Listen to the Hidden Brain: Revealing Your Unconscious podcast and find out
A friend texted me about a podcast
he thought I would enjoy. The show notes piqued my interest: “We ask how
is it that we can hold negative stereotypes — without being aware of
them?”
If you’ve been following our work here at SunShower Learning, you’ll
know that this is right up my alley. And so, as I walked Nova into the
corner park so he could sniff around and read the “dog news of the day,”
I clicked play on Hidden Brain: Revealing Your Unconscious
and was immediately captivated. Shankar Vedanta, the podcast host and
producer, set the stage by explaining, “One of the most enduring puzzles
of the human brain is that when we look inward, we see what feels like a
complete picture. We perceive our feelings, remember memories and make
plans for the future. Over the last several decades, however,
psychologists have shown that significant portions of our minds are in
fact hidden from us. They operate outside or below the spotlight of
conscious awareness.” He then engaged social scientist Mahzarin Banaji
for a more in-depth discussion that depicted the origin of the Implicit Association Test.
A simple exercise reveals the unconscious mind
Vedanta asked Mahzarin Banaji to share how she became a social scientist. Banaji told the story of being curious about implicit memory and how people attached more importance and fame to male names than they did to female names. This led her to conduct other studies about how people misapply filters of gender.
In 1994, Banaji’s Ph.D. advisor, Tony Greenwald, emailed her a simple
computer program that asked her to sort a list of insects and flowers
using the keys on her computer. Then, she had to classify a list of
words as positive or negative and group the insects with the negative
words and the flowers with the positive words. Here’s where it got
interesting. Greenwald’s program switched things up and asked Banaji to
associate insects with the positive words and flowers with the negative
words. She noticed this was more difficult.
Vedanta went on to explain, “A few weeks later, Greenwald sent Banaji
a list of names traditionally used by Black people and a list of names
traditionally used by white people. He asked her to pair white names
with positive words and Black names with negative words. Banaji found
this as easy to do as pairing flowers with positive words and insects
with negative words. Then, Greenwald flipped the groupings. He asked
Banaji to pair white names with negative words and Black names with
positive words.
Banaji stated, “I’ve already done the insect flower task, so I know
that, aha, I see what we’re doing here. But I’m not prepared at all for
the pit in my stomach that I’m going to experience when I come to the
moment when I have to associate white with bad and Black with good. How
shall I say this? I knew what this test was trying to do. I’ve done
dozens of these kinds of things before, but there was something about
that moment that I say even today it was the single most transformative
moment in my life. The test was telling me that my mind could not
associate Black with good as easily as it could associate white with
good.”
Are we really in control of our associations?
Banaji ‘s voice was rich with emotion as she vulnerably shared, “That
is not my view of myself. That is to say, I believe that if I choose
to, I can associate anything with good and with bad. It’s up to me to
decide what I want to do. This test took away all of that. This test
said, ‘You can try to do that, but I’m going to show you you really
cannot do certain things as easily as you can do others,’ and, as a
psychologist, I knew that that ease meant something more than just ease
of doing the test. It meant that my brain had received the thumbprint of
the culture so deeply that I had no control over this.”
I was gripped by Banaji ‘s words: “The test was telling me that my mind could not associate Black with good as easily as it could associate white with good.”
The IAT Is born
Now, for some perspective … If you haven’t Googled her already,
Mahzarin Banaji is not just a researcher and co-author with Anthony
Greenwald on the groundbreaking book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, she is the co-developer, also with Greenwald, of the Implicit Association Test, now famously known as the IAT.
In our work with clients, we often recommend that people take one of
the many tests that comprise the IAT in order to learn about their own
patterns of associations. It is not a test to prove or disprove that you
have implicit biases. (Let’s be clear. If you have a human brain, you
have implicit biases.) Rather, the IAT is a test that can show how
you’ve been influenced and conditioned by all sorts of things – family,
education, religion, culture, social media, etc. – to make snap
judgments about people and associate them with good or bad, part of your
tribe or a different tribe, friend or foe.
What the IAT truly reveals
This societal conditioning is what Part 2 of the Hidden Brain: Revealing Your Unconscious podcast considers. Banaji explained, “Yes, at one level, the tests are telling you about something that is inside your head. But the tests might be telling you something much more important about the culture in which you are living.”
Those words echoed in my head: “the culture in which you are living.”
In terms of my work, this concept can also be applied to workplace
culture. I’ve thought for a long time that SunShower’s DEI courses are
powerful and impactful for the individual and that individuals can shape
and change the workplace culture. At the same time, there are many
factors that are beyond an individual’s ability to control. For example,
systemic biases often show up in the hiring process with job postings
that are written in ways that signal the job is for a man rather than a
woman or that discourage a person with disabilities (who may be just as
qualified) from applying.
Vedanta asked, “What if the IAT test has some measure of importance
for the individual and it is actually more accurate as a reflection of
what’s in the society and the culture around us?”
The implications for DEI training
Banaji went on to talk about the challenges of training in the
workplace to change people and eradicate bias from individual brains. I
found this hopeful and what I would call a “both/and” solution.
Educating individuals is critical. Banaji suggested that such education
must be voluntary so that people are open to the work, but we must also
be aware that the bias in individuals comes from society. The bias is
part of larger systems that need to be changed.
Banaji looked at the hiring process. “When you then go to [people]
and you say, ‘You know what, the way we run interviews is really bad.
Interviews are a terrible way to make decisions. We are going to start
to do something differently. We are going to get resumes with much
harder, good evidence. We’re not going to let people write their hobbies
on their resumes. We’re going to do these screenings.’”
This is an example of using two tracks – the individual education
about bias and its impact and considering where systems, structures and
policies must be re-evaluated and changed. As Banaji explained, “I
believe that if that education has been done well, that you will be able
to make all these institutional level changes that will ultimately
change the level of bias because you will have fixed it by intervening
in the right moments. But I don’t say don’t educate them because I do
believe that education plays the role of making individuals feel secure
as to why we’re going about changing our organization.”
I wholeheartedly recommend spending a dog walk, a drive or a quiet hour on the sofa listening to Hidden Brain: Revealing Your Unconscious (Part 1 and Part 2). I imagine that you will be just as captivated as I was and that you will be spurred to think about the societal forces that are causing us to make associations that are inconsistent with our conscious belief systems. I’d also encourage you to take the Implicit Association Test.