Subliminal

champion the underprivileged. Consider this quote by a famed advocate for equality:

Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir [black African] … whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.²¹

That was Mahatma Gandhi. Or consider the words of Che Guevara, a revolutionary who, according to Time magazine, left his native land “to pursue the emancipation of the poor of the earth” and helped overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.²² What did this Marxist champion of poor oppressed Cubans think of the poor blacks in the United States? He said, “The Negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.”²³ And how about this famous advocate for civil rights:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality … and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

That was Abraham Lincoln in a debate at Charlestown, Illinois, in 1858. He was incredibly progressive for his time but still believed that social, if not legal, categorization would forever endure. We’ve made progress. Today in many countries it is difficult to imagine a serious candidate for national political office voicing views such as Lincoln’s—or if he did, at least he wouldn’t be considered the pro–civil rights candidate. Today culture has evolved to the point where most people feel it is wrong to willfully cheat someone out of an opportunity because of character traits we infer from their category identity. But we are only beginning to come to grips with unconscious bias.

Unfortunately, if science has recognized unconscious stereotyping, the law has not. In the United States, for example, individuals claiming discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin must prove not only that they were treated differently but that the discrimination was purposeful. No doubt discrimination often is purposeful. There will always be people like the Utah employer who consciously discriminated against women and was quoted in court as having said, “Fucking women, I hate having fucking women in the office.”²⁴ It is relatively easy to address discrimination by people who preach what they practice. The challenge science presents to the legal community is to move beyond that, to address the more difficult issue of unconscious discrimination, of bias that is subtle and hidden even from those who exercise it.

We can all personally fight unconscious bias, for research has shown that our tendency to categorize people can be influenced by our conscious goals. If we are aware of our bias and motivated to overcome it, we can. For example, studies of criminal trials reveal one set of circumstances in which people’s bias regarding appearance is routinely overcome. In particular, it has long been known that people’s attributions of guilt and recommendations of punishment are subliminally influenced by the looks of the defendant.²⁵ But: typically, more attractive defendants receive more lenient treatment only when accused of minor crimes such as traffic infractions or swindles, and not with regard to more serious crimes like murder. Our unconscious judgment, which relies heavily on the categories to which we assign people, is always competing with our more deliberative and analytical conscious thought, which may see them as individuals. As these two sides of our minds battle it out, the degree to which we view a person as an individual versus a generic group member can vary on a sliding scale. That’s what seems to be happening in criminal trials. Serious crimes usually involve longer, more detailed examination of the defendant, with more at stake, and the added conscious focus seems to outweigh the attractiveness bias.

The moral of the story is that if we wish to overcome unconscious bias, it requires effort. A good way to start is by taking a closer look at those we are judging, even if they are not on trial for murder but, instead, are simply asking for a job or a loan—or our vote. Our personal knowledge of a specific member of a category can easily override our category bias, but more important, over time repeated contact with category members can act as an antidote to the negative traits society assigns to people in that category.

I recently had my eyes opened to the way experience can trump bias. It happened after my mother moved into an assisted living center. Her cohorts there are mainly around ninety. Since I have had little exposure to large numbers of people that age, I initially viewed all of them as alike: white hair, slouched posture, tethered to their walkers. I figured that if they’d ever held a job, it must have been building the pyramids. I saw them not as individuals but, rather, as exemplars of their social stereotype, assuming they were all (except my mother, of course) rather dim and feebleminded and forgetful.

My thinking changed abruptly one day in the dining room, when my mother remarked that on the afternoons when the hairdresser visited the assisted living center, she felt pain and dizziness as she leaned her head back to have her hair washed. One of my mother’s friends said that this was a very bad sign. My initial thoughts were dismissive: What does she mean by a bad sign? Is that an astrological prediction? But the friend went on to explain that my mother’s complaints were the classic symptoms of an occluded carotid artery, which could lead to a stroke, and urged that she see her physician about it. My mother’s friend wasn’t just a ninety-year-old; she was a doctor. And as I got to know others in the home, over time, I started to see ninety- year-olds as varied and unique characters, with many different talents, none of which related to the pyramids.

The more we interact with individuals and are exposed to their particular qualities, the more ammunition our minds have to counteract our tendency to stereotype, for the traits we assign to categories are products not just of society’s assumptions but of our own experience. I didn’t take the IAT before and after, but my guess is that my implicit prejudice concerning the very old has been considerably reduced.

IN THE 1980S, scientists in London studied a seventy-seven-year-old shopkeeper who had had a stroke in the lower part of his occipital lobe.²⁶ His motor system and memory were unaffected, and he retained good speaking and visual skills. For the most part he seemed cognitively normal, but he did have one problem. If shown two objects that had the same function but were not identical—say, two different trains, two brushes, or two jugs—he could not recognize the connection between them. He could not tell, even, that the letters a and A meant the same thing. As a result, the patient reported great difficulty in everyday life, even when attempting simple tasks such as setting the table. Scientists say that without our ability to categorize we would not have survived as a species, but I’ll go further: without that ability, one could hardly survive even as an individual. In the previous pages, we’ve seen that categorization, like many of our unconscious mental processes, has both up- and downsides. In the next chapter, we’ll find out what happens when we categorize ourselves, when we define ourselves as being connected, by some trait, to certain other individuals. How does that affect the way we view and treat those within our group and those on the outside?

CHAPTER 8 In-Groups and Out-Groups The dynamics of us and them … the science behind Lord of the Flies

All groups… develop a way of living with characteristic codes and beliefs.

—GORDON ALLPORT

THE CAMP WAS in a densely wooded area in southeastern Oklahoma, about seven miles from the nearest town. Hidden from view by heavy foliage and ringed by a fence, it was situated in the midst of a state park called Robbers Cave. The park got its name because Jesse James had once used it as a hideout, and it was still an ideal place to hole up if being left undisturbed was a priority. There were two large cabins inside the perimeter, separated by rough terrain and out of sight and hearing both from any road and from each other. In the 1950s, before cell phones and before the Internet, this was enough to ensure their occupants’ isolation. At ten-thirty on the night of the raid, the inhabitants of one of those cabins darkened their faces and arms with dirt, then quietly made their way through the forest to the other cabin and, while its occupants slept, entered through the unlocked door. The intruders were angry and out for revenge. They were eleven years old.