Just finished a section on unconscious preference of one race versus another. They reference a Harvard study which claims to be able to measure this type of preference, so I had to check it out. I took the African American - European American Implicit Association demo test and actually wasn't overly surprised that I registered a Moderate automatic preference for European Americans over African Americans.
Like many/most people I know, I don't consider myself a racist... However, I definitely will agree that I have been influenced by some racial programming. As I first learned in Sociology 1A as a college freshman, it is impossible to completely separate the thoughts of the individual from the the thoughts of society. So it's natural for me to hypothesize that this test measures reveals this unconscious programming - instilled by society. The aggregate results (a bell curve) shifted drastically in one direction fit this hypothesis perfectly. Predicting an individual's actions is another story - much more tricky... Perhaps with an understanding of how much that individual rely's on the sub-conscious for certain types of decisions, and the results from the IAT, then some determination could be made. I've been realizing more and more lately that I'm more of a conscious person than most. It's not (at this moment) meant as bragging, but I suppose that's why the results don't bother me too much. I feel that my actions on important topics such as whether or not to hire someone, wouldn't be significantly adversely impacted by this unconscious preference. And unfortunately, although I don't have a strong feel for the numbers, I do often feel in the minority as far as a preference for conscious thought goes. It impacts me in interesting ways - for instance, I have been told by coworkers that there is an impression that I am slow, even though there are many important tasks that I can accomplish in a small fraction of the time of anyone else in the group. I bet that the reason that this isn't a glaring contradiction to them is that they are probably picking up my preference for conscious thought. So, perhaps with more reliance on unconscious thought, it is possible to achieve much faster average responses on a set of decisions, but with the price that the decisions can be swayed by possibly unrelated "automatic preferences". And these preferences aren't nearly as abstract as race - for instance, colleagues often have interesting preferences for things like starting from scratch over extending an existing system, or using new technology over old, and definitely there are unconscious preferences for particular technologies. I need to figure out a better way to bill my strengths though, because "slow" is just not cutting it... Perhaps "thinking out of the box" will work =)
Even if one does not act on this type of unconscious prompting, it definitely has influence... I was amazed at another study, referenced in blink, which found that when quizzing black college students with 20 questions from the GRE, that their scores were cut in half (on average) by asking them first to indicate what race they are. That is intensely disturbing! And they had no understanding of what happened... My emphasis for myself is at least to realize some of the unconscious influences as they impact my decisions. Lately, I have had exposure to a larger number of African Americans, and I actually have noticed a number of interesting unconscious thoughts/impressions bubbling to the surface that I had sort of assumed I didn't have. I don't think they are adversely affecting my actions, but I assume that given the right set of circumstances, they probably could...
Even more interesting than just identifying these types of subconscious society influenced preferences would be research into how this programming could be changed - society wide...
For instance, my impression is that in the US, there is a bias against Polish people as less intelligent than average. Since I am 1/4 Polish, I have read up on the topic a bit, and actually Poland has produced many brilliant scientists - probably more than their share worldwide. I'm sure I'm blood biased, but I really didn't form too much confidence around the idea of polish intelligence until a fair amount of research - including reading James A Mitcher's Poland, studying the discoveries of Polish academics, and meeting people from Poland. My impression of the Polish people, based on this moderate amount of reading is that they are above average on both peacefulness and intelligence. However, I bet that an IAT to determine associations of US society towards Polish intelligence, would show that the predominant opinion is much more in line with the jokes from popular culture.
Perhaps there is a way to shift these impressions... Marketing Hypnosis (ex: coke vs pepsi) does impact us at an unconscious level - perhaps the same approach could be effective for social issues. A problem with existing programs - ex: affirmative action, is that they can be seen as reinforcing the idea that African Americans are not as smart... Getting a black student into college and then having him get 50% of his test questions wrong because of racial priming before the exam doesn't really fix anything...
Related Research that I think would be interesting
- To see how these opinions vary by country. Even though we appear to be moving towards a global society/culture, I bet there would be some interesting findings there. One that I often think about is "entrepreneurial spirit", or the tendency to own one's own business - I know there are significant differences from country to country on that one, and somehow in corporate driven America, I feel like the entrepreneurial spirit is fading. And then comparing that with the stock market and small business performance in that country over a number of years.
- To see how the faces of black celebrities (or look alikes?) fare... Is this effect really race specific, or are there ways to tweak the results? For example, if using scary looking white faces and friendly and/or famous/respected looking black faces skews the results in favor of African Americans, what would that mean? Could it diminish the significance of the "automatic preference"?
- There are also interesting studies that could be done on how individual experiences play into mix. For example, blink references a speed dating study, where people changed what they said they were looking for based on who they met. And I have noticed in friends that a very small set of experiences can reinforce a popular stereotype. Before that experience they can seem totally open-minded, but then one bad experience can cause them to switch entirely. Something along the lines of, "well I gave them a chance, and it didn't work out... the popular opinion must be right about x". Teaching people how to avoid that type of "bad statistics prejudice" might be a useful thing also.
- For example, it would be interesting to ask of a person's top 10 friends, how many of them are African American and see how that changes the results.
I will have to finish the book... I imagine he offers some practical suggestions in later sections.
