by Sam Sommers
Again, the interviewers weren’t out to torpedo the black candidates. But that’s exactly what they did. It becomes just that much harder to nail the interview when the person you’re talking to is disengaged, cold, or anxious. In fact, in a second study, the researchers changed things up and this time trained a set of interviewers. Half were instructed to conduct interviews in the manner of the white applicant sessions from the initial study—by sitting close, taking more time, and so on. The others were trained in the less immediate, more detached style of the previous black applicant sessions. The Manchurian interviewers were then sprung on unsuspecting white Princeton students.
These student volunteers were told that they were helping Career Services train new interviewers, and that they should treat the session like a real job interview. How did the “candidates,” all white students, fare? As you’d expect, those randomly assigned to an engaged, friendly interviewer outperformed those interviewed in a less personal style. Indeed, had you watched the interviewees on video, you would’ve been convinced that the first group was just a more qualified, impressive, and interpersonally savvy set of people. Even though they weren’t—even though the only real distinction was which interviewer they were assigned to.
In reality, of course, we don’t get assigned to warm and cold interviewers at random. Reality is even less fair. Some of us regularly get interviewed by people who are open, relaxed, engaged, and willing to take the time to look for our strengths. And some of us aren’t that lucky.
In other words, don’t give in to the “so what?” response to your thigh-slapping performance. Category-based associations make a difference in the real world, and not just for employment issues. It’s precisely this sort of stereotyped association that leads police officers in training simulations to have an easier time recognizing that a white suspect is unarmed than a black suspect.15 That accounts for physicians with high-bias IAT scores being less likely to think that a black patient who presents with chest pains is in need of anticlotting thrombolytics. 16 That explains why the more bias people exhibit on an IAT-like measure, the more closed-off their body posture is during an informal conversation with someone of another race. 17
In spite of your best efforts and deeply held convictions, you’re not as fair-minded a person as you think you are. Few if any of us are.
MANAGING BIAS
We play a lot of games in my house. Yes, we have the obligatory basement Wii, but even more of our time is devoted to old standbys: meandering about Gum Drop Mountain, stuck in a perpetual loop of chutes and ladders, mixing it up with the old maid. Like my father decades before me, I’ve developed a penchant for falling asleep on the living room rug during these sessions—sometimes while waiting for my turn to come up, but just as often right in the middle of reading a question or calling a bingo number. So I spend a good chunk of these enjoyably lazy afternoons with my kids trying to think of creative ways to ward off the nap that lingers tantalizingly in the ether.
One strategy I’ve developed is to play conventional games unconventionally. Take, for example, Guess Who? This is the game where you’re supposed to use as few yes/no questions as possible to figure out which of the dozens of plastic faces in front of you is the target face your opponent is holding. The obvious questions are those about gender or eye color or facial hair or clothing. Rather quickly, though, I start to find these unsatisfying, not to mention coma-inducing. So I like to sprinkle in the unexpected.
Instead of asking, “Is it a woman?” I’ll try, “Does the person have ovaries?” I figure this way it’s a game, but it’s also an anatomy lesson.
Even better, I’m quite fond of the unanswerable question, such as, “Does the person feel fulfilled at work?” “Does she prefer red or green grapes?” Or, “Does he have commitment issues?”
I started doing this for fun—asking questions they can’t really understand, much less answer, has proven to be an easy way to get a laugh out of my kids. Little did I suspect, though, that my own scientific research would soon come to show that many of us employ a similar strategy of dancing around the obvious when we navigate the sometimes choppy waters of real-life social interaction. Particularly when it comes to race.
After reading about our automatic tendencies toward in-group preference, categorization, and stereotyping, it’s only natural to wonder, What can we do about it? One increasingly popular tactic these days seems to be to maintain that you don’t even notice group differences to begin with. Such strategic efforts to appear color blind can be observed anywhere from the race-neutral elementary school curriculum that renders students surprised to find out later that Martin Luther King was black18 to the facetious Stephen Colbert, who has on more than one occasion asked a talk show guest if she’s African American because he doesn’t “see color.”
The assumption underlying this strategic color blindness is if I don’t even notice race, then I can’t be a racist. And so your coworker describes the new guy at the office by saying, “Oh, he’s about my height, broad-shouldered, mid-forties, dresses well, smiles a lot,” omitting the diagnostic fact that he’s talking about one of only a handful of black men in the entire building. Or maybe race is mentioned, but only at the very end, in a stage whisper after first looking around to see who else is listening.
In other words, many people today gravitate toward the idea that talking about race is no different than admitting to your spouse that you think someone else is attractive: nothing good can possibly come of it. Instead, we search for creative ways to avoid the topic, even when it’s relevant. So has emerged the mentality that total avoidance of race is the way to make a good impression—or, at least, the way to avoid making a bad one.
Does the strategy work? In a word, no.
In a series of studies in my lab at Tufts, colleagues and I have assessed the social consequences of such efforts to appear color blind.19 And we’ve done so by using my favorite trick of playing conventional games unconventionally. In this research, we asked people to play a grown-up version of Guess Who? Our first step was to take a series of photos of adults so we could create a thirty-two-face array. Next, we recruited pairs of people to play our version of the game, giving them the regular instructions to ask as few yes/no questions as possible in identifying the target photo.
The pictures in the array always varied on several dimensions, just like in the kids’ game. Specifically, there were three characteristics by which the photos were split on exactly fifty-fifty terms: background color, gender, and race. Half of the faces were on red backgrounds and half were on blue. Half were of women and half were of men. Half were unambiguously white faces and half were unambiguously black. This made for three particularly useful questions when playing: ask if the target photo has a red (or blue) background, for instance, and you cut down the remaining possibilities by half.
Indeed, almost every single adult in this research asked their partner the obvious question about background color. Same for gender. But a funny thing happened with race. When white people played the game with a white partner, they asked about race close to 95 percent of the time. But with a black partner, this number dropped to 63 percent—and in some versions of the game, considerably lower.
What were the consequences of this effort to dodge race? For one, it led to less efficient communication and poorer performance. It takes more questions to identify the target when you dance around the obvious.
Even more problematically, the color-blind strategy actually made a negative social impression. We showed silent video clips from the study to people who knew nothing about the research, asking them to evaluate the nonverbal behavior on display. They told us that the game players seemed less friendly and more distracted when going out of their way to avoid race. Too focused on not saying the wrong thing, these individuals came off as preoccupied and disingenuous. Ironically, when you try too hard to make a good impression, you run the risk of just the opposite.
So, as I’ve already suggested, we don’t nee
d our teachers needlessly harping on distinctions like gender in the classroom when doing so serves no concrete objective. And, no, we don’t need our juries talking about race when assessing the physical damage a two-hundred-plus-pound assailant can cause. But going too far in the other direction by insisting that social categories don’t even exist is hardly the answer. Bending over backward to maintain the façade of color blindness causes more problems than it solves.
Because let’s face it: none of us are socially color blind, despite what the tongue-in-cheek talk show host would have you believe. The data have spoken: we notice race more quickly than we sneeze. Just as it’s an oversimplification to think that discrimination always comes from hate, so is it naïve to believe that we can avoid bias by refusing to admit that we notice group differences in the first place.
WHAT, THEN, is a fair-minded and well-intentioned person to do?
Well, one lesson of this chapter is that you need not pretend that social categories don’t exist in order to address social ills like conflict, prejudice, and discrimination. Doing so usually just makes things worse.
The next time you’re in the produce section and your child points at a fellow shopper to exclaim, “Mommy, look—that man’s face is a different color,” remember that you don’t have to shush her or make a panicked getaway to the frozen aisle. She’s recognizing difference, not passing judgment. Talking about race isn’t the same as pointing out a bad toupee.
And when you happen upon a more substantive discussion about group difference, don’t just try to change the subject. Hear everyone out, even if you disagree. Refrain from automatically dismissing their position as “playing the race card.”
Actually, we’re long overdue to drop that phrase from the lexicon entirely. It’s a mindless excuse to preempt uncomfortable conversations, a knee-jerk response to any attempt to discuss inequity. I’ll say this for Crash: the movie may have offered an oversimplified take on discrimination, but at least it was willing to have the conversation. In the end, that’s why people and critics liked it so much—it provided a chance to discuss that which many of us habitually shy away from. As the Guess Who? study demonstrates, constantly avoiding the reality in front of us isn’t actually that much fun. Such mental gymnastics are onerous, distracting, and ultimately counterproductive.
And when you next find yourself interacting with someone of a different background, don’t expend all your mental energy worrying about what not to say or not to do. What you recognize as your own anxiety born from good intent looks to others like lack of interest, disengagement, or the effort to hide something.
Instead, devote yourself to proactive, positive social efforts. Force yourself to maintain eye contact. Smile. Nod. Ask questions and then listen intently to the responses. Act naturally instead of trying to play it safe by clamming up. Research is clear: approaching interactions with the goal of promoting a positive outcome is far more effective than focusing on preventing a bad outcome.20 It’s much harder to make a good impression when all your mental energy is tied up trying to avoid a bad one.
In short, interracial interactions are just like any other daily experience: how you frame them makes a big difference. Life’s a lot more fun—and things go more smoothly—when you think of diverse settings and conversations about race as learning opportunities rather than potential minefields.
Perhaps the most important lesson of this chapter, though, is to move past thinking about bias in strictly WYSIWYG terms. These days, everyone is much too caught up in avoiding the label “racist.” The actor uses an epithet when pulled over by police, the comedian makes an ill-advised attempt at racial humor, the politician makes a remark that sounds like it came out of the nineteenth century . . . whatever the race-related controversy du jour, initial response is always the same: “I’m not a racist.” Then the discussion inevitably heads in that direction, toward the question of whether or not this is a bigoted person.
So we’re forced to wade through what passes for supporting evidence in these debates, like the touting of good intentions, past philanthropy, or even just having a few black friends. But this type of argument about who’s a “racist” is tilting at windmills. The debate never gets anywhere because it’s a dispositional term too loaded for anyone to admit to but too ethereal to ever pin conclusively on someone else.
It’s high time to stop the fruitless arguments about who is and isn’t a racist (or any other type of -ist, for that matter). We all are.
We all break down the people we see into distinct social categories. We’re all impacted by stereotypes. We have automatic preferences for and against certain groups. We’re more comfortable with in-groups than out-groups. The real question isn’t whether or not you’re an -ist. Rather, it’s are you willing to make the effort to go beyond your default tendency of relying on category-based associations? And does the situation you’re in leave you with enough cognitive energy to do so?
By no means do I suggest that you celebrate discrimination or remain complacent in its face. But it is OK to recognize that bias is part of human nature. It’s actually liberating to admit it. If we’d all get over our denial that the way we see each other contributes to inequity, we could actually get to work on making the world a fairer place. And we might even loosen up and enjoy social interactions a bit more while we’re at it.
Because the conclusion that bias has automatic aspects doesn’t mean we’re inevitably at its mercy. The IAT and measures like it assess implicit or nonconscious thoughts about different social groups—thoughts that can influence us when we don’t realize we have to stand guard against them. This means that simply recognizing that you carry around such associations goes a long way toward dampening their effects. All the more reason for you to accept rather than avoid the conclusion that we all have biases: by doing so, you turn the implicit into the explicit, sapping the power of those preconceived notions lurking silently within.
So don’t be afraid to ask yourself tough questions like, how might my reaction have changed if the person in question had been less similar to me? Or would this incident have seemed different had the people involved been members of my own group? Make the effort to shake yourself out of the rut of default assumption. Force yourself to ponder those expectations we usually don’t acknowledge.
You can also proactively structure situations in ways that make discrimination less likely. There are out-and-out bigots who will act on any opportunity to make life difficult for certain others, but most of us want to be fair most of the time—the key is providing yourself with sufficient resources so that you don’t have to cut cognitive corners. Like having ample time to make decisions. Or obtaining additional, individuating information about each person you’re evaluating to prevent dependence on the superficial.
And take note of the simple research finding that you’re most likely to rely on stereotypes when you’re tired, overworked, or frustrated. In fact, “morning people” get more biased as the day wears on, and vice versa for “night people.”21 Thus, anything that helps you think clearly and feel comfortable also leaves you less prone to discriminate. Once again, learn to appreciate that the seemingly minor aspects of daily context have a major impact on how we think and act.
But none of this should surprise you anymore. You’ve been reading about the power of situations for more than two hundred pages now. You already know that the continuum of human capacity is remarkably broad—that just as we quickly fall head over heels in love, we also slip all too easily into the mind-set of bias. More often than not, it’s context and not some immutable personality type that dictates which direction we go.
Remember, not all discrimination is born from animus; a good heart is not a fail-safe against inequity. In hate as in love, what you see is not always an accurate reflection of what, deep down, you get.
EPILOGUE
I LIED TO YOU. IN THE VERY FIRST PAGES OF THE BOOK, no less.
It wasn’t an earth-shattering fabrication, but even if it was
just minor deception, I feel like I should come clean. So here goes.
Remember my opening story about hotel vouchers and the Newark airport? My epic battle of wits with Marta, the seemingly cold-blooded customer service representative? Well, while every detail in that anecdote was true, I confess to having omitted a crucial fact.
Yes, I told Marta that my wife was pregnant, a disclosure that tipped the balance of the negotiations in our favor. And, yes, my wife reacted to our free hotel room with superstitious concern: we really had agreed not to tell anyone about our first pregnancy until after three months had safely passed. But what I conveniently left out of the story is that there was no pregnancy at the time. OK, someone at the Newark airport was probably pregnant that night, but I had nothing to do with it—I swear. The jinx my wife was worried about was a future, still-hypothetical one.
I told Marta we were expecting simply to exploit a loophole in airline policy. And I didn’t think twice about it. While I fancy myself an honest guy, the big, bad company was sticking it to us without remorse. By my mental calculus—admittedly aided by generous processes of self-perception and a healthy portion of rationalization—I figured that my dishonesty just evened the score.
In my first draft of the book, I admitted from the start that my successful navigation of Newark had included a flat-out lie. It struck me as a compelling way to illustrate the moral of the introduction, namely, that while understanding the power of situations doesn’t inevitably make you a “better” person in a moral sense, it does render you a more effective person in a variety of pursuits.
When I circulated the draft, however, the opening concerned a few people. In fact, I believe my editor’s exact question was, Do you really want to introduce yourself to the readers by advocating for lying? A fair point, I admit.