Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

“A quarter century ago, many psychologists believed that human behavior was primarily guided by conscious thoughts and feelings. Nowadays the majority will readily agree that much human judgment and behavior is produced with little conscious thought.”

The authors demonstrate that over the past few decades understandings of the unconscious mind have changed dramatically among the scientific community. After having fallen out of favor in the 20th century, they have been revitalized and updated in recent history. Psychologists now primarily agree that much of what we do is guided by our unconscious thoughts. Mindbugs, as a part of our unconscious behavioral repertoire, fit into these current understandings and help shed further light onto how the unconscious mind works.

“Those who fall prey to the availability and anchoring heuristics are not more feeble-minded or gullible than others. Each of us in an ever-ready victim.”

When discussing two different mindbugs—anchoring, in which one uses a certain idea as an anchor for other, nonrelated ideas; and the availability heuristic, where something seems to occur more frequently than something else because it comes to mind more easily—the authors warn that they can be demonstrated by anyone. Those who exhibit them are not necessarily weaker in some way or more easily convinced of things. In other words, no one should consider themselves immune from such behavior, no matter how strong-minded one believes oneself to be.

“It turns out that it is surprisingly easy (we didn’t say accurate) to make such assessments based on nothing more than a static picture. In fact, trying to avoid making such judgments may be far more effortful than making them. The problem, of course, is that these judgments may be not just a little wrong but quite wrong”

When introducing the notion of social mindbugs, the authors explain that people can make a number of judgments about others from a single photograph. The practice is so common, the authors argue, it may actually be harder to refrain from making any judgment at all. However, the hidden biases people bring to the table in such situations may do them a disservice, as their assessments can often be completely incorrect. They may end up trusting those who shouldn’t be trusted or vice versa.

“Understanding how mindbugs erode the coastline of rational thought, and ultimately the very possibility of a just and productive society, requires understanding the mindbugs that are at the root of the disparity between our inner minds and outward actions”

To conclude the first Chapter, the authors argue that mindbugs ultimately erode our ability to act rationality. In particular, they create a disparity between what we intend or the ideals that we hold and what we do and say. Mindbugs give us less control over ourselves and make us less self-aware. Overall, they have a negative impact on the individual and society. The more we understand them and how they work, the more likely we are to eradicate them.

“You may be only dimly aware of forces that work to shade your answers away from truth. Those forces reflect a diverse set of motivations, including (paradoxically) a desire to be accurate and truthful.”

The second chapter deals with the idea of untruths—lies that we tell without always being wholly conscious of them. The authors cover a broad range of untruths and the motivations behind them. Most untruths are designed to make us seem more favorable to others and ourselves. Others are told in an attempt to live longer or for reproductive purposes. Some untruths even appear to be truthful—like those told about how much we drink or smoke, or lying that we voted in the current election because we normally vote—but are not accurate in reality.

“There is now no doubt that impression management produces flawed, inaccurate responses to many question that have long been used to measure race prejudice.”

One of the types of lies discussed in Chapter 2 is known in psychology as impression management. It’s the lies people tell because they want to appear favorable to others. They might lie about what they watch or how much they weigh to look good to other people and may even believe that what they are saying is essentially true. For example, they are the type of person to watch educational programs, so they lie about watching a particular one. Impression management presents a major problem for researchers asking questions to participants about race. In current studies, it is not unlikely that participants will skew answers to appear less racist. New methods had to be devised to measure for bias to bypass the problem of impression management.

“The new IAT was expected to reveal whether the method could measure on of our society’s most significant and emotion-laden types of attitudes—the attitude toward a racial group.”

After one of the authors, Anthony G. Greenwald, came up with the first Implicit Association Test (IAT) in 1994, which demonstrated that many people have a preference for flowers over insects, he created a new test that attempted to do the same thing with race. The IAT depended on previous mental associations that existed in the brain and appeared to bypass the problem of impression management. It is comprised of lists and asks participants to quickly sort the words in each list into either positive or negative categories. The book includes Greenwald’s original IAT and the Race IAT so that the reader can complete them and determine their results.

“The Race IAT holds up a mirror in which many see a reflection that they do not recognize. Most who take the Race IAT are faster on Sheet B (linking racial White to pleasant words) than on Sheet A (linking racial Black to pleasant words. This is the pattern that is described as showing ‘automatic preference for White relative to Black.’ “

For many people who take the Race IAT, the results reveal that they have an automatic white preference. It upsets them because it exposes their hidden biases that they didn’t necessarily know they had. Many individuals taking the test do not consider themselves to be prejudiced and are surprised to learn that they have a clear preference. However, possessing bias does not necessarily translate into discriminatory behavior.

“Most people, we’ve discovered to our happy surprise, would rather know about the cracks in their own minds. In the same way that they would want to know about a high level of blood cholesterol so that they can take action against it, they wish to confront potentially harmful mental content.”

In Chapter 4, the authors introduce the two sides of the mind, according to psychologists: the reflective and the automatic. The reflective is the rational, conscious side while the automatic is the unconscious side where mindbugs may reside. The goal of the IAT is to bring to the surface the automatic side that one may not be consciously aware. The authors have found, to their pleasant surprise, that many people desire a stronger understanding of the biases hiding in their automatic side so they can take action against them. They want to resolve the disparity between their reflective and automatic sides.

“The influence of Freud notwithstanding, it is hard for human beings, endowed with the capacity for conscious thought, to accept that the beliefs and preferences that so define us can be shaped by forces outside of our awareness.”

While people may be willing to confront the biases of their automatic side, they may still be confused as to why those biases exist in the first place. The authors explain that such people may be unwilling to accept that ideas may be shaped by factors over which they have no control and of which they are completely unaware. They may be holding on to the belief that they are in control of their thoughts or that they are fully conscious of the ideas shaped in their minds.

“Categories are not only extremely convenient—they are essential in permitting us to get about the business of our lives.”

Chapter 5 explores stereotypes. The authors explain that stereotypes are derived from our brain’s ability to think in terms of categories. Categories are essential to our lives in that they enable us to identify people and differentiate them from one another. For example, we recognize that people in white coats at hospitals are doctors and we trust them with our lives. A person behind a cash register is someone we understand to be a salesclerk. If we reacted differently to people we’ve categorized in a certain way, life would be much more difficult.

“Probably the most common, and arguably the most important, of these cooperative categorization strategies are those that help others to categorize us as male or female.”

Cooperative categorization is how we assist others in placing us in the appropriate social category. An example is wearing a particular uniform based on occupation. The authors argue that one of the most common forms of cooperative categorization are the cues we give to indicate our preferred gender type. The way we dress, wear our hair, and whether we wear makeup or jewelry may collectively help a person determine if we identify as male or female.

“The stereotypes applied to a group are sometimes self-applied by members of the group to themselves, and in that case the stereotypes may act as self-undermining and self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Stereotypes can be problematic for many reasons. A particularly damaging effect can be when people in a group begin applying negative stereotypes of the group to themselves, other members, or the group as a whole. When negative stereotypes are internalized by part of the group, it can have negative consequences for all members.

“We would agree that we possess these stereotypes because we’ve been repeatedly exposed to relevant propaganda in images, in stories, in jokes, in ordinary language, and in the inferences that pervade social space.”

Before the authors discuss the toll stereotypes can take on individuals and society as a whole, they explain where stereotypes come from. They determine that the culture around us plays an enormous role in shaping our perceptions of the world. The things we read and watch, the images we see, and the way we speak to one another feeds us information that creates and perpetuates stereotypes.

“Stereotypes do not take special effort to acquire. Quite the opposite—they are acquired effortlessly, and take special effort to discount.”

The authors argue that stereotypes are often easy to adopt because they are all around us. In fact, it is much harder to try to think alternatively and challenge prevailing stereotypes. It requires reexamining one’s opinions, values, and beliefs, and not only reconsidering them but reshaping them.

“All of this tells us that stereotypes, especially automatic stereotypes, don’t just engage the neurons in our heads and the thoughts in our minds and remain there. They have impact on behavior such as the intellectual pursuits we select—a decision that in turn may influence what career path we chart for ourselves, the happiness we derive from it, and the contributions we make by the end of our lives.”

Stereotypes are not simply confined to our thoughts and feelings. They can have enormous consequences for our lives and those of others. Internalizing negative stereotypes can affect what we choose to study or what job we pursue. In turn, these choices can have major implications for how the rest of our lives unfold.

“Certainly we know that, once formed, the identities humans take on play a powerful role in their lives, dictating not just our love for kith, kin, and even sports teams but our lack of warmth toward those who are not only foreign, but even just a little bit different.”

The authors emphasize the extent to which identity formation is predicated on an “us” versus “them” mentality. From an early age, humans favor those with whom they are familiar. The groups to which they identify will often receive preferential treatment in a variety of ways, becoming their “in-group.” The authors stress that differences between the in-group and those who appear outside of it can sometimes be minimal, even flimsy, but a boundary line is nonetheless drawn.

“In the modern world, where friendships, collaborations, businesses, and entire economies span the globe in a highly networked web of interdependence, the ability to create alliances that bypass boundaries of race, nationality, and culture can have bearing on our well-being, our prosperity, our productivity—and perhaps even our survival.”

Although fearing those from different groups may have once served a purpose for our survival, the authors argue that it no longer seems to have any practical function. In our modern interconnected world, it makes more sense to overcome such fears. We can benefit in a number of ways from forming bonds with members of different cultures, races, and religions. Ironically, our survival may come to depend on maintaining bonds with those whom—at one time—may have appeared as a threat.

“Blindspots hide both discriminations and privileges, so neither the discriminators nor the targets of discrimination, neither those who do the privileging nor the privileged, are aware. No small wonder that any attempt to consciously level the playing field meets with such resistance.”

Blindspots that serve to privilege other members of the in-group often remain as hidden as those that contain hostility, discrimination, or aggression. When a member of an in-group does something to help another member, they are often unaware of the extent to which others are being left out. This is especially the case if the in-group operates in a somewhat self-contained environment. It becomes difficult or even impossible to see that privileging some people has a cost to those who are being excluded—the costs remain hidden unless they are pointed out.

“At about the same time that we were becoming discouraged about eradicating our own hidden biases, other researchers were starting to experiment with procedures that they had devised with the aim of weakening, possibly even eliminating, IAT-measured mindbugs.”

In the final chapter of the book, the authors begin by describing their personal frustration with being unable to get rid of their blindspots. They repeatedly took the Race IAT with the same results, leading them to conclude that simply being aware of their biases was not helping to overcome them. However, other researchers began working on ways to minimize the influence of mindbugs. They started to introduce methods to weaken the power of hidden biases—with the hope of potentially eliminating them.

“This promising work notwithstanding, we have come to regard mindbugs as dauntingly persistent.”

While the authors cite studies demonstrating that mindbugs can be weakened, their overall conclusion is that hidden biases are hard to eliminate. Research has shown that mindbugs can successfully be temporarily eradicated for a short time. Negative stereotypes might be replaced with positive ideas for a few weeks or longer. However, the change is almost always temporary, with individuals soon returning to their previously held beliefs.

“Although we (presently) lack optimism about fully eradicating mindbugs, we are not similarly pessimistic about prospects for research to develop and refine methods for outsmarting mindbugs.”

The authors conclude by explaining that overcoming mindbugs presents an enormous challenge. At the moment, they are not optimistic that hidden biases can be completely overcome. Awareness of one’s mindbugs does not necessarily mean they can be easily eliminated. However, they maintain hope that research will continue to yield methods for outsmarting them—which may lead to their eventual demise.

“That history will provide a basis for understanding why many scientists now believe that, rather than disappearing, America’s race prejudices have merely metamorphosed into harder-to-see forms. While milder in appearance than what came before, these evolved forms of prejudice remain potent as sources of race discrimination.”

Appendix 1 looks at studies on racial discrimination over the past century to show that it still exists. However, the authors conclude—based on those studies—discrimination does not take the same form as it did in the past. Since the 1950s, it has become less discernible and more hidden. While overt racism also still exists, it is practiced by a small minority. Much more prevalent today are the hidden biases that contribute to continued discrimination in all aspects of society.