Nae a SLs Ne kona LETS oR olsl3 Cee ae Sea OES 4 RUB oom sie cm lac] eer cao ran lel aerelt exe} not. 2 Jo, are you OOS OU Cea a ae aR rag Feri“YOU'RE NOT, LIKE, 2 coxa! :acist bastard,” David Amodio tells me. He pauses. “Today. T'm sitting in the soft-spoken cognit sts spotless office nested within New York University’s psychology department, but it fels lke Pm a the doctor’, geting a dreaded ci sis, On his giant monitor, Amodio shows me 3 big, blob of data, «cluster of points depicting where people score on the Implicit Association Test. The test measures racial prejudices that we cannot consciously conttol. I've taken it thre times now. This ime around my uncontelled prejudice, while clearly present, has come in significantly be- low the average for white people like me. That certainly beats the fist time I took the wt cline, on the website UnderstandingPrejudice org. That time, my results showed strong auto- mati preference” for European Americans over ‘African Americans, That was not 2 good thing to hear, but it's extremely common~S1 percent of online test takers show moderate to strong bis Taking the ar, one ofthe most popular tools among researchers trying to understand racism and prejudice, is bth extremely simple and pretty traumatic, The test asks you to rapicly categorize images of faces as either “Affican American” or “European American” while you sso categorize words (ike "evil" happy," “awl,” and “peace") her “good! or “bad.” Faces and words flash on the ren, nd you tap ey, a fasts youcan, which category is appropriate you'r asked to sort ican American faces and “good” words ro one se ofthe sreen ther ies, black fees are to be sorted with “bad” words. As words and faces keep flashing by, you serugle not to make too many sorting mistakes, ‘And then suddenly, you have a horrible realiza- tion, When black faces and “bad” words are pated together, you fe] yourself becoming asterin your categortingan indication thatthe 680 are easily linkedin your min ¥ bike going downhill,” Amodio says, feel yourself going fs this not how Iwan other response option.” You think of yourself who sive 1 be unprejudice, ontrl these split second reactions As the milseconds ae being tk lied up, yousknow thetalethey'ltell: When negative words and blackface are paired together, you're a beter, faster categorizes. Which soggests that 13 cially biased messages ffom the cultuee around you Je shaped the very wing of your brain IWENT TO NYU 60 learn what psychologists could tell me about racial prejudice in the wake of the shooting of a black te by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri We may never really know the exact seq} events and assumptions that led to the moment when Brown, unarmed and, according to wit nesses, with his hands in the ai, was shot multiple times. But the incident isthe latest embodiment of America’s racial paradox: On the one hand, overt expressions of prejudice have grown markedly less common than they were in the Archie Bunker era ‘We elected, and reelected, a black president. In many parts of the country, hardly anyone bats an eye at interracial relationships. Most people do not consider racial hostility acceptable. That's why it was so shocking when Los Angeles Clip: pers owner Donald Sterling was caught telling his _gilfiend not to bring black people to games—and ‘why those comments led the nba to ban Sterling for life. And yet, the killings of Michael Brown, Jordan Davis, Renisha MeBride, Trayvon Martin, and so many others remind us that we a prejudice-fee society Science offers an explanation his para dox-albeit a very uncomfortable one. An im pressive body of psy. arch suggests that the men who killed Brown and Martin need not have been conscious, overt racists to do what they did (though they may have been). The same goes for the crowds that flock to support the shooter each time these tragedies become public, or the birthers whose racially tinged conspiracy theories paint President Obama as a usurper. These peaple who voice mind-bogal wile swearing they're not racist at all-they make sause the paradigm for under- standing prejudice has evolved. There need to be intent, doesn’t need toa be de: there could even be desire in the opposite direc: tion,” explains University of Virginia psycholo 1 Brian Nosek, a prominent 1aT researc "But biased results c The tat is the most famous demonstration of this realty, but it's just one of many similar tools, Through them, psychologists have chased preiu ice back to its lir—the human brain, We're not bom with racial prepudices. We may save been “taught” them. Rather, ex plains Nosek, prejudice draws on “many of the same tools that help our minds figure out what's good and what's bad.” In evolutionary terms, it’s still occur.”efficient to quickly classify a grizzly bear as "dangezous." The trouble comes when the ‘brain uses similar processes to form nega- tive views about groups of people. But here's the good news: Research sug- gests that once we understand the psycho: logical pathways that lead to prejudice, we just might be able to train our brains t0 g0 in the opposite direction DOG, CAT. HOT, COLD. Black, white. Male, female. We constantly cat egorize, We have to, Sorting anything from furniture to animals vo concepts into diferent filing folders inside our brains is something that happens automatically, and it helps us function. In fact, categorizae tion has an evolutionary purpose: Assum- ing that all mushrooms are poisonous, that all lions want o eat you, is avery effective way of coping with your surroundings. Forget being nuanced about nonpoison- ‘ous mushrooms and occasionally nonhun- any lions-certitude keeps you safe Bus a particular way of categorizing can be inaccurate, and those false categories can lead to prejudice and stereotyping. Much psychological research into bias has for cused on how people “essentalize” certain categories, which boils down to assuming that these categories have an underlying nature that sted to inherent and iment table qualities. Like the broader sorting ‘mechanism of categorization, an essentiale ist cognitive "style” emerges very early in our development and may to some extent bbe hardwired. Psychologist Susan Gelman of the University of Michigan explains it this way: The category of “things that are white” is not essentialized. It simply con- tains anything that happens to share the attribute of "white": ea, pain, paper, and so on. There's nothing deep that unites the members ofthis category. But now consider white and black pop Like other human attributes (gender, age, and sexual orientation, for example), race tends to be strongly-and inaccurately= essentilized, This means that when you think of people in that category, you rap- ily or even automatically come up with assumptions about their characteristics characteristics that your brain perceives as ‘unchanging and often rooted in biology. Common stereotypes with the category “African Americans," for example, in- clude “loud,” “good dancers" and “good 26 MOTHER joes | anvanwsennanr a0 The Truth About Cats and Dogs ‘When shown these images, some children insist that the ast one is stillacat. at sports.” (One recent study found that white people also tend to essentialize AF tican Americans as magical-test subjects associated black faces with words like paranormal” and "spiti.”) OF course, these assumptions are false. Indeed, es: sentialism about any group of people is dabious—women are not innately gentle, ld people are not inherently feeblemind ed-and when it comes to race, the idea of deep and fundamental differences has been roundly debunked by scientist Even people who know that essential= iting race is wrong can’t help absorbing the stereotypes that are pervasive in our culture. But essentials thinking vaties greatly between individuals. It’s kind of ike neurosis: We all havea litle bie, but in some people it's much more pronounced. In national polls, for example, fewer and fewer Americans admit openly to holding racist views. But when told to rate various groups with questions like, "Do people in these groups tend to be unintelligent or tend to be intelligent?” more than half of those asked exhibited strong bias against African Americans. Even the labels we use seem to affect our level of prejudice: Another study found tha test subjects as- sociated the term “black” with more negi- tive attributes-such as low socioeconomic stacus-than “Aftican Ametcan.” (One of the earliest and most insightful researchers on these varying rates of bias was Else Frenkel-Brunswik, part of « pior neeting generation of post’ World War IL psychologists who sought to understand ‘why some people seem to find prejudiced and fascist ideas so appealing, Born in 1908, toa Jewish family in whats now Ukraine, Frenkel-Brunswik might never have man: aged to do her research a all had she not twice escaped the forces of prejudice her self. When she was young, 21914 pogrom forced her family to fee to Vienna. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, she sought refuge inthe United States Frenkel-Brunswi’s work came long be- fore the days of high-tech tools like eye trackers and computer games that measuze bias based on millisecond differences be- tween reactions. Instead she used some- thing far simpler: cards. She studied young children, some of ‘whom she had previously documented to be highly prejudiced and ethnocentric. In ‘one of many experiments, Fenkel-Brunswik showed the children a sequence of cards similar tothe ones on this page. On the first card the animal is clearly and dstinedy ‘at, On the ast card, i just as clearly and distinctly a dog. But in between, the cat slosely transforms into the dog. ‘At each of the stages, the children were asked to identify the animal on the card. Among the more prejudiced childen, Frenkel-Brunswik noted something stik- ing: As the image became increasingly ambiguous, “there was a greater reluctance to give up the original object about which ‘one ha felt telatvey certain, tendency not to see what did not harmonize with the first set as well asa shying away from ‘tansitional sofations.” In other words, for these children twas much harder o let g0 ‘of the idea that a cat was act, ‘What Frenkel-Bronswik realized back in 1949, modem research reaffirms. The Implicit Association Test, afterall, boils down to how your mind automaticallylinks certain categories. “I's really how strongly you associate your category of “black people’ with the category of ‘good things’ or ‘bad things," David Amodio told me. "The capacity to discern us from ‘them is fumdamental in the human brain,” he wrote in a 2014 paper. Although this computation takes just 3 fraction of second, it sets the stage for so cial categorization, stereotypes, prejudices, intergroup conflict and inequality, and, at the extremes, war and genocide.” Call it the banality of prejudice THE PROCESS OF categorizing the world obviously includes identifying the group or groups to which you belong. And thar’ where the next psychological factor underpinning prejudice emerges. Much has found that humans ate tribal creatures, showing strong bias against those we perceive as different from us and fa itism toward those we pesceive as similar. In fact, we humans will divide ourselves into in-groups and out-groups even when the perceived differences hetween the specific groups are completely arbieeary in one classic study, subjects are asked 10 rate how much they like a large series of paintings, some of which are described as belonging to the "Red!" artistic school and others to the “Green” school. Then. participants are sorted into two groups, red or green—not based on their favoring cone school of painting, as they are made to think, but actually at random. In subse quent tasks, people consistently show fix vortism toward the arbitrary color group to which they are assigned. When asked to allocate money to other participants, the majority of “reds” more generously find other reds~despite the fact that they have never actually met them, The same goes for “greens.” 1¢ upshot of such “minimal group" iments is that if you give people the slightest push toward behaving tribally, they happily comply. So iface isthe basis 72s ate identified, expect ser con which 1 ous problems [As these experiments suggest, shat we are either prejudiced or unpreju- diced, period. Rather, we are more and less prejudiced, based on our upbringings and experiences but aso on a variety of tempo- nary ional prompts (lke being told ‘we're on the green team), st, it is not One simple, evolutionary explanation explains, amygdala firing can translate into for out innate tendency toward tribalism anything from “less direct eye gaze and is safery in numbers. You're mote likely to more social distance” to literal fear and. survive an attack from a marauding tribe vigilance toward those of other races. if you join forces with your buddies. And primal fear of those not inthe ingroup WE'WESEENHOW 2 vases ofcogni: tls sem closely ied to racial bias Amo tive behaviors feed into preudice. But you know what will relly blow your mind? The do's research suggests that one key area as vay that prejudice the cognitive sociated with prejudice isthe amygdala, a styles that underlie i) can interfere with how small and evolutionarily ancient region in the mide of the brain that ‘our brains function~ofien for the worse Consider, for instanc for triggering the notorious response. In interacial situations, Amodio mit Tadmot, a psychologist What? Me? Racist? remaie ont ‘More than amition ta people have tested thei ow radial prejudice usingan age ire | imple association Test, 7 Mast groups’ average scares fal between slight" and "moderate | among groupsare riguing. (higher score indicatesa stronger bias favoring whi people; a negative score indicates bas favoring Educational Level Sore high schoo! | vighicholgracuste "ome clege | | achlors degre wasters degre | Mo mo key ° ‘ » oe “0 5 sitleornobias Political identification 15-35 sight bias steongy converte 35.65 moderte bias Mederstey consent Sighisoara Aftican Americans) Strong tera enaty sone te| . ee Race categeris are thoseSchool of Business at Tel Aviv University. In one 2013 paper, Tadmor and her col- leagues showed that racial prejudice can playa directand causal role in making peo- ple less creative, We're not talking about autistic creativity here, but more like see ing beyond the constraints of uaditional ‘ategories~"thinking ouside the box.” Taimor’s team fits uncovered a simple positive conelation between one’s incli- nation to endorse an essentialist view of race (like associating racial differences with abilities and personality tats) and ‘one's creativity. To measure the later, the researchers used a simple open-ended test in which individuals are asked to list as many possible uses ofa brick as they can think of People who can think outside of traditional categories-realizing that a brick can be used for many things other than buildings ft can make a good paper- weight, for starters)~score better. This study showed that people who essential- ied racial categories tended to have fewer innovative ideas about a brick. But that was just the beginning, Next, a new set of research subjects read ex says that described race either as a fun- damental difference between people (an essentialist positon) or asa construct, not reflecting anything more than skin-deep differences (a nonessentialist position) After reading the essays, the subjects moved on toa dificult creativity test that requires you to identify the one key word that unites three seemingly unassociated words. Thus, for instance, if you ae given the words “call,” “pay,” and “line,” the coreec answers “phone.” Remarkably, subjects who'd read the nonessentiaist essay about race fated considerably better on the creativity text. Their mean score was a fll point-or 32 percent—higher than it was for those who read the essentialist essay Tvs not ike the people inthis study were selected because oftheir preexisting racial prejudices. They weren't. Instead, merely a temporary exposure to esentalist thinking seemed to hamper their cognitive fexbi- ity. “Essentials appears wo exert its nega tive effects on creativity not through what people think but How they think,” con- clude Tadmor and her colleagues. That's because, they add, “stereoryping and cre- ative stagnation are rooted in a similar tendency to overrely on existing category 28 MOTHER JONES | anuanuteenvaty 31s attributes.” Those quick-judgment skills that allowed us to survive on the savanna? Not always helpfal in modem life So, yes: Prejudice and essentialism are bad for your brain-if you value creative thinking, anyway. But they can also be downright dangerous. ‘At NYU, David Amodio sat me down to take another tes called the Weapons Identi> fication Task. had no idea what I as in for. In this test, ike on the wr, you have two buttons that you can push. Images flash rapidly on the screen, and your task isto push the left shift key if you see a tool a ‘wrench, or2 power drill, say) and the right shift key ifyou see a gun. You have to go super fast-ifyou don't respond within half «second, the screen blares at you, in giant red letees, “TOO SLOW.” “It does that to keep you from thinking too much,” Amodio would later explain. But it’s not just guns and tools flashing fon the screen: Before each object you see 4 face, ether white or black. The faces ap- pear fora split second, the objects for 8 split second, and then you have to press a key. Ifyou are faster and more accurate at identifying guns after you see a black face than after you see a white face, that would suggest your brain associates guns (and threat) more with the former. You sight also be more inclined to wrongly think you seea gun, when i's actually just a tool, right after seeing a black face. (The weapons task was created by psychologist Keith Payne of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in response to the tragic 1999 death of Amadou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant shot by New York City police afier the officers mistook the wallet in his hand fora weapon.) I'm sorry to ruin the suspense: I don’t know what my score wason the Weapons Identification Task. The test euffled me so much that messed up badly. It is stessfel to have to answer quickly to avoid being rebuked by the game. And it’s even more ‘upsetting to realize that you've just “seen” a gun that wasn’t actually ther, right after «black face flashed. This happened to me several times, and then I suddenly found myself get- ting "TOO SLOW" messages whenever the object to be identified was gun, This went on for many minutes and numerous trials, For a while, I thought the test was broken, Bt it wasn’t [finaly realized that rather than pressing the right shift key, 1 hhad somehow started pressing the enter kkey whenever T thought I saw a gun. I's almost like I'd subconsciously decided to stop making “gun” choices at all. (Psycho. analyze that) But don’t take that asa cop-out: Before | (arguably) tried to dadge responsibility by pressing the wrong key, I cleerly showed implicit bias. And it was horrifying. THE UPSHOT OF ali of this research. is that in order to rid the world of preju- dice, we can't simply snuff out overt, con- scious, fall-throated racism. Nor can we fundamentally remake the human brain, with its rapid-fire associations and its cat egorizing, essentializing, and groupish tendencies. Instead, the key lies in shifting people's behavior, even as we also make them aware of how cultural assumptions merge with natural cognitive processes to munites-thus making i ss ike fr a co- altional experience to change their biases, So how do we break the cycle? We could requir lawmakers to engage in exercises to recognize their own unconscious preju dice like the Fair and Impartial Policing program does, Or we could even go a step farther and anonymize emails they receive from constituents-thus taking implicit bias out of the equation. Shot of hat, you can da something very simple to fight prejudice: Trick your brain. ‘UNc-Chapel Hill’ Payne suggests that by deliberately thinking a thoughe that is di rectly counter to widespread stereotypes, you can break normal patterns of asso- ciation, What counts as countrsteteotypi= cal? Well, Payne's study found that when research subjects were instructed to think the word “safe” whenever they saw a blake face—undermining the stereotypical associa: tion between black people and danger-they were 10 percent less likely than those in a control group to misidentify a gun in the ‘Weapons Identification Task. Tobesure,itwill take more than thought ‘exercises to erase the deep tracks of prejtr dice America has carved through the gen erations. But consciousness and awareness area startand the psychological research is nothing if not a consciousness-raser Taking the tar made me realize that we can't just draw some atbitrary line between prejudiced people and unprejudiced peo- ple, and declare ourselves to be on the side of the angels. Biases have slipped into al of our brains. And that means we all have 2 responsibly to recognize those biases~ and work to change them. ana eanuane 2098 | MOTHER JONES 62