I thought these articles were really interesting. In the first article it talks about how women are surprised that they have the women=family and men=career bias. I talked about that in my response paragraph to the implicit association test that we had to take cause I was genuinely surprised. I thought it was really interesting how it wasn’t just me that was surprised by that result. I was a little but confused by the section that was telling us how to change our implicit associations because they didn’t really give a solution. I know that these implicit biases are the result of cultural norms but I feel like there has to be a way to change them in order to create a society that is not focused around white people. I thought it was really interesting when they gave the example of that woman who donated equally to her college and to an African American college fund and how that did not get rid of the mindbug it just neutralized the issue.
Critical Thinking
I think the article was trying to say not to change society so that these implicit biases never exist in the first place (although that would be nice) but to acknowledge the biases that you may have, and try to counter those stereotypes.
I found the part about “outsmarting the machine” to be the most suggestive solution to remedying (not yet eradicating) mindbugs. I see eradication as gradual progression. Our society is built around mindbugs and stereotypes, therefore, there can’t really be a solution until we find a way to outsmart the mindbugs that surround us. The author offers a few ways to outsmart these mindbugs, which I think would be great to implement into our society. I see this as the first step towards understanding stereotypes and mindbugs and then eradicating them.