Gladwell applies the cognitive perspective of psychology to his book through his explanations of how different situations use the cognitive method of “Thin-slicing.” He describes “Thin-slicing” as “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience” (Gladwell, 2014, p. 23). The application of “Thin-slicing” is chronicled in how Thomas Hoving and other art experts instinctively knew the Getty Museum’s kouros was fake and in how Lee Goldman developed a heuristic for examining whether patients’ chest pains were indicators of a heart attack or some other ailment. Thomas Hoving’s use of “Thin-slicing” occurred in his thought process when he was examining the Getty kouros. He explains …show more content…
76). The Warren Harding error explains how making a snap judgment based on the implicit associations made between our expectations and the appearance of a person can lead us to faulty judgments. The social perspective implications of the Warren Harding error come from how the error “is at the root of a good deal of prejudice and discrimination” (Gladwell, 2014, p. 76). The associations we learn to make between people and the stereotypes we are exposed to by society develop implicit prejudice in our cognition. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) tests measures the strength of these implicit associations to reveal how much they affect our beliefs and behavior. On a racial IAT, “more than 80% of all those who have ever taken the test end up having pro-white associations” (Gladwell, 2014, p. 84), meaning a lot of people have an unconscious bias toward white people. Through this unconscious bias, the Warren Harding error can affect how we impulsively favor white people over black people in job interviews or who we view as a crime suspect. To learn to overcome this bias and improve scores on the racial IAT, we need to immerse ourselves in media and culture that celebrate the positive aspects of black people. Gladwell (2014) explains: “Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our …show more content…
For example, an experiment by Ian Ayres involving how car dealers sell to different types of people shows an implicit prejudice of car salesmen. Ayres sent white men, black men, white women, and black women to go to 242 dealership and bargain with a dealer on the price of a car for up to 40 minutes. The results of the experiment revealed that “after lengthy negotiations, Ayres’s black men still ended up with a price that was nearly $800 higher than Ayres’s white men were offered without having to say a word” (Gladwell, 2014, p. 93). The experiment revealed how car dealers used stereotypes from their implicit prejudice to create assumptions of their customers, charging them more or less for the car based on their race and gender. Gladwell (2014) explains this processing saying, “Most salespeople are prone to a classic Warren Harding error. They see someone, and somehow they let the first impression they have about that person’s appearance drown out every other piece of information they manage to gather in that first instant” (p. 91). Part of this erroneous “Thin-slicing” includes falling on stereotypes perpetuated by society, stored as implicit associations in our
The power of stereotypes stored in the brain was a daunting thought. This information enlightened me about the misconceptions we carry from our cultural experiences. Also, it startled me that according to (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) “those who showed high levels of White Preference on the IAT test were also those who are most likely to show racially discriminatory behavior,” (pg. 47). I reflected on this information, and it concerned me that my judgments were simply based on past cultural experiences. This mindbug was impacting my perception of someone before I even had a chance to know him.
Some common ethnic stereotypes are derived out of implicit social cognition, also known as implicit bias. The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity defines implicit bias in their report titled, “Understanding Implicit Bias”. “… Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that effect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner” (“Understanding Implicit Bias”). Stereotypes from implicit bias contrast with others because they are created in one’s subconscious, not necessarily from a palpable event or reason. Implicit biases can become rooted in a person’s subconscious in several different manners. “In addition to early life experiences, the media and news programming are often-cited origins of implicit associations,” says the Kirwan Institute (“Understanding Implicit Bias”). The manner in which the American media portrays specific groups of people influence the implicit biases of the American people. These biases causes people to have feelings or attitudes about other races, ethnicities, age groups, and appearances (“Understanding Implicit
Ever since the end of racial segregation, Americans have struggled with equality and have been caught between racial tensions and incidences that portray racial prejudice in the existing society. Sociologists and physiologist Anthony Greenwald with two of his other colleagues designed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) that evaluates the autonomic associations individuals have based on their reactions towards certain topics such as race. I recently took the test and the results were absolutely not surprising to me. According to the results of the IAT the following percentages depict the percentage of test takers’ autonomic preferences to either black or white: 48% have a strong autonomic preference to whites, 13 % moderate to white, 12 % slight preference to whites, 12% little or no preference to whites, 6 % slight preference to black, 4 % moderate preference to black and 6 % Strong automatic preference for Black people. The test portrayed me as having no automatic preference between white or black; which is true based on my experiences. As I grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, my association towards whites was that of wealth because the only white people who would come to Kenya
The Project Implicit, Harvard Education is a non-profit organization that seeks to collect data on an individual’s subconscious chooses. The test that I took was the Race IAT (Implicit Association Test), which measures and shows an individual’s implicit belief and attitudes that one may not be unwilling to admit that they have (Teachman, Nock, 2011). So, this test was an attempt to see if I have biases that I do not really know about. This is interesting and scary at the same time. To have someone basically interpret your thoughts through a series of unrelated responses.
Stereotypes can be defined as sweeping generalizations about members of a certain race, religion, gender, nationality, or other group. They are made everyday in almost every society. We develop stereotypes when we are unable or unwilling to obtain all the information we would need to make fair judgments about people or situations. By stereotyping, we assume that a person or group has certain characteristics. Quite often, we develop these ideas about people who are members of groups with which we have not had firsthand contact. Stereotyping usually leads to unfair results, such as discrimination, racial profiling, and unnecessary violence, all behaviors which need to be stopped.
I chose to participate in two IAT tests on the Project Implicit website. The website states Project Implicit was started by Tony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji as a way to virtually perform scientific testing. Project Implicit is a non-profit dedicated to exploring unconscious bias. The tests I took from the site focused on automatic preference of the elderly or young and gay or straight people. Each test required me to sort pictures and phrases using the “E” and “I” key. The first groupings were between the two groups of people, followed by two sets of words labeled “good” and bad”. After completing those two sets, groupings were combined and switched. For example, the first group was elderly and good words. The second round grouped elderly and bad words. At the end, results determined the group I was more inclined to.
Additional studies, such as those by Bargh and Pietromonaco’s study (1982) which focused on non-conscious priming. In Study 3, both high- and low-prejudice people increased negative ratings when valenced stereotype content was also primed. Lepore & Brown, 1997. The general aim of these three studies by Lepore & Brown, was to assess the possible flexibility among categorization, stereotyping and prejudice.
The first Implicit Association Test (IAT) that I took was whether I had a preference for Young people compared to Old people. I chose this IAT because I initially thought that I would have no preference for Young or Old people. Though, I knew I would have some mistakes, I still expected my results to have an equal preference for both young or old people. In addition, this IAT used four categories. The first two categories were images of either a Young or and Old face and the other two categories were the words good or bad. The good or bad categories has at least five words listed.
Abercrombie states that the human brain plays an active role in shaping the information presented to us, based on one’s past experiences. Kahneman claims that the human mind uses two systems of thinking, System 1 and System 2, where System 2 is more active and effortful than System 1. I attempt to illustrate how Abercrombie and Kahneman's ideal concepts of the perception of reality are applicable to real situations, by referring to the following three readings: Jung’s “The Personal and the Collective Unconscious,” Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” and Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The three readings relate to Abercrombie and Kahneman, considering the overlapping concepts of reality, that words and metaphors structure our understanding of what is real, reality can be altered from different perspectives, and that ignorance can actually be bliss.
Implicit Bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions unconsciously. (Kirwan, 2015) The implicit bias, which includes both favorable and unfavorable being personal, are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or voluntary control. The implicit interaction subconscious
The creation of the implicit associations test was to find out if there is a way to determine if it is possible to actually know the inner feelings that someone has, but that they may not be able or willing to report. It may also be a way for someone to determine if their explicit attitudes line up with their implicit attitudes and be able to know themselves a little better than they did before. Before taking the tests, I decided which four that I felt had the most relevance towards myself. I chose one based on my preferences for religion because I consider myself a religious person and have respect and an interest in religious teachings. Two of the tests I chose were based on that I am, ever so slightly, part of that race; The Asian and Native American IAT. The fourth and final test I chose was the weapons IAT and I ch...
“vulnerable to manipulate” and that it is “more often than not a willful ignorance and acceptance of stereotypes.” Bissoondath’s article discusses through examples of two men who are very friendly, who make unconscious insensitive remarks that are based on stereotypes. He also goes on to describe
The IAT (Implicit Associations Test) is a test designed by Harvard to prove that implicit associations exist, despite our personal desire to insist that they do not. Implicit associations are involuntary connotations of objects or concepts that we hold but may not be aware of. Therefore, implicit associations are created through socialization, which is a process in which an individual learns and recreates skills, knowledge, values, motives, and roles appropriate to their position or group in society. Social cognition is how we interpret and apply information about other people which can be modified by implicit associations, but can also determine implicit associations.
According to Devine (1989), automatic processing involves the unconscious retrieval of obtained associations that develop through memory repetition; this process links with stimulus cues in the environment. The intense nature of automaticity is that an individual cannot escape or try to ignore the process (Devine, 1989). People build and enforce stereotypes through this automatic process and have no conscious control of memory retrievals. Human bodies take a lot of effort to function, but automatic processing requires little effort. People, therefore, mostly rely on automatic thinking, rather than controlled. This is why some researchers argue that automatic processing is why stereotyping is inevitable; because automaticity is easier, it does not mean controlled thinking cannot disband stereotypes (Devine, 1989). Controlled thinking is intentional and requires active participation of an individual. This proce...
As Hodson and Victoria (p.344) note, human beings are not born prejudiced. They develop prejudice through socialization process. The role of family, media, and education is crucial in the prejudice in individuals. Stereotyping involves the construction of unfounded ideas and thoughts concerning an individual. Stereotyping involves the construction of unfounded ideas and thought concerning an individual in the same social context (Farley, p.21). The development of stereotypes revolves around the association of individuals with particular labels of identity. The truth is such ideas and propositions cannot be proven in most situations (Brown, p.68). Hence, the individuals who uphold stereotypes in society become prejudiced toward the victims. The difficulty associated with changing stereotypes is connected to the length of time required for internalization. Individuals in particular classes of society are exposed to stereotypes in their social environment for a considerable amount of time. In consideration of the Emmanuel Church shooting, the perpetrator expressed stereotypical idealization of the African American community. He expressed biased attitude through the sole target of African