The Hidden Prejudice - Scientific American Frontiers

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>>Hello and welcome to
Scientific American Frontiers,

I'm Alan Alda.

we all like to think that we
understand our own minds.

That we carefully weigh the pros and cons
when we make a decision.

And that after we've made it,

even if we have cause to regret it, we
know why we decided the way we did.

Oh sure we know some choices
are more emotional than rational,

but even then, we think
we're conscious

of all the conflicting arguments that run
through our minds as we make a choice.

Well, in this program we'll find out
how utterly deluded we are,

as we join in experiments revealing just how
sneaky and underhanded our brains can be.

[music]

>>I've always thought
of myself as a feminist,

so I'm pretty sure I know how I'll
do in this test of my reaction

to women in the work place.

I am ready to begin.

Women, in fact like Mahzarin Banaji, who's
a professor here at Harvard University.

The test is called the
"implicit association test"

and it begins simply enough.

I have to pair the word in the center,

with one of the words above by
pressing the "e" key with my left hand

or the "i" key with my right.

Well, that could be either way.

Mahzarin has told me to
do this as fast as I can

because it's the time I take to make the
associations that's critical to the test.

Now the target words have changed,
but the task remains the same;

to quickly decide whether the
new words belong to the left or the right.

But things are about
to get trickier.

>>It's the same thing except now any
one of these four will show up,

and when it's "career" or "male"
you'll press the left key,

when it's "family" or "female" you'll
press the right key.

>>"Career" or "male"
>>Yes.

>>So now the categories are
described by two words,

making it harder to decide
where the new words belong.

But since historically, "male" and
"career" have gone together....

This is like, reinforcing this stereotype.
>>Yeah, that's it exactly.

>>The point of the test is to discover
if lurking beneath my feminist convictions,

I actually harbor a hidden bias
against women in the work place

based on all the associations between
"man" and "career" and "women" and "family"

that bathed the culture
I grew up in.

"Family or "male", "career" or "female".
Okay, now you're testing me.

The implicit association test
is designed to ferret out any bias

by seeing if it takes me fractionally longer
to figure out where a word belongs

when the pairing of the target words, in
this case: "family" and "male" together

and "career" and "female", is slightly
more difficult for my brain to except.

Corporation - "family"
or...[breaks off in laughter]

"brother", "management"...

and we're done.

>>Slight. I could tell he has a slight.
This is very good.

You are...so let's see,
you're showing a slight,

automatic association
between male and career,

and the...only 12% of the
population that takes this test

shows this bias. What you're
seeing is that you're,

you're showing a much smaller bias
then what many other people show.

I'm up here. I make a strong
association between

"male" and "career" and "female" and
"family" even though that's not what I

consciously express.

>>Even though that's
not what you live, huh?

>>And that's not what I live,
but in my world.

And I don't know, I'd be
interested to know. Maybe

many years of working in feminist
causes made you show this lesson.

>>So all those years of working
in feminist causes

didn't manage to totally eliminate my lingering
association between "female" and "family"

and "male" and "career".

What's astonishing though is that
Mahzarin is far worse,

and she's not only enjoying
a very successful career-

she designed the test!

Another of its designers
is Brian Nosek,

who personally developed
the test he's taking now,

intending to reveal hidden
racial prejudice.

>>These are the same faces
you've seen many, many times.

>>Many times, many times. In fact I helped
create the faces, so...

>>The heart of this test is to see whether
it's easier for Brian to match words

or pictures to the pairing
of African American with bad,

and European American with good.

Then when the pairings
are reversed,

European Americans with bad and
African Americans with good.

[quiet]

>>I can predict.
>>Yeah [chuckle]

What do you think?

>>Moderate. Moderate to strong.

>>Yeah, I'll say moderate as well.
>>Yeah.

>>Strong preference for white.
[exclamation of laughter]

>>You've taken this
for the umpteenth time,

and you still haven't caught on
to the fact that you're a little biased?

[laughter]

>>I think part of that is the insistence
that my conscious beliefs still matter.

It isn't that-- that fact that I
keep showing these implicit biases

mean that I'm a biased person so
I should just accept that and move on,

it's that-- no, I don't agree with
those, I do have them

and I will admit to having
those implicit biases

but I'm not going to let that rule
what I would consciously want to have.

>>It really is remarkable that here I am
in Cambridge, Massachusetts--

perhaps the liberal
capitol of the country--

with two academics who pride themselves
on their enlightened attitudes,

only to discover that they
have latent within in them

biases they would fervently deny
if their own test hadn't revealed them.

But all may not be lost.

>>We found in research, and
also in testing of myself,

that if I put myself in a situation where
I think about positive black exemplars--

I think about Michael Jordan
and Colin Powell and people...

Martin Luther King who have had a very positive
impact and who are also African American,

I show much less bias immediately
after thinking about those exemplars

then if I hadn't thought
about them before.

>>Even simple things, like the presence
of an African American experimenter,

reduces race bias. That the presence
of a competent woman,

makes women's attitudes to math
become more positive.

Those kinds of studies

sit, I think, in contradiction the ways
in which people like I thought about this-

we thought they were learned
over long periods of time,

that they were entrenched,
they were rigid, inflexible--

and that does not appear
to be the case,

and I think that that's where
the room for optimism is.

On the one hand, I would like people
to take these data seriously

when we can show the vast numbers
of people who show the bias,

I think we need to contend with that.

On the other hand, what this work
is showing is that it might be

not that hard to shape environments
that can change these,

even automatic kinds of attitudes.

>>You can find out if you harbor unconscious
biases you would deny even to yourself,

by logging on to the
Project Implicit website.

There you'll find tests of attitudes towards
such things as age and religion,

as well as lighter fair like the Harry
Potter movies versus Lord of The Rings.

Give it a try. You may be in for a shock.