To many people, prejudice seems to be rising in American society. In 2009, around a quarter of Americans identified racism as a “big problem.” By 2015, that number had doubled. Since then, we’ve seen a measurable jump in reported hate crimes. Today, six in ten Americans believe gay and lesbian people face a lot of discrimination.
But research by Harvard psychologists Tessa Charlesworth and Mahzarin Banaji suggests a paradox: Even as Americans grow more aware of bias, we appear to be becoming less biased in many areas—especially when it comes to same-sex relationships and gender nonconformists.
In order to study prejudice, Charlesworth and Banaji used 4.4 million tests of social attitudes collected by Harvard’s Project Implicit website. The test asks participants about their conscious—or explicit—attitudes toward a group, such as the young, the disabled, different ethnic groups, and more. However, it also tries to measure unconscious—that is, implicit—bias by measuring response time. In general, faster responses are thought to be more automatic ones—and so more revealing of implicit bias. Explicit bias is bias that we are conscious of; implicit bias, on the other hand, is typically unknown to us but may nonetheless affect our words and actions. Quickly associating negative words with, say, the elderly, can suggest bias, but so can taking a long time to consciously choose positive ones.
[For more on this story by ZAID JILANI, go to https://greatergood.berkeley.e...bridging_differences]
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