Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

The book centers on the concept of “blindspots” (xii), or the hidden biases we carry in our minds without our knowledge. The authors borrow the term from the visual phenomenon of a blind spot—the area of each retina in which light-sensitive cells are absent. Like visual blind spots, the authors argue, hidden-bias blindspots are beyond our ability to detect—unless they are pointed out to us. They have an enormous influence on our behavior, but we often remain “oblivious” (xii) to the extent.

Cognitive dissonance is a theory devised by psychologist Leon Festinger in the mid-1950s. It is defined as the mental conflict between “two simultaneously coexisting beliefs” (59) or “between our beliefs and our actions” (59) that produces unease or discomfort. It can occur consciously or without awareness. Feeling disappointment after scoring a white preference on the Race IAT because one consciously embraces egalitarian values is an example of cognitive dissonance. Experiencing cognitive dissonance can interfere with the ability to achieve “mental harmony, or consonance” (59).

Dissociation is when the mind successfully holds opposing ideas without conflict—as when the reflective mind and automatic mind disagree but still retain their respective information. Dissociation is evident in the disconnect between our conscious thoughts and hidden biases. For example, the same person can consciously promote ideals of equality while scoring a white preference on the Race IAT.

Hidden biases are directly related to blindspots. The authors describe them as “bits of knowledge about social groups” (xii). They are pieces of information about other people that we store in our minds—often dictating the way we behave toward them. However, this information remains hidden to us. We may genuinely believe we have positive feelings about a particular social group, but we retain negative biases of which we are unaware.

One of the methods researchers use to overcome impression management is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Devised by author Anthony (Tony) G. Greenwald in 1994, the IAT asks the test taker to time themselves sorting items into categories. The first IAT provided four lists comprised of the names of various flowers and insects as well as several pleasant and unpleasant words. The first two lists were to be sorted into the categories “INSECTS or pleasant words” or “FLOWERS and unpleasant words” (36). The second set of lists were to be sorted into the categories “FLOWERS or pleasant words” or “INSECTS or unpleasant words” (37). Most test takers sort the second set of lists faster, showing “an automatic preference for flowers relative to insects” (37). The IAT is based on the idea that the preconceived ideas stored in our minds can be easily revealed through sorting tasks. The IAT showed signs of being a promising method of exposing biases that surveys could not detect due to impression management.

As the book often cites research into discrimination and bias, it calls attention to the well-documented problem of “impression management” (27). Since studies into biased behavior are often dependent on survey questions, researchers regularly encounter the issue of impression management—in which participants skew responses to seem less biased. They will do so even when their answers are anonymous and fed directly into a computer. To accurately measure bias, researchers have had to devise methods to “weed out” (28) such participants or to bypass the problem altogether using alternative strategies.

Society’s in-groups are those that hold privilege and power over others, or out-groups. Members of in-groups often exclusively help one another, perpetuating their privilege and creating or reinforcing disadvantages for out-groups. Although in-group members may feel uncomfortable interacting with or helping members of out-groups, they can sometimes be unaware of the extent to which their actions maintain social disparities. The authors argue that while some forms of racial discrimination are overt and hostile, many other forms are more subtle, stemming from in-group members favoring one another at the expense of out-group members.

The IAT is also dependent on the idea of mental association—a long-standing concept in psychology. Mental association is the “mental glue” (39) that bonds ideas together. A result on the IAT that shows a stronger preference for flowers over insects indicates that flower names and pleasant words have a strong positive mental association. Conversely, flower names and unpleasant words lack a strong mental association or glue, and therefore most people take more time sorting that list.

Mindbugs are errors in perception, memory, and judgment that stem from “ingrained habits of thought” (4). We can observe visual mindbugs at work when we view optical illusions—which often rely on the mind imposing its 3-D understanding of the world onto a 2-D image. Social mindbugs work similarly. We impose preconceived understandings of social groups onto individual people, influencing our behavior and attitude toward them. Mindbugs can arise from our ingrained ideas about race, ethnicity, age, gender, religion, occupation, social class, sexual preference, and attractiveness, as well as a host of other physical and social traits. Mindbugs are directly related to hidden biases and provide a means of better understanding them.

Soon after Greenwald developed the IAT, he created the Race IAT. Designed to expose hidden racial biases, it was predicated on mental associations regarding race. The Race IAT replaced insects and flowers with the faces of both African American and European American faces. Most people who take it show an automatic preference for European American faces, or a “White preference” (47). Further studies showed that the Race IAT serves as a predictor for discriminatory behavior—even among those who feel they hold egalitarian views.

Psychologists divide the mind into two sides or systems: the reflective and the automatic. The reflective side is the conscious side that forms explicit thoughts, opinions, and beliefs—and drives many of our actions. For example, we may consciously embrace a certain religion and are driven to pray as a result. This is the side that may believe in equality for everyone, despite showing an automatic white preference on the Race IAT.

Stereotypes are a byproduct or extension of our brain’s capacity to sort the world around us into different categories. While categories are essential for us to make sense of our surroundings, stereotypes are not. Many stereotypes can be considered a type of mindbug, as they are an error in judgment based on preexisting thoughts. They involve the representation of a group as sharing the same qualities, which are often negative. While various aspects of stereotypes may have some basis in fact, they generally cannot be applied to all members of a group all the time. Stereotypes can exacerbate social divisions, promote conflict, and hold people back from fulfilling their potential.

The authors describe those who hold explicitly egalitarian beliefs but score a white preference on the Race IAT as “uncomfortable egalitarians” (159). The authors count themselves among the significant group of people who fall into this category. They define uncomfortable egalitarians as potentially anxious during, or avoidant of, interracial interactions and as privileging white Americans over Black Americans and other minority groups. Most significantly, uncomfortable egalitarians are generally unaware of how their actions contribute to disadvantages experienced by other groups and most likely do not believe their behavior is discriminatory. Their discrimination mostly lies in their readiness to primarily help only “those who are like them” (160).