In podcast 3, Dr. Bezio talked about needing to be aware of where our judgements and biases come from. I think this podcast was a great way to follow up the reading for the last class regarding split second judgements and implicit biases. First, it is important to know where our decisions come from. Along these lines, awareness that differences aren’t always a bad thing is key. However, doesn’t part of this come from our own human nature to have an in group – our group bias judgement? I am not saying I agree with it, but rather I think becoming aware of it is important.

For example, Dr. Bezio discussed at length in this podcast about how the social standards set in The United States have generally come from the same population of people: a majority rule of white middle to upper class citizens. Because of this, laws regulations, and social norms were then facilitated in order to keep this group of people happy and satisfied because there was the most of them. However, as the podcast mentioned, this was really only roughly 30-35% of the population, which means that the other 65-70% of people were conforming to norms different than their own. It initially seems strange to think about, but I believe this goes back to the in group/ out group bias tendency. This group of people have generally been in rule of this society for a while, therefore the norms of the society benefit and are biased towards that group. Moving forward, I think we have to progress past the idea that if something is different or not normal then it is weird or even wrong. If we never move past the point of being critical of differences, then we neglect to take advantage of an opportunity to learn from others.

Lastly, I found one point from Flanigan’s writing for today interesting along these same lines. She discusses the fact that we tend to assume that people who are self medicating are doing it for reasons such as leisure, pleasure, or enjoyment, but rarely do we put ourselves in their shoes and evaluate it from a different standpoint. Medicine is a very important, yet touchy topic, and with a mom who is a doctor, I have heard stories about the DIC and her own struggles with assumptions about patients and their uses of medicine. It is obviously difficult to manage our assumptions, but awareness of it is the first key, and the process of moving past them can begin.

I was not super surprised about my test results. I took the “gender and career” IAT test, and received results saying that I had “little to no bias towards male = career and female = family. I did not notice that in my mind, it did seem a little bit easier to place certain words with the male names and vice versa as opposed to the female name. However, I think that this difference was so minimal that the test probably didn’t pick up on this. One thing about this is interesting, though. I have taken this same test three times now. The first two times, I received results saying that I had a “slight bias towards male = career and female = family”. When I took these tests in the past, I felt I had no bias at all, but I suppose the test picked up on something I was missing. I wonder what has changed in the time between tests. I do seem more aware of this bias, and maybe because of this, subconsciously over time I have gotten past it a little bit. I think also being in a culture at Richmond where there are so many females that are so passionately pursuing careers, this bias may have been weakened for me.

This class’s readings really opened my eyes to the way “mindbugs” begin, how we can become more aware of them, and how we can combat them. A few things stuck out to me as being particularly interesting. First, I thought the reading did a great job of outlining different types of mindbugs and how they start. For example, it titled the mind as an “automatic association making machine”. In doing this, it shed light on two types of mind bugs: availability and anchoring. The discussion about the words participants read that impacted their moods was eye opening for me. When I read it the first thing I thought about was “If my head is stuck in my phone all day, is this what I want to be anchoring my instinctive reactions to?”

Next, I was especially interested in the difference in knowing and endorsing stereotypes. I thought the reading did a great job of highlighting the differences between the two. Yes, most of us know about stereotypes and biases, but this reading opened my eyes to how much we really endorse the stereotypes even though we aren’t aware of their presence in our minds and the effect they have on our thoughts, opinions, and behaviors. I had heard about the Amadou Diallo tragedy before, but in reading in in this context, anchored to biases and implicit reactions, I immediately turned introspective. What biases do I not even know I hold, and how will they affect not only my conscious decisions, but more importantly my split second decisions that occur in my subconscious mind where my conscious mind doesn’t have time to intervene?

Lastly, I appreciated the way the reading offered examples and ways to combat these biases. The most interesting example to me was the blind audition for the Boston Symphony. It seems amazing to me that at the end of the day, music is music, but it truly took literally blindfolding themselves for decision makers here to be more open to female musicians. As the reading mentioned, knowing we have biases is not enough. We have to actively combat these biases with counter stereotypes. Whether it is in our cultures, or our individual choices, as Dr. Bezio mentioned on the podcast, we have to expose ourselves to situations that contradict our deep biases that dictate our outlook on the world. Being open minded and working to gain attention for counter stereotypes is the only real way to make a change.

Today’s podcast really helped me condense the reading. I felt like I understood the basis of the readings, but the podcast really helped me apply it to our world today. The most interesting thing I remember hearing in the podcast was how consequentialist,  deontological, and aretaic methods and patterns of thinkings determine our laws. I thought it was interesting that Dr. Bezio mentioned that fact that true relativism is really literally anarchy. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but when you take relativism to the extreme, it really does mean that not only cultures are able to decide their own rules, regulations, and actions, but individual people also then have the complete power to do exactly what they want. Therefore, it seems that there has to be some level of balance among all of this to maintain a fully functioning, effective society. I thought thinking of our laws as mixtures and combinations of our intentions, actions, and outcomes was another new thought for me. I understood that that different intentions and actions of crimes were punished differently, for example, that manslaughter is judged differently than an accidental murder or intention to murder, but did not think about the morality evaluation of it all. With this in mind, it is much easier to see how certain cultures demand and regulate one thing, while another may do something completely different. What makes the common ground so important then? For instance, stealing and killing is generally wrong in all societies. Is this because it is so morally wrong, or is it regulated more so to keep the society able to function?