The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives

by Shankar Vedantam

  Were the adults lying when they said they were not prejudiced? Of course not. The reason people consciously reject stereotypes is that they know that generalizations about entire groups are dumb. When we ask people about their views, they tell us what they consciously know. But that doesn’t tell us about their unconscious attitudes and associations. Why should adults, who live in the same world as preschoolers, form different unconscious associations? It’s not as if adults live in a world where interracial marriages are the norm and there are just as many gay families in the neighborhood as straight families. Why would their hidden brains, which learn through blind repetition and association, arrive at different conclusions?

  I want to be very clear: I am not saying most adults consciously believe racial or sexist stereotypes. When we are explicitly asked to state our views, our conscious brain and hidden brain sit down for a chat, and our conscious brain wins the debate every time, because reasoned analysis is always superior to dumb heuristics. If the conscious mind is the pilot and the hidden brain is the autopilot function on a plane, the pilot can always overrule the autopilot, except when the pilot is not paying attention.

  Let’s go back to George Allen and Michael Richards. Does the hidden brain explain their outbursts? Let’s turn the question around. Let us assume that Allen and Richards did not have a hidden brain, that their comments were the product of conscious intent. George Allen’s crack now seems even more peculiar than it already did. (Who calls someone a “macaca,” anyway?) If Allen had been consciously trying to slur the Indian American at his rally, he was engaging in intentional political suicide. The young man Allen addressed was taping him on a video camera—and he was working for Allen’s opponent in the Senate race. Sure enough, Allen denied being suicidal. In his flustered attempt to explain his comments, he said, “It’s contrary to what I believe and who I am.” Likewise, after Michael Richards was excoriated on national television for his comments at the comedy club, he confessed he had no idea where his words had come from. He swore they were at odds with how he really felt.

  Now let’s put the hidden brain back into the equation, and take the conscious brain out entirely. You can actually do this in experimental settings—not through brain surgery but through techniques that distract people’s conscious attention and keep them from consciously restraining the automatic associations of the hidden brain. When social psychologists devise such situations, the automatic biases of the hidden brain show up loudly and clearly. Under pressure, the conscious brain can get overwhelmed. Its ability to mask the hidden brain declines, and we observe the beliefs and attitudes we normally conceal. This is why, under the glare of spotlights and cameras, people often say dumb things. It astonishes us when we see small children assign nearly every positive word to white faces and nearly every negative word to black faces, just as it outrages us when a politician or a prominent entertainer—people who really “ought to know better”—voice hateful ideas. But what is really happening in all these cases is that people are deprived of conscious control over their unconscious attitudes. In the case of toddlers, the conscious mind has simply not developed to the point where it can exert much control over the hidden brain. In the cases of the George Allens and Michael Richardses of the world, stress and pressure can overwhelm the conscious mind and temporarily unmask the hidden associations that lie beneath the surface. People under pressure are more likely to voice hateful ideas and associations—or mix up one Chinese face with another—simply because the conscious mind has its hands full and cannot override an “autopilot” error.

  Since our entire political discourse is premised on the assumption that the hidden brain does not exist, however, our ability to talk about race in the United States is severely hampered. Take a look at this conversation that Allen had with Meet the Press host Tim Russert about the “macaca” comment. I have italicized two sentences.

  RUSSERT: Critics say that “macaca” is a racist slur, and that you used it because he was dark-skinned. What did you specifically mean when you said, “Welcome to America and the real Virginia?” Why did you use those words toward a dark-skinned American?

  ALLEN: Tim, I made a mistake. I said things thoughtlessly. I’ve apologized for it, as well I should. But there was no racial or ethnic intent to slur anyone. If I had any idea that, that that word, and to some people in some parts of the world, was an insult, I would never do it, because it’s contrary to what I believe and who I am.

  RUSSERT: Well, where’d the word come from? It must’ve been in your consciousness.

  ALLEN: Oh, it’s just made up.

  RUSSERT: Made up?

  ALLEN: Just made up. Made-up word.

  RUSSERT: You’d never heard it before?

  ALLEN: Never heard it before.

  If Allen really did make up the word “macaca,” he invented a word that happened to have a long and racist history. It’s patently unbelievable, of course, but this response was prompted by Russert’s argument that Allen must have meant what he said. Russert was saying, If I can show George Allen meant to demean a person of color, that will prove he is a racist. The politician was saying, If I can show I did not intend a slur, that will prove I am not a racist. Both men were focused on Allen’s conscious intentions. But what if the word “macaca” came out of Allen’s hidden brain? Contrary to what Allen was trying to imply to Russert, he is still responsible for the slur—because we are responsible for the doings of our hidden brain. But contrary to what Russert was trying to imply to Allen, the Republican may not have been consciously motivated by the slightest racial animosity.

  Most Americans think of Allen’s comments and Richards’s views as abhorrent—and they are. But unpleasant and inaccurate associations lie within all of us, which is why when we see someone slip, our reaction should not be “We finally caught that racist bastard!” but, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” When we focus mountains of newsprint and television time on these incidents, we implicitly set ourselves off as different from the George Allens and the Michael Richardses. We convince ourselves that biased attitudes are the exception, when dozens of research studies have shown that they are really the norm—among blacks and whites. I am not saying everyone associates brown people with “macaca”—I had to run to a dictionary myself to find out what the word meant. What I am saying is that we all have mindless associations in our hidden brain that surface when we are not on guard.

  I promised to show you how the hidden brain can offer a unifying explanation for prejudice across the life span. Many studies have found that older people have higher levels of prejudice than younger adults, and the conventional explanation for this phenomenon is that elderly people grew up in an age when prejudiced attitudes could be expressed freely—or were even the norm. In other words, racist attitudes stem from consciously racist beliefs.

  There can be little doubt that people consciously do have different attitudes and beliefs. This is true of kids, adults, and the elderly. There are people who explicitly feel African and Asian nations ought to be re-colonized, that black people in the United States ought to be slaves, and that Jews should be sent to concentration camps. But I believe these consciously biased people are in a very small minority. The disproportionate attention we pay to them distracts us from the far greater challenge—the unconscious biases of the majority, including people in positions of visibility, influence, and authority.

  One scientist recently showed how the hidden brain is responsible for prejudice among the elderly. William von Hippel at the University of Queensland in Australia found that elderly people were more likely to express prejudice when they had diminished ability to control their minds—in exactly the same way Wendy McNamara became careless about social norms and niceties as her ability to exert “executive control” was stolen from her by frontotemporal dementia. Prejudice among the elderly, von Hippel found, was closely related to the extent of conscious control elderly people could exert over their hidden brain. Elderly people who were more easily
confused by distractions in laboratory experiments were also the most likely to express prejudiced views. Many displays of prejudice among elderly folk, von Hippel argued, were no different from the propensity of elderly volunteers to get into quarrelsome arguments when they were tired. Elderly patients were three times more likely to engage in “gratuitous arguments” in the afternoon than in the morning.

  In another experiment that I could hardly believe when I first read about it, researchers reduced prejudice among adults by giving them some sugar. Some volunteers were given lemonade sweetened with sugar while another group was given lemonade sweetened with the sugar substitute Splenda. Sugar, of course, rapidly boosts energy levels in the body and the brain, while Splenda does not. The researchers then evaluated the attitudes of the volunteers toward homosexuality. They found that volunteers who got the drink with sugar displayed less overt prejudice than the Splenda volunteers. The brain is one of the body’s biggest energy gluttons. If people need executive control to restrain hidden stereotypes, volunteers who got the nonsugar drink had less mental fuel to shackle their hidden brains.

  The work by von Hippel meshes perfectly with Frances Aboud’s work among the very young and with a growing body of research into prejudice among adults. Elderly people who have lost executive function behave in exactly the same way as thirty-year-olds deprived in experimental settings of conscious control over the hidden brain. The politician in the heat of an election campaign or the entertainer confronted by a heckler in a darkened theater, meanwhile, can be momentarily reduced to thinking like Frances Aboud’s preschoolers.

  “More and more, I have gotten to think that some part of our brain is still stuck where we were at four and five and eight, and it is always there,” Aboud told me. “Under stress, people do regress to an early mode.”

  When people cannot control their hidden brains—because they are young and immature, or because they are adults whose minds are temporarily distracted, or because they are elderly and literally losing brain matter—they are more vulnerable to the associations that are always present in the hidden brain.

  This is why when you ask adults who “ought to know better” why they said and did certain things, they will tell you they have no idea. We often feel such protestations are disingenuous, but I believe that people are mostly telling the truth when they say they do not hold consciously bigoted views. They are sincere when they report they do not consciously harbor hostility, hate, or malice toward people from other groups. But that does not mean their hidden brain shares their egalitarian views. Thomas Jefferson was a great man, but it is not remotely self-evident to the hidden brain that all men are created equal.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Invisible Current

  Gender, Privilege, and the Hidden Brain

  Lilly Ledbetter’s life followed a clockwork routine. When she worked the night shift at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Alabama, she came home from work around nine-thirty in the morning. She took a hot bath, laid out her work clothes for her next shift, and slept until the afternoon. At around five, she set off again for the plant. Her shift did not start until seven, but the route from her home in Jacksonville involved a stretch of about ten miles on a country road, where she sometimes got stuck behind a slow vehicle.

  The rubber plant was solid, stolid work. During each shift, managers such as Lilly were given instructions that told them what they needed to get done. If the instructions—which were called a “schedule”—required Lilly’s team to make tread belts one night, she had to make sure she had all the components and labor in place before the shift started. The shift ran for twelve hours, but Lilly usually got to the plant early and stayed late. Lilly had once worked for a group of gynecologists, but she felt she was not cut out for medical work. She joined Goodyear when she was forty, straight out of a position with H&R Block. The tire company was a man’s world, and Lilly was the only female manager on the night shift. It didn’t bother her. If she kept her head down and worked hard, she knew she would be treated the same as everyone else.

  One evening in 1998, Lilly reached work around six o’clock. She went to an upper floor where the managers had their mailboxes. There were a number of documents in her mailbox, and inserted among them was a torn sheet of paper. On the fragment were four names—first names. One was hers. The others were area managers who worked with her, doing identical work. The four managers supervised identical crews, worked the same hours, handled the same responsibilities, and had the same level of experience. Lilly was the only woman in the quartet.

  Next to the names were numbers. Lilly instantly recognized the number next to her name. It was her salary: $3,727 a month. She looked at the other numbers and instantly felt sick. The other managers’ salaries ranged between $4,286 and $5,236 a month. Lilly made $44,724 a year. Her co-workers made $51,432 to $62,832 a year.

  Lilly’s cheeks flushed. She looked up to see if anyone was watching her. No one seemed to be taking any notice. Lilly rushed to the women’s room and collapsed on a sofa. She stared at the paper. She did not feel angry; she felt ashamed, small, and humiliated. “What am I going to do?” she asked herself. “How do I do anything?”

  She slipped the paper into her pocket, determined not to show her feelings, but all through her shift the realization that her company valued her so much less than her co-workers gnawed at her. She crossed paths with another manager, a man who was being paid much more to do the same work. Lilly said nothing, but she ached inside.

  Lilly did not want to think of herself as a victim of discrimination. Over the years at the Gadsden plant, there had been people who’d been nasty to her, but there had also been plenty of people who’d been friendly. There had been times, for example, when her supervisors had failed to tell her what her team needed to get done during a shift, even as her colleagues received their schedules. She would fall back on personal relationships to get out of the jam—friends in the scheduling department would pass along the instructions. When she had run-ins with supervisors, she put it down to individual chemistry. When a department foreman told her, “God damnit, Lilly, your department looks like a whorehouse!” Lilly coolly told her supervisor, “I don’t know. I have never been in one.”

  Another time, when corporate bigwigs from Akron came down to Gadsden for a visit, Lilly learned that two of her colleagues had been invited to meet the bosses at a social event after work. She asked a manager what time she needed to be at the gathering, and was told she didn’t need to attend. She stayed home and fretted, but there was not much else to do—it wasn’t like she could barge into a social event uninvited.

  After some poor performance reviews, a supervisor told her that if she would only go “down to a local hotel with him,” the reviews would start saying Lilly was a good worker. When Lilly complained about sexual harassment, the company changed her supervisor, but she felt she was thereafter branded a troublemaker. She got left out of meetings, which made it harder for her to do her job. Setbacks usually made Lilly more determined. She had grown up on old Westerns, where the cowboy gets spat on and cursed at but keeps his cool, and the world comes around in the end. Whenever she felt dispirited, Lilly told herself, “I’m not a quitter.”

  Despite her determinedly sanguine attitude, Lilly did sometimes suspect she was being paid less than her co-workers. She heard rumors, for example, that some of her colleagues were making twenty thousand dollars a year in overtime. Lilly worked overtime hours that were as long as anyone else’s, but she did not make nearly that much money. The fragment of paper she received—nineteen years after she started working at Goodyear—was the first piece of tangible evidence to support her suspicions. Lilly was working a shift with a complicated two-week cycle; the next time she got a day off that fell on a weekday, she drove an hour west to Birmingham, to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and filed a complaint. The EEOC was backlogged but told her that she had a strong case and encouraged her to work with a private lawyer.


  In the lawsuit that followed, Lilly learned she was earning seventy-nine cents to the dollar of her male counterparts. The numbers on the piece of paper were only base salaries; they had other consequences. Her salary determined how much she got paid for overtime. It determined how much she could set aside in her personal retirement account, and how much she contributed to Social Security. Eventually it affected how much pension she received, and all the other sources of her retirement income. Lilly figured if she had been compensated fairly, her income in retirement would have been twice as large as it actually was.

  Goodyear countered in court by producing a number of Lilly’s performance reviews, which were below par. Lilly’s salary had lagged behind her counterparts’, the company argued, because she was an underperformer. Lilly argued that she had been evaluated unfairly because she was a woman. She pointed out that in 1996, Goodyear itself had given her a top performance award. The company put a manager on the stand who said the company had given Lilly the high rating because her salary had been lagging behind her peers and the company had been trying to justify giving her more money. Far from discriminating against Lilly, Goodyear suggested, the company had been biased in her favor, and had given her merit raises she did not deserve.

  The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, which dismissed Lilly’s complaint on the grounds that the discrimination she alleged had taken place a long time before. A central tenet in the law, the Supreme Court ruled, is that people need to file complaints promptly. Chief Justice John Roberts openly worried that if the Supreme Court were to consider Lilly’s allegations, the courts might be flooded by cases from people alleging discrimination in earlier eras. Goodyear had denied Lilly only two raises in the 180 days before she first reached out to the EEOC, and the court ruled there was insufficient evidence to show that those two decisions constituted discrimination. Lilly pointed out the obvious: She could not have filed a complaint earlier in her career because until she found that scrap of paper in her mailbox, she did not have evidence she was being paid less than her co-workers.