Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

Implicit bias is a kind of distorting lens that’s a product of both the architecture of our brain and the disparities in our society.

We all have ideas about race, even the most open-minded among us. Those ideas have the power to bias our perception, our attention, our memory, and our actions—all despite our conscious awareness or deliberate intentions. Our ideas about race are shaped by the stereotypes to which we are exposed on a daily basis. And one of the strongest stereotypes in American society associates blacks with criminality.

For nearly fifty years, scientists have been documenting the fact that people are much better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of other races—a finding dubbed the “other-race effect.”

That cringe-worthy expression “They all look alike” has long been considered the province of the bigot. But it is actually a function of biology and exposure. Our brains are better at processing faces that evoke a sense of familiarity.

Our experiences in the world seep into our brain over time, and without our awareness they conspire to reshape the workings of our mind.

we label the beliefs we have about social groups “stereotypes” and the attitudes we have about them “prejudice.”

So, for example, simply seeing a black person can automatically bring to mind a host of associations that we have picked up from our society: this person is a good athlete, this person doesn’t do well in school, this person is poor, this person dances well, this person lives in a black neighborhood, this person should be feared. The process of making these connections is called bias. It can happen unintentionally. It can happen unconsciously. It can happen effortlessly. And it can happen in a matter of milliseconds. These associations can take hold of us no matter our values, no matter our conscious beliefs, no matter what kind of person we wish to be in the world.

“confirmation bias.” People tend to seek out and attend to information that already confirms their beliefs. We find such information more trustworthy and are less critical of it, even when we are presented with credible, seemingly unassailable facts that suggest otherwise. Once we develop theories about how things operate, that framework is hard to dislodge.

Bias, even when we are not conscious of it, has consequences that we need to understand and mitigate. The stereotypic associations we carry in our heads can affect what we perceive, how we think, and the actions we take.

I often left the meetings feeling exhausted by the raw wash of emotions: the anger, fear, hopelessness, and resentment that so many people feel. They’re frustrated because they believe officers don’t bother to build relationships with them. They’re frustrated that they feel they can’t call the police for help without worrying that they’ll be handcuffed and hauled off to jail. They feel abandoned, belittled, demonized.

When people focus on not seeing color, they may also fail to see discrimination.

Most trainers in the business today are not scientists trying to solve the mysteries of the mind but entrepreneurs trying to deliver a message and sell a product that is in high demand.