I thought the concept of mind bugs was so interesting. I know that what we think we are seeing is not always the truth, but it surprised me how wrong that we can be. The fact that our brains have evolved so much is miraculous, but there are still so many shortcomings. There are real consequences to having our brain trick us into seeing something we are not. This is seen in recalling crimes or dramatic events because our brains jump to conclusions and make pathways that are not there. Depending on how our brains perceive information, two people could possibly convince themselves and recall two very different events. I thought the idea that we could misidentify a suspect or a random person for a criminal was frightening because that is unfair. Our brain adds details that can be damaging because it’s hard to determine where we stray from the exact truth. I thought this was important especially in criminal cases because, when identifying suspects in a lineup, you could have filled in a blank that is incorrect. I also think criminal lineups are unreliable because, as the reading mentioned, word choice really matters when talking about previous events. The fact that jurors can be swayed by the simple addition of one detail is also extremely frightening. I think that, while the criminal justice system in the U.S. is technically functioning, there are a lot of changes to be made to ensure that biases and mindbugs don’t play as big of a role in it (even though I have no clue how that would look or if it’s even possible! My biggest guess is education on biases and stuff like this).

Another thing that I think is really important to include while talking about this subject is biases. Biases can make those jumps in your brain happen even faster which makes it all the more complicated. I have taken a couple implicit bias tests before and they all have been really impactful. Some I was happy to see that there was no implicit bias and then others left me a little disheartened. However, I think the fact that we get to study and understand this is amazing. While implicit biases exist and affect our thinking, the more conscious we are of them and how they work, the easier they will be to dismantle. Like these mindbugs, hopefully we can start to understand what is really there and what is our brain trying to reach conclusions faster. I think it is really incredible that we are so far evolved that we can understand this, so I think it should be standard practices to see where your biases lie and how you can be aware and actively fight against them, even though they will be almost impossible to get rid of. We all need to do our part to make sure we each are treating others fairly and equitably because I think that will make for healthier and happier environments!

I have previously taken an IAT in one of my psychology classes so I was aware of what this test would be like and how you could receive results that you did not expect to reflect your biases. I decided to take the Gender-Career IAT. I was both surprised and not surprised by my results that I have little to no automatic preference between gender and family or career. I was surprised because of the history of our society where women are assumed to stay at home and care for the family while men are supposed to be the provider for the family and have a job. This concept of an ideal American family is still prevalent in society today. Going into the IAT I thought this might have more of an impact on my results that it did. However, I am not surprised by my results from the IAT since both of my parents hold the same type of job and worked pretty much the same hours while I was growing up. While many of my friends had a stay at home mom, it was normal for me not to see both of my parents until much later in the evening because they were at work and are both very driven in their careers. Since they had almost identical schedules, they generally split their time the same between their career and family. I believe my own experience with both my parents being dedicated to both career and family influenced my results from this IAT. 

When reading the Blindspot pages and listening to the podcast, the concept of idea availability stuck out. We are surrounded every day with very similar people and circumstances because being comfortable is where humans, in general, feel the safest and accepted. Over time, different biases are formed because we like to take the easy way out and let society create us. Since we stay in our bubble, we are shown very similar actions and events every day. One part of the reading had us pick if option A or option B was more deadly. I chose B for the first and then A for the next two. The book predicted that I would do that and said it was because the media presents the A options, murder, and car accidents, more frequently than the B options, suicide, and abdominal cancer. If we go back to why people donate, people want to do the greatest good, but what tends to happen is they see different issues on their media outlets and feel a connection to donate. Whereas suicide awareness does not get the media attention, but at the end of the day is more deadly than murder, and we should be giving money to help the people struggling.

I took a great deal of pleasure finding out in this reading that most likely if a flat earther took an Implicit Association Test (IAT) they would associate earth with a sphere. Of course, their explicit bias still is the earth is flat. But I still enjoyed imagining a flat earther getting said IAT result and their reaction to it.
Something that stood out to me in the reading was in chapter 6 when the authors discuss facial recognition by race. I have known for as long as I can remember about racial profiling, specifically when it comes to police officers misidentifying innocent black members of comminutes as suspects. But this year with the help of some of my other classes I have come to think more about facial features and race, more specifically the concept that it can be easier for white people to see identifying features in other white people, and other races to see identifying features in their race because of the faces they have been exposed to growing up, or rather the differences in faces they have seen growing up.
The way the Podcast discussed change in stereotypes and high/low culture over time seems contradictory to me in the same way it is contradictory to me that women have been taught they are meant to be in the kitchen and cook for their house bands, but when it comes to a career as a chef or a head cook that is a man’s job. The decisions of what is for women vs men, or what is for the rich vs the poor have changed and contracted themselves forever. It makes me wonder how we can change and flip so many “traditions” but still have the same class, gender, and race issues.

I took two tests and was not surprised by either of my answers. One of them I would say I was pleased with the answer as I had “no automatic preference.” The other I was slightly less pleased with myself for but again not surprised as it suggested a “slight automatic preference.” But I do believe the reason I got the second one was because of something I feel about my life rather than something I judge others for.

For this assignment, I decided to take the Gender-Career IAT. Overall, I was not surprised with the results that I received, which showed that I, for the most part, had a moderate automatic association of Male with Career and Female with Family. I think that this association of male with career and female with family comes largely due to the influence of the culture around me, for oftentimes, the American culture pushes the image of a nuclear family as the ideal, with the father as the “breadwinner”, while the mother stays at home. While I am a career-oriented woman, I have been ingrained with this culture for my entire life, and thus I believe the constant pushing of this ideal, and the view of men as the “breadwinner” has become an implicit bias of mine that I can become more aware of. I think one thing that has made my implicit bias closer to being borderline moderate instead of strong is that growing up, both my mother and father worked full-time jobs, and overall split many of the family duties, and pushed strongly for my sister and me to focus on our educations and careers. Additionally, my mother comes from a family that, even in the early 1930s, had woman pursuing careers; thus, I believe that it is this combination of being strongly influenced by the male-career dominated culture, along with a family that strongly pushes for woman to pursue careers, that lead to my implicit bias being quite moderate.

When listening to the podcast, I thought it was really interesting hearing about how we tend to think and talk about culture in ethnic culture and never truly discuss how white culture (a topic that becomes controversial between people) is a default culture within America. We are all a part of many different cultures that we may not entirely realize. For some reason the topic of culture can be uncomfortable to think about for people – maybe partly as people believe that if other cultures become better represented then that will somehow harm ‘white culture’. Other cultures are certainly being better represented in media and film which does help to limit our implicit biases that lead to snap judgements.

I feel like I am generally pretty aware of other cultures and try to embrace other cultures in order to learn more about them and move past stereotypes. In the podcast it briefly talked about things like princess movies beginning to portray different cultures and I think this is really essential for younger generations in order to limit these stereotypes and biases at a young age. People have to go out of their way to take time to educate themselves as we cannot simply rely on the history that is learned in the classroom, the movies that pop up on TV, or a different genre of music that comes on to the radio. Some people are not willing to take the time to educate themselves as it may make them a little bit uncomfortable. This is the mindset that needs to be changed as culture is nothing to be intimidated by, but instead is something that is exciting for people to learn about.

I found the different types of lies to be extremely interesting from this week’s reading. While I do not consider myself a liar I could identify several occasions where I have used gray, colorless, red, and blue lies. We unknowingly lie to ourselves and others on a daily basis. When I ask someone how they are doing and they answer with either “good” or “great” a lot of the times I follow up my question with “how are you really doing.” I am surprised that the majority of the time people elaborate on their original answer and even sometimes change their original response. What’s even more fascinating is that when I ask the follow-up question the person never admits they lied. They simply brush their original answer to the side for an honest one. 

I think everyone experiences gray lies on a daily basis, especially when you do not want to answer a question honestly or even at all. I like the description that colorless lies are often “self-deception” (Pg. 25). I really resonated with this in my everyday life. An example being when someone asks me how much work I have for that day or week. As students, we often tend to downplay the amount of work we have for an assignment or class. This “self-deception” allows us to be more at ease when taking a break or choosing to do something else instead of work. I think that blue lies appear most often in everyday life, especially within the classroom. An example being when a professor asks if the class has any questions and two things happen. One, no one says anything because it might be the end of class and they are trying to leave as fast as possible. Or two, students may feel that even though they have a question that the best answer to give is “no further questions” because that is deemed to be the best answer. All in all, I am more aware of how often I lie and how often others lie on a daily basis. Taking this a step forward, how exactly do you think we can prevent various forms of lying moving forward? 

In listening to Podcast 2: Culture & Implicit Bias, the main point, and one that I have not truly thought about before was the connection between culture and implicit bias. As it is commonly viewed, culture is the combination of different elements, such as food and dress that separate people into different subgroups. For example, as an Italian-American, a large amount of my family speaks Italian and makes Italian food, while also incorporating other aspects of American culture, such as their liking of “People” magazine and Americanized foods. Looking more largely at American culture, to understand the tie between culture and implicit bias in our country, it is critical to acknowledge that what we see as “American” culture is really white culture. In America, things we see as the default culture are typically associated with white people, while other aspects, such as certain foods eaten or music listened to, are labeled as the culture of different ethnic groups. I think this is important to recognize because as a white American, it is eye-opening to realize that the culture we live in commonly pushes the “default” to be white culture, while we tend to ignore or mark off the cultures of other groups, whether they be ethnic, religious, etc.

Once we understand this tie between white culture and American culture, we can view the development of implicit bias. An interesting point raised in this podcast that I was unaware of was the adaption of human brains to see patterns around us as a survival method. This physiological tie of a pattern can be seen in the development of implicit bias, for in our American culture, which is essentially white culture, oftentimes certain images of certain ethnic groups are shown. As the podcast described, white people are often placed as the hero, while other individuals, such as black Americans and Chinese individuals, are continuously shown in other roles. This constant feeding from the culture, along with the use of media, including movies, music, etc, creates a pattern of these certain individuals of certain ethnic groups in certain positions, and thus implicit bias develops, for we see these patterns and begin to implicitly assume the position of a certain individual from a certain ethnic group. From this podcast, I think the most important point to take away is that to begin the process of alleviating the impact and consequences of implicit bias, we must begin to increase representation in the media and put people of different ethnic groups in different positions to break these patterns and thus break these implicit biases.

I was extremely surprised at the results of the implicit bias test I took. I chose to take the test about weight and was shocked at my results that showed a 31% automatic preference to thin people. I thought this number would be much lower. I credit this to my involvement in athletics. My friend group is primarily made up of division one athletes who are all in tremendous shape. I believe this heavily influenced my answers on this test. I was also surprised because I myself am moderately overweight and I have always been about body positivity and acceptance of others regardless of weight. I think that this test is extremely telling not just for myself but also others in the sense that weight is a sensitive issue that unknowingly pushes others away from each other. I think this is something that can be avoided going forward.

Concepts that stood out to me from the reading were “self-defeating stereotypes”, and the idea that people might subconsciously endorse a stereotype, even if they consciously reject it.  In my Leadership 102 class with Dr. von Reuden, I learned that people can suffer mental and physical ailments due to the stress of feeling like they are a part of a minority group. For this reason, members of minority groups have shorter lifespans than members of majority groups when other variables are held constant. I was surprised to hear this at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The reading mentioned our evolutionary history, and how we have evolved to prioritize being part of the “in-group” (for safety reasons). To feel like a constant outsider is to feel constantly as though a need for survival is not being met. It would be like your brain constantly sending your body signals that you are hungry, even when you just ate. No wonder the increase in stress hormones can have a real, measurable affect on a person’s physical well being.

Our vulnerability to self-defeating stereotypes presents a huge challenge. In order to be perceptive and self aware, we have to understand reasons why others might make quick (often negative) judgements about us. The catch is that even if we consciously choose not to agree with or believe in these negative judgements, the fact that they exist can create doubt and stress in our minds. Maintaining the balance between self belief and maintaining awareness of others criticisms (even if they are unfair and/or baseless) adds another layer of social difficulty for anyone who finds themself in a minority group in their environment.