Reading between the Lines: Uncovering Unconscious Bias

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Reading between the Lines Uncovering Unconscious
Bias

• john a. powell
• Williams Chair in Civil Rights Civil Liberties,
  Moritz College of Law
• Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
  and Ethnicity

September 30, 2009 Los Angeles, California
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Presentation Overview

• Unconscious networks
• Implicit Association
• Implicit Bias
• Priming
• Race-Neutrality?
• Additional Links

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The Conscious Unconscious Mind

• 2 of emotional cognition is available to us
  consciously
• If messages about race are not framed in terms
  that address conscious networks, unconscious
  attitudes will triumph
• Racial bias tends to reside more in the
  unconscious network
• You want to appeal to the level of consciousness
  that activates the right emotions.

Source Drew Westen, The Political Brain
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Our Unconscious Networks

• What colors are the following lines of text?

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Our Unconscious Networks

• What colors are the following lines of text?

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Our Unconscious Networks

• What colors are the following lines of text?

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Our Unconscious Networks

• What colors are the following lines of text?

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Our Unconscious Networks

• What colors are the following lines of text?

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Implicit Association

• How we behave often hinges on factors of which we
  are unaware
• Peoples minds operate through schemas
• Schemas are simply templates of knowledge that
  help us organize specific examples into broad
  categories.
• The schemas we use to categorize people are
  called stereotypes
• Stereotyping and prejudice are not the same

Source http//americansforamericanvalues.org/unco
nsciousbias/
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Implicit Association and Bias

• Both history and societal factors play a crucial
  role in providing the content of schemas, which
  are programmed through culture, media, and the
  material context.
• Implicit bias lives within our schemas
• Bias doesnt make you prejudiced it makes you a
  person

Source http//americansforamericanvalues.org/unco
nsciousbias/
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Implicit Bias The Shooter Game

• In a video-game experiment, images of suspects -
  both armed and unarmed, black and white flash
  rapidly on a monitor. Within a split-second,
  subjects must decide whether to shoot.
• Participants must assess whether the man in each
  picture is carrying a gun. Within 850
  milliseconds they must press one key to shoot or
  another to leave the figure unharmed.
• After repeated experimentation, peoples
  mistakes, although rare, follow a pattern
• They shoot more unarmed blacks than unarmed
  whites
• They fail to shoot more whites than blacks are
  holding weapons.

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What Would You Do?
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Implicit Association Test
https//implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
http//thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/
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Implicit Bias Unconscious Modeling
The Kanizsa Triangle
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Implicit Bias Unconscious Modeling
The Ponzo Illusion
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Awareness Test
Source http//www.youtube.com/watch?vyrqrkihlw-s

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Priming

• Our environment affects our unconscious networks
• Priming activates mental associations
• Telling someone a scary story activates a frame
  of fear
• Claude Steeles stereotype threat
• For example, tell students about to take a test
  that Asian students tend to do better than
  whites, and the whites will perform significantly
  worse than if they had not been primed to think
  of themselves as less capable than Asians.

Source http//www.eaop.ucla.edu/0405/Ed18520-Spr
ing05/Week_6_May9_2005.pdf
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Race-Neutrality?

• Given the forces of implicit bias, framing, and
  priming, race neutrality is neither reasonable
  nor effective
• It is important to understand implicit bias and
  how it operates in order to understand how it
  affects our society

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www.KirwanInstitute.org
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Links

• http//americansforamericanvalues.org/
• https//implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
• Examples of priming
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vyrqrkihlw-s
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vFqGqGwRaILg