Our Biases

Below is an excerpt from a fascinating article in Washington Post magazine, describing a bias test developed by team of Harvard sociologists that consistently reveals the innate biases that exist deep in our cognitive processes. Even minorities and women often find it easier to equate negative adjectives with members of their own groups than with whites or men. The article is a very thought provoking look at the attitudes that hide inside most of us, if even at a subcouncious level. This portion introduces the basic concept behind the test, and how the Harvard team leader--Mahzarin Benaji--was exposed to the idea.

In 1994, Anthony Greenwald, Banaji's PhD adviser and later her collaborator, came up with a breakthrough. Working out of the University of Washington, Greenwald drew up a list of 25 insect names such as wasp, cricket and cockroach, 25 flower names such as rose, tulip and daffodil, and a list of pleasant and unpleasant words. Given a random list of these words and told to sort them into the four groups, it was very easy to put each word in the right category. It was just as easy when insects were grouped with unpleasant words and flowers were grouped with pleasant words. But when insects were grouped with pleasant words, and flowers with unpleasant words, the task became unexpectedly difficult. It was harder to hold a mental association of insects with words such as "dream," "candy" and "heaven," and flowers with words such as "evil," "poison" and "devil." It took longer to complete the task.

Psychologists have long used time differences to measure the relative difficulty of tasks. The new test produced astonishing results. Greenwald took the next step: Instead of insects and flowers, he used stereotypically white-sounding names such as Adam and Chip and black-sounding names such as Alonzo and Jamel and grouped them with the pleasant and unpleasant words. He ran the test on himself.

"I don't know whether to tell you I was elated or depressed," he says. "It was as if African American names were insect names and European American names were flower names. I had as much trouble pairing African American names with pleasant words as I did insect names with pleasant words."

Greenwald sent Banaji the computer test. She quickly discovered that her results were similar to his. Incredulous, she reversed the order of the names in the test. She switched the left and right keys. The answer wouldn't budge. "I was deeply embarrassed," she recalls. "I was humbled in a way that few experiences in my life have humbled me."

Some may recall a U. Chicago study from a few years ago that sent out hundreds of resumes, identical in everything but their ethnic and non-ethnic names. Tom, Karen, and Susans got something like 30% more calls back than LaShondas and Jamels. Still a long way to go...