a catering job. Instead, the color of her skin influenced how she was perceived and how the police officer treated her.

In one study, Eberhardt showed that police officers hold a great deal of power in how well a confrontation or traffic stop proceeds simply by how they speak to the person in the car. By being polite, friendly, and respectful, police officers are able to alleviate and deescalate tense interactions. Yet, a study conducted by Eberhardt and her colleagues at Stanford revealed that police officers were less respectful and less friendly when speaking to Black drivers versus white drivers.

Chapter 5 then expands upon these principles by looking at what happens as a result of this bias in these initial stops and arrests, analyzing the bail system, the pretrial detention rate, and the plea-bargaining system. Each of these elements of the justice system disproportionately target Black defendants. After prison, “[w]hite applicants with criminal histories were much more likely to be interviewed by employers than blacks with similar records” (115). Black marriage rates dropped as more Black men were sent to prison.

In the fourth act of Chapter 3, Eberhardt asks whether stereotypes could move beyond just how we see people but also affect how we see objects. In the case of Terence Crutcher, Officer Shelby thought Crutcher was headed to his car to retrieve a weapon. In one study, a priming procedure was used to expose participants to a series of Black male faces versus a series of White male faces before asking students to push a button the moment they detected the image of an object. Those who were exposed to Black male faces affected only the ability of the participants to detect objects related to crime, and these participants needed fewer frames to detect crime objects than those who were primed with white faces.

In the fifth and final act, Eberhardt questions whether bias can influence physical actions, such as the decision to pull the trigger of a gun. In one study, participants were faster to respond “shoot” to images of a Black person holding a gun than a White person holding a gun. The same was true for students, community members, and police officers, Black or white.

Chapter 6 explores the idea of the Black individual as a “scary monsters,” a notion that may illicit quicker reflexes of violence and fear. Eberhardt shows how these reflexes are a result of a long campaign to advance white wealth and advantage, as well as a product of a historically ingrained set of stereotypes rooted in scientific racism. An economy which had become largely dependent upon the enslavement and brutalization of Africans, American scientists rationalized the mistreatment and subjugation by asserting that the Black captives were “less than fully human” (134). The chapter cites several historical accounts of scientists attempting to prove that Black people were less intelligent, a separate species, or even lower on the evolutionary chain. As Eberhardt began to explore the Black-ape association, she found that even her own colleagues were subject to the stereotype.

In Part 3, Eberhardt moves from issues of justice and law enforcement to other aspects of American life, but these four chapters provide an understanding of how bias affects attention, thinking, and behavior and how those associations with Black people and crime affect all other aspects of day-to-day interactions and choices. The five acts outlined in Chapter 3 offer a base upon which the studies cited by Eberhardt can take shape and present a compelling narrative. The chapters that follow reveal how our negative associations with Black men and women infiltrates every aspect of American life.