Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

Research and getting out to those of us outside academically is a gift for sure. It helps to know we aren't all as far along as we think with the unconscious ethnocentric wiring we come into this world with. And that cultural change is slow. That said, those who choose to be participants in academic research may not always be representative of the rest of the diverse multicultural populations exploding in the US and elsewhere.

If implicit association tests are important and predictive of consequential behavior the authors haven't convinced me of it. They strangled the readability of this book with the sheer volume of text committed to the subject.

Only in the final chapter do they give any advice on "mindbug" avoidance and it's perfectly unmemorable.

There are many ongoing critiques of the entire "concept" (conceit is a better word) of so-called implicit bias. The authors themselves have had to backtrack their fantastical claims. Here is an excerpt from but one of many thorough critiques available from reputable sources: "Greenwald and Banaji now admit that the IAT does not predict biased behavior. The psychometric problems associated with the race IAT 'render [it] problematic to use to classify persons as likely to engage in discrimination,' they wrote in 2015, just two years after their sweeping claims in 'Blind Spot.' The IAT should not be used, for example, to select a bias-free jury, maintains Greenwald. 'We do not regard the IAT as diagnosing something that inevitably results in racist or prejudicial behavior,' he told The Chronicle of Higher Education in January. Their fallback position: though the IAT does not predict individual biased behavior, it predicts discrimination and disadvantage in the aggregate. 'Statistically small effects' can have “societally large effects,” they have argued. If a society has higher levels of implicit bias against blacks as measured on the IAT, it will allegedly have higher levels of discriminatory behavior. Hart Blanton, one of the skeptics, dismisses this argument. If you don’t know what an instrument means on an individual level, you don’t know what it means in the aggregate, he told New York’s Singal. In fairness to Greenwald and Banaji, it is true that a cholesterol score, say, is more accurate at predicting heart attacks the larger the sample of subjects. But too much debate exists about what the IAT actually measures for much confidence about large-scale effects."

Read it to know what is claimed, but read it critcally--holding the ideas at arm's length while you examine them. Avoid the trap of embracing the concept as valid until you have read more the many more recent and scientifically rigorous treatments of so-called implicit bias.

This is questionable "science" if it is science at all: "But though proponents refer to IAT research as 'science'—or, in Kang’s words, 'remarkable,' 'jaw-dropping' science—their claims about its social significance leapfrogged ahead of scientific validation. There is hardly an aspect of IAT doctrine that is not now under methodological challenge. Any social-psychological instrument must pass two tests to be considered accurate: reliability and validity. A psychological instrument is reliable if the same test subject, taking the test at different times, achieves roughly the same score each time. But IAT bias scores have a lower rate of consistency than is deemed acceptable for use in the real world—a subject could be rated with a high degree of implicit bias on one taking of the IAT and a low or moderate degree the next time around. A recent estimate puts the reliability of the race IAT at half of what is considered usable. No evidence exists, in other words, that the IAT reliably measures anything stable in the test-taker."

For more details and to get started on additional sources of information on this subject, search for the article entitled "Are We All Unconscious Racists?" at City Journal online. At the time I write this, it is not pay-walled.

Have you ever noticed that you have contradictory thoughts about the same thing? Have you ever noticed that sometimes you behave in ways contradictory to your own values and goals?

If so, join the human race. Unfortunately, the authors neglect to mention that there is a wealth of knowledge about the practice of self reflection which helps to diminish the negative impact when such contradictions remain outside of our awareness. I am astonished that the authors do not offer any such mechanisms of individual and group reflection to correct for contradictions and biases.

Why don't the authors mention this? My speculation is that it has to do with their own personal reactions to their own blind spots.

On page 57. the authors state "The gaps between Mahzarin's (one of the authors) reflective and automatic reactions to the same thing (Black-White attitudes) would not have been unveiled without the insight the test inflicted." The word "inflicted" probably says something about the authors own biases and negative reactions to having contradictions within themselves. It seems that in order to accept such a notion, they need the sterilized, academic tool of a validated test. No, you do not need to take the Implicit Association Test to find these things out. Yes, self-reflection does conjur up the inner critic. Yes, by practicing self-reflection over time, the negative critic greatly diminishes in its power. And, yes, you can discover these things and manage them without the IAT if you wish.

I recommend against reading this book as it has the risk of making one's own pathway of self discovery seem much more daunting than it is--as though you need an academic by your side to do it.

Blindspot will help you understand the real psychological basis behind the old saying "do as I say, not as I do". As most of us know, it is common to observe people acting in ways that seem to contradict what they say they believe. It turns out that many of these situations can be traced to the influence of unconscious, yet powerful biases on our behavior. And virtually everybody holds these biases.

Banaji and Greenwald have done a good job turning their research, which makes extensive use of academic studies, statistical analysis, and psychology experiments, into a well-written book that is both accessible and entertaining. The authors take considerable care in the early chapters making sure readers are ready to have their own biases exposed in the heart of the book, where several versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) are presented. Anybody who has not taken the online versions of the IAT should be prepared to be surprised.

The best parts of the book, though, are the last two chapters and the two appendices. The IAT first debuted in the early 1990's and has received a great deal of media coverage and academic attention since then. Consequently, a fair amount of the book, especially the first half, will already be familiar to many people. The latter sections, on the other hand, cover important consequences and questions raised by the IAT: how being part of a group affects treatment of people not in the group, ways to help reduce the effects of hidden biases, a discussion of whether present day Americans are racist, and the causes and societal effects of racial discrimination.

Bottom line: Blindspot is a fine book. It will give you a greater understanding of an important driver of human behavior, hidden biases, all in everyday, non-academic language. Those who follow the social sciences or who already know about the IAT may find parts of the book to be redundant. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

Banaji, Mahzarin, & Greenwald, Anthony (2016). Blindspot: Hidden biases of good people. New York: Bantam Books. The authors developed the IAT, Implicit Assocation Test, which purports to show hidden biases, including “implicit racism.” What it really measures, however, is a surrogate, delayed response time. Even if this is accurately measured, it is not really a surrogate for racism, as it would measure only response and not chosen behavior.
The concept of IMPLICIT or Institutional RACISM is wrong, and derives from materialism / Marxism /Communism, and their rejection of individual responsibility and truth, and false/incorrect ideas about human nature and action. “Implicit racism” is alleged to exist when there is no evidence of actual racism, or evidence to the contrary.
In my 20s, raised Catholic, I was for my sins condemned to read to the end every book I started, including the works of Karl Marx. I also read about him, and spend long days and nights being lectured to about Marx and his wonders. These friends and “teachers” all predicted the imminent, inevitable, self-destruction of free market capitalism. I was invited to entire weekend discussions devoted to Marx and his works, and his successors, which it was preached and taught as dogma.
Later, I also came to read great writers who took Marx to pieces and pointed out his dishonesty, broken promises, awful personal life, and inconsistencies or outright lies in his works. I was also insulated against Marxism / Communism /Socialism because of Captive Europe, Europe behind the Iron Curtain, and stories of life in Communist USSR, the satellite countries, Red China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, and so on. I grew up among friends who themselves and their families has escaped from the horrors of Captive Europe, from such as Lithuania and Poland, and knew its evils first-hand. Communism proved horribly wrong in practice as well as theory. It presented itself always as the more moral option: it promised equality, but delivered poverty and slavery. The capitalism it criticized endlessly was said to be immoral, but was based on the mutually beneficial exchange, and delivered wealth and freedom. One imposed itself by force, while the other offered its benefits. I read the works which praised communism and found them full of lies, deception, and self-deception. One of the great scandals of the 20th Century is the deceptions and self-deception of intellectuals with respect to Communism and Socialism.
I read The God That Failed, Robert Conquest, Witness, 1984, Animal Farm, Farewell to Catalonia, Solzhenitsyn, Sidney Hook, Hayek (The Road to Serfdom), Leo XIII, and more. Much later, I came to love Michael Novak, who also grew up in my same Western Pennsylvania, such as The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, and “Liberation Theology: But does it liberate?” I watched millions flee or try to flee Communism, and flee to the United States and England. Even Marx himself had fled Germany and found refuge in England, though he never showed gratitude. Voltaire had taught us, long before, that England exemplified freedom in the world. Throughout my early university years—1967-74--- I watched Marxists and their supporters with endless criticism of the US and the West, while they sycophantically praised the USSR, Mao and Red China, and such villains as Castro and “Che,” the latter still idolized and romanticized by youth and adults who wear his picture and thus honor his murders.
The Marxists, then as now, find causes of behavior not in individuals but in larger events and qualities, such as economic systems and class. They talked of people being “objectively” wrong, even when well=intentioned. Of course, they rejected free will (although they knew little of its history—ask your Marxist friends to recount and distinguish Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, or the later Luther, and to explain each’s version of what causes men to do evil, even when they know it to be evil. Ask them about how people “blind themselves” and “harden their hearts.”).
Today’s Intersectionalists [I prefer “Deer at the Crossroads”], and Post-truth advocates, likewise reject ideas of individual responsibility (except when it comes to Police, Republicans, and CEOs, whom they blame and want to imprison), seeking “the root causes” of poverty, and to change the “system,” rather than individual behavior. To them, as to the Marxists, individual behavior is epiphenomenal, merely a symptom of the “system,” which must first be changed if change is to occur. They claim there is no objective truth (although this would seem, if true, to apply to them as well…yet they are full of such contradictions).
I remember, from childhood, the motto of the McKeesport Police Department: Before you seek to change the world, first change yourself. Good behavior starts with humility and acceptance of responsibility for one’s own actions.
Today’s ideas of institutional or implicit racism are unscientific nonsense, but flow directly from the unscientific nonsense of Marxism and its assumptions. Polygraphs (lie detector machines) do not test for truth, but rather for physical phenomena, which are interpreted by the Polygrapher to indicate truthfulness or not. The machine does not and cannot measure whether the person is lying, but only measure physical conditions (See National Academy of Sciences report debunking polygraphs). In much of science, there are attempts to measure what cannot be measured by finding surrogates. In implicit racism theory, Greenwalt and Banaji developed in the 1990s the IAT Test (IMPLICIT ASSOCIATION TEST), which purports to measure racism, sexism, or the like. What it actually measures, however, is the quickness or slowness of response to certain pictures. This was developed in their book BLINDSPOT (The hidden biases of good people). On line, one can take IAT tests, which have become a multi-million dollar industry, just like other unscientific tests (such as Meyers Briggs and its cousins. Read the legal fine print and disclaimers at the Myers Briggs website).
Don’t forget Lincoln: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time,…”
The IAT tests do not and cannot measure what they purport to measure. Even if they measure correctly that a person had racist thoughts or feelings, that still would not show that the person was racist. We are not responsible for our thoughts or feelings or dreams, but rather for what we do with them. A person can be “born” homosexual, but choose to be celibate. We may be born with predispositions to alcohol, but choose not to drink, and thus avoid “occasions of sin.” We are dealt our cards, on where we are born, but we play our own cards. Poverty does not cause crime: most poor people are not criminals. We are not condemned to smoke, because our parents smoked, or to be violent if those who raised us were violent. We can choose to have, as wrote Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a BAD CHILDHOOD, [but a ] GOOD LIFE.
There is often one correct admission even from the implicit (and institutional) racism advocates: it has become increasingly harder to find explicit racism (that is, racism for which there is actual evidence), Implicit racism means racism for which there is no evidence (but we “know” it must be there. How clever they were to hide it so well). When actual racism is discovered, we have ample laws to deal with it. Those who “find” racism everywhere in reality are impelled by false dogma, and not by science or evidence.
Such imputations of racism arise from “disparate” results, such as when it is alleged that a group, such as blacks, is more affected, disproportionately to its presence in the population. Blacks commit proportionately more violent crimes, including murder, than whites. Blacks are proportionately more convicted and imprisoned than whites. Some insist that such findings must be the result of racism, “implicit” when it we cannot otherwise find proof. The evidence and studies actually show that, when the nature of the crime and criminal history of the offender are taken into account, racism disappears as an explanatory factor. Rabid students and professors assert that even to allege or discuss such “facts” as the excessive black crime rate is “racist.” They reject science and its methods as racist. In my recent attendance at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, I heard professors and students, on the panels, in the audiences, and in the hallways, make such assertions of implicit racism, and applaud asserters, and jeer if any panelist or questioner suggested that actual evidence was required. They were an intellectual mob.
When the Obama Administration and some Courts find “disparate” conditions, they infer racism, and (at least since the Griggs v Duke Power “disparate impact” 1971 case) shift the burden of proof to employers and others to prove that they are NOT racist. This is wrong and absurd, but infects today’s law. Then court findings and consent decrees are taken as “proof” that there is racism, even though it remains assumed and imputed, not proved.
The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald wrote, in the Wall Street Journal (10-10-2017), “The False “Science” of Implicit Bias,” worth reading, which dissects this madness, although she does not there trace it to its roots in materialism, determinism, and Marxism/Communism. These have taken hold in the American Universities, which power and politics have replaced the honest search for truth.
If there is an “institutional” bias, it is in these places against the truth and common sense. Plaintiffs are deemed innocent, and Defendants presumed guilty. This is Red Queen country from Alice in Wonderland.

Hard as we might try, we all have our biases. The authors/researchers of this book have done a wonderful job of categorizing how our blindspots and mindbugs work and ways that have been attempted to ameliorate these.

Knowing that some of these are intentionally discriminatory and some are not is even more mind boggling. The “us versus them” information should be something that anyone working with people should be aware of, especially those who are working to create laws.

Psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to uncover our hidden biases when it comes to race, gender, age, sexuality, religion, etc. Developed in 1994, the IAT is used in clinical research and it provides, in theory, a more objective way to uncover our automatic (i.e. implicit) views as opposed to our stated views. For example, if we disagree with a racist comment, that is a stated view. But the association that black = bad can still be present and we may not be aware of it. The IAT sought to identify such biases by having people associate a race with both positive and negative assessments. They did the same for gender, with typical female = family and male = career biases.

The authors were startled by the results, that despite stated viewpoints, the majority of test takers will reveal hidden biases that reflect common stereotypes. They were especially surprised to discover they themselves harbored these hidden biases, these blindspots. In this book, they delve into the results and support it with other research that confirms or expands upon their findings. They begin with a chapter on mindbugs, the automatic thought processes that shape our overt thoughts and behavior in good ways and bad. Then they explain the IAT test and include a few in the book for readers to take (you can take a full battery of them at implicit.harvard.edu). They discuss how our brains automatically categorize things and always have (foods that are safe to eat, those that aren't) and how stereotyping is part of the categorization process.

Now I am not a psychologist, just a layperson with a great interest in psychology and race relations in particular. I took psych classes in high school and college and am fascinated by related research. So I am fairly well-read on the topics covered in this book, and was disappointed that it didn't really reveal a whole lot of new information. As I was reading, I kept hoping for new information, but I was left wondering why the authors chose to publish this book now, after already publishing their findings in scientific and general articles.

And indeed, much has already been published on these topics by numerous authors, with greater analysis as to why these biases and stereotypes persist and how to combat them. Banaji and Greenwald only scratch the surface as to the causes and solutions. They keep writing, "We don't know why, we just know it exists." They discuss decades-long views that have either been consistent or have evolved (pre-war and post-war views on Jews, for example). But their research is done without being correlated to factors other than "subjects were white or black and the IAT was about race" or "subjects were young or old and the IAT was about age." Other research has shown correlations between certain demographic factors (age, race, gender, geographical region, socio-economic background) and views on race, religion, gender, and homosexuality. The authors do not consider those factors. If you take the IAT on their Web site, you can provide that information, but they don't report results such as, "Older whites in the American South harbor more black stereotypes than do older whites in Northern states." They don't ask if testers have ever been the victim of a crime from someone of another race, which would certainly influence one's views of that race.

They also don't delve deeply into more surprising revelations, such as blacks themselves having a stronger preference for whites than they do for blacks. Blacks tend to associate more positive attributes with whites and negative ones with blacks. The authors bring up the issue of government programs to help level the playing field for minorities (i.e. Affirmative Action) and how people today feel the playing field has been leveled and such programs are no longer necessary. They briefly talk about why, but they don't seem to be aware of research that has shown that blacks, particularly urban blacks, will hold each other back from being successful in traditionally "white" careers. Black professor Shelby Steele wrote a fascinating, yet controversial, book on the topic in which he showed how blacks encourage each other to display stereotypical black behavior and pursue "black" careers (sports, music) but ostracize those who speak like whites, go to college, etc. They will call those blacks "Oreos" and say they aren't truly black. This concept applies to gender as well, as women who are tough in business are often suspected of being lesbians (I was accused of this myself more than once!). Mothers who work full-time outside the home still bear a stigma for not fulfilling their traditional role of staying home with the kids, and women are the ones most likely to harbor that viewpoint. The authors make no mention of these very real forces affecting the persistence of certain stereotypes, but they are well-known to anyone with a real interest in the topics.

It has been proven that one's community and experiences have great influence on one's views on race, homosexuality, age, etc. If you have experienced since you were young that blacks and whites are equally capable of being productive, law-abiding members of society, and you have friends of varying races, religions, etc., you're less likely to be affected by these blindspots. I have had friends from all walks of life my entire life, and when I took the race IAT, I showed no preference for blacks or whites. It's no surprise that if someone hasn't been exposed to positive experiences with people different from them that they will adopt the stereotypical viewpoints so pervasive in the news, movies, and TV. This may have been ground-breaking 20 years ago, but today, it's old news.

I found a serious flaw in the IAT, however. Every one of them begins with the tester doing the stereotypical association! For example, in the gender IAT, the tester first has to correctly place "women" and "family" attributes together and "male" and "career" attributes together. Then they have to do the reverse (i.e. women and career), and calculate how long it took them to do each test and how many they got wrong. Later in the book, the authors describe studies in which other psychologists used the race IAT but first exposed test subjects to highly positive examples of successful blacks (Bill Cosby, Martin Luther King). They were excited to see that those testers demonstrated more positive viewpoints of blacks in their tests, but they were more surprised than they should have been. And they didn't equate that with the flaw in their own tests, that they were inadvertently exposing the testers to stereotypical viewpoints first, then asking them to undo those associations. I would like to see if the IAT were administered with the non-typical viewpoints first, how many subjects were reveal fewer hidden biases. They've already planted the idea in our heads, so the results are suspect. They seem completely unaware of this.

So yes, I found this book disappointing. It is useful and very interesting for those not already well-versed in the issues of bias and discrimination. But if you've already read a lot on these topics, you won't find anything new here, and you'll be frustrated at the lack of depth of analysis. The authors provide little in terms of solutions for bias, even though they illustrate a great example of a symphony orchestra more than doubling the percentage of women hires when they switched to blind auditions (when the judges could not see who was performing, they were far more likely to select women than before). There should be more focus on ways to combat the biases, more of an effort to push the agenda in schools, workplaces, and the community. It's old news that we're still biased against others. What we need are new ideas to combat it, and a focus on studies that showed how such efforts were paying off would have made this book a truly useful tool.

I teach a news literacy and critical thinking course so I was familiar with the IAT. We start the course by taking the IAT so that we can talk about bias. You cannot be a stronger thinker if you do not understand the ways your biases hinder thinking. So I was a little disappointed in this book.

Blind spot does a great job of helping us see our biases. It also does a great job of helping us identify our resistance to bias (the Martha Stewart vs Oprah email is a humorous example). It also shows all the situational things that bias thinking. Referred to a "mindbugs" these are fun little anecdotes that show how very easily we are swayed. Just taking a tour through how our thinking is impacted by situations will make better critical thinkers.

This book does get a little tedious. If you have already taken or taught with the IAT, wading through the repetition gets a little old. But there is still enough good stuff here to make it valuable.

Blindspot is an outstanding new way of understanding how our brains create an understanding of the world around us. This should be required reading for everyone in a leadership position. How does one correct a problem that he/she is unable to notice? The most interesting part of this book is the IAT Implicit Association Test. I believe it is more useful than an Intelligence Quotient Test. Like most folks I was disappointed in my scores on the sample tests in the book. However, the information I learned about where my "blindspots" are, will help me to discover methods to "out smart" my blindspots. Now that I know I have them, I can prepare ways to outsmart the blindspots. Well written, easy to understand, scary because you learn the truth about yourself. However, I want to know the truth about myself, then at least I have an opportunity to improve myself. Good book even for someone without a background in psychology. I had taken the IAT years ago so I was familiar with their ideas. It was great to have an entire book devoted to this mysterious by nature process that is natural for our brain.

Unlike everyone else, you, of course, are perfectly objective, intellectually honest and not at all prejudiced, right? Well, probably not. Although the percentage of people openly admitting to prejudicial attitudes has drastically declined in the past several decades, authors Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald demonstrate that the majority of people still harbor various biases - usually unknown to themselves - which the authors term "mindbugs".

Using a test called the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the authors time people for matching different categories with "positive" or "negative" words. For instance, people might be asked to check the bubble on the left if they see a negative word (such as "poison") or a bug-related word (such as "gnat"), which checking the bubble on the right for all other words (flower words such as "rose" and positive words such as "gentle"). Next (or first - order does not seem to matter), participants are asked to pair negative words and flower words on the left, all others on the right.

Now, it probably not surprising that most people are faster on the task that involves pairing negative words with bugs and positive words with flowers than they are on the reverse. Most of us will readily admit to liking flowers more than bugs, and we wouldn't' object to the idea that we have an implicit "bias" that bug = bad, flower = good (unless, of course, as the authors point out, you are either an entomologist or a ten-year-old boy).

But what about, instead of bugs and flowers, if people are asked to pair positive or negative words with images of black or white faces? Male or female faces? Old or young faces?

The project on implicit biases at Harvard (available online) has recorded the scores of millions of participants who have taken various IATs. On the race IAT, approximately 70% of participants are able to match black faces with negative words and white faces with positive words faster than the reverse. Furthermore, even black participants tend to show similar results (albeit to a lesser degree). Similar results have been shown with males vs. females, young vs. old, and many other IAT configurations.

So what does this mean? Unlike bugs vs. flowers, most of us will not readily admit that we harbor any bias for whites or against blacks. Yet even allowing for repeated practice on the test, the scores remain quite stable. Most people find their results quite jarring, if not a bit horrifying. So does it mean that most of us are racist (sexist, ageist, etc.)?

The authors explore this question in rather thorough detail, and come to the rather muddled answer of, not exactly, but sort of, yes. They find, for instance, that those who show an implicit white = good/black = bad bias on the IAT are more likely to show other forms of prejudice in their behavior and judgments. For instance, they are more likely to show helping behavior toward whites than blacks, and likely to judge whites more positively than blacks. This holds true even for those who consciously adamantly deny any prejudicial attitudes.

The authors trace the origins of this implicit bias through cognitive psychology, evolutionary theory and brain structure and chemistry. Human beings have evolved to be excellent categorizers - in fact, our survival depends on it. From day 1 (earlier, as older fetuses are already developing sensory systems and making sense of stimuli), humans make sense of their experiences by creating categories long multiple dimensions - size, color, behavior, etc., and each new experience gets automatically associated with the most similar previous experiences until we've developed whole categorical systems - toys, plants, people, for instance. Within the "people" category, there is male/female, old/young, etc. As we grow, we learn other categories and characteristics such as race, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, etc. From earliest days we are receiving thousands of messages every minute from many different sources which we use to evaluate and make connections about members of all our different categories, all without being aware of what we're doing. These evaluations and connections can form the basis of stereotypes, which can, in turn, lead to bias and prejudice without our conscious knowledge, much less our approval or acceptance.

Because humans tend to prefer familiar to non-familiar stimuli and experiences (linked psychologically and evolutionarily with security and, hence, survival), we tend to categorize people like us as "in-group" and more favored, and people not like us as "out-group" and less favored. We are more likely to associate with and help people from our in-group than our out-group. Furthermore, certain groups become dominant in different cultures (in American culture, for instance, whites are the dominant group), and those groups, because of their preference for others like themselves, tend to set the norms and characteristics of the dominant group as the ideals. Hence, even members of out-groups can come to implicitly prefer the norms and characteristics of the dominant group.

The authors do a good job explaining and exploring our implicit biases, but their theories and research have not yet advanced far enough to tell us too much about where to go from here. They do cover a few ways to outwit our mindbugs (such as blind application procedures, so that those reviewing the applications are not biased by issues such as race or gender). They also talk about ways to confront or work around our mindbugs. But basically, the bottom line is that mindbugs exist and most of us display biases that help members of the dominant culture more than members of minority or out-groups, resulting in relative advantage for the dominant culture over minority cultures. They stop short of calling these biases racism (or sexism, ageism, etc.), but it seems rather obvious that they at least serve as the basis for institutionalized racism and our collective blindness and denial thereof.

There's not a lot new presented in this book. If you've kept up with pop psychology or if you've taken a cognitive psychology class or two, you will certainly be aware of how humans create schema and categorization that is influenced by - and which further influences - our experience of the world. But this book is still worthwhile for the evidence presented by the various IAT tests and for the presentation as a whole in helping us understand how we got to this point. And I certainly give the authors kudos for being brave enough to confront not only their own biases, but the issue of prejudice in society at large. I hope that this work will serve as a springboard for further research and better policy making to address where we go from here.

As a side note, this book deals almost exclusively with social biases. I was expecting something more to do with our biases in how we make and accept arguments and frame issues for debate - our logical gaps and fallacies, even when we think we are being consistent and intellectually honest. There are certainly some extrapolations that can be made from this book to the issue of logical fallacies, but that's not primarily what this book is about, so if that's what you're looking for, you probably want to look elsewhere.

Anthony Greenwald is a distinguished name in psychology and I'd read his works as a grad student and academic, and his co-author seems headed for a distinguished career as well. The book focuses on an instrument created by these authors designed to assess hidden biases and prejudices.

The major lesson of the book is that our prejudices are unconscious. The subtitle "Hidden biases of good people," summarizes the point. Apart from the instrument, there's not much new; Claude Steele's research had the same findings.

I especially appreciated the section on biases against the elderly. Many people deny these biases but they're real. I'm not sure that media images of lively, active elderly people will make a difference; after all, we've seen Ronald Reagan, John McCain, Golda Meir and other "older" world leaders. Hillary Clinton in her 60s was qualified to take on a new career as secretary of state, but it's unlikely that any major corporation woul take on a 60-plus person in a significant role that represented a career change.

The section on medical "mindbugs" doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. The author presents an example of a "Joan A" who insists on a cholesterol test, despite being at low risk for heart disease. She had low body weight and high athletic activity. Her cholesterol was high so he initiated "some treatment."

The problem is that female = low cardiac risk is not a stereotype. It's a correlation established (or refuted) by research. In her book, The Truth About Statins, cardiologist Dr. Barbara Roberts, argues that high cholesterol in an otherwise healthy woman is not a risk factor for heart disease. Other researchers question the importance of lowering cholesterol or even having tests. Dr M and Joan A should read Gilbert Welch's book, Overdiagnosis. A healthy athletic woman might have a greater risk from side effects of statins than from high cholesterol.

Otherwise it's an excellent book, a welcome addition to the increasingly popular genre of well-researched psychology translated for ordinary people.

Unless the story being told is extremely pretzel-like, it can’t be true that high IAT scores predict both better and worse behavior toward members of minority groups. If one study finds a correlation between IAT scores and discriminatory behavior against out-group members, and another, similarly-sized study finds a similarly sized correlation between IAT scores and discriminatory behavior against the in-group members, for meta-analytic purposes those two studies should average out to a correlation of about zero. That isn’t what the Greenwald team did — instead, they in effect added the two correlations as though they were pointing in the same direction.

The psychometric issues with race and ethnicity IATs, Greenwald, Banaji, and Nosek wrote in one of their responses to the Oswald team’s work, “render them problematic to use to classify persons as likely to engage in discrimination.” In that same paper, they noted that “attempts to diagnostically use such measures for individuals risk undesirably high rates of erroneous classifications.” In other words: You can’t use the IAT to tell individuals how likely they are to commit acts of implicit bias. To Blanton, this is something of a smoking gun: “This concession undermines the entire premise of their webpage,” he said. “Their webpage delivers psychological diagnoses that even they now admit are too filled with error to be meaningful.”

If a race IAT test-taker is exactly 1 millisecond faster on each and every white/good as compared to black/bad trial, they “will get the most extreme label,” he said. That is, the test will tell them they are extremely implicitly biased despite their having exhibited almost zero bias in their actual performance. That’s an extreme example, of course, but Blanton says he’s confident this algorithmic quirk is “affecting real-world results,” and in the Assessment paper he and his colleagues published the results of a bunch of simulated IAT sessions which demonstrated as such.

At the moment, there’s no good, empirically backed reason to assume that a given IAT score reflects your actual level of implicit bias, as opposed to a noisy mishmash of other stuff (a mishmash which probably includes some unknown quantity of “real” implicit bias). That’s because the IAT’s creators didn’t bother fully investigating this question before releasing the test to the public and telling all of us, prematurely, that it really measures implicit bias, and does so accurately.

It's hard to sit down and read through this book all at once. The writing is a bit wordy in areas. There are dense walls of text, so it's not very scannable. And this is a participatory book, where you really should take the tests as you go.

It is very interesting, but not light reading. The information is really very good, though.

We are far more likely to judge others than we realize, best intentions aside. It is not about integrity. It's about associations.

Blindspot explains we have a "preparedness" to favor the familiar, even from a prenatal timeline. We fear the foreign "them" - even animals segregate this way. We perceive that other human groups with a different look are "all alike" - the Outgroup Homogeneity Effect.

Can we break free of the mindbugs posited by Blindspot?

A good start is recognizing that we have them, and being more mindful with others. The fix is inconclusive, though, with the final statement that although "it is not an easy task, there is nothing to suggest that it cannot be done."

The two appendices on race are enlightening (esp Are Americans Racist?), and there is an excellent reference section, along with expanded notes for each chapter.

RECOMMENDATION

This is kind of a seminal work on an important topic. As such, it deserves attention and needs to be read. The writing isn't dull, but it DOES read like something you would be assigned in a sociology class. If you are prepared for that, I recommend it.

This book tries to uncover how we all operate with hidden biases that subtly guide our choices towards decisions that seem logical to us but are influenced by these biases.

The first chapter tries to prove it to us by giving us little exercises that demonstrate that our mental adaptations lead us to different conclusions. Then they move on to demonstrate the biases in the research methods that rely on verbal answers to researcher's questions. The intent is to prove that these biases are unintentional. They provide a website where the reader can take implicit association tests to discover their own blind spots. Then the book delves further into explaining how our circumstances, associations we form and the groups we belong to can influence our beliefs and hence feelings toward others. It's important to understand, but like other reviewers have pointed out, didn't we already know this? However, the authors provide ways of measuring and understanding our biases. The next few chapters dive deeper into exploring these biases, stereotypes we believe in, how we get into us vs. them patterns of thought and behavior. The last Chapter discusses ways to eliminate or mitigate these biases.

Given the prevalence of hidden biases, for instance in recruitment of minorities, it's a good book to read to understand what causes these biases and how we may be acting upon these hidden biases without being aware of them.

Two and one-half stars, rounded up to three. The authors have a blind spot regarding their own work, the Implicit Association Test.

The first half of the book attempts to assure the reader that their test is correct. The "proof" reads like an undergraduate term paper. I stopped taking undergraduate psychology classes in college because I was tired of hearing students extrapolate from mice experiments onto their roommates' behavior. The authors designed a test which they say is accurate, and that's the self-referential "authority" they unleash on the reader during the first half of the book. Along with a soggy metaphor about visual perception: Just as we're deceived by our own senses, they say, we're deceived by our beliefs--and their self-administered test will prove it.

In the trial test, the IAT measures your preference for flowers or insects. OK, people don't like bugs; but where are the results of the real "Controls"? Are humans biased about everything and anything? Can I take an IAT about two things I know nothing about, and care nothing about?
There is a conspicuous lack of information about the design of the test.

At the end of the book, they note factors that measurably influence racial attitude (e.g. beauty) and describe how a small, but cumulative, effect will penalize those who are being biased against . They acknowledge, yet ignore, these factors in their own test. During the race bias test, you are "trained" to identify blacks and non-black faces based on the appearance of the central part of the face. You see wide noses, narrow noses, rough skin, smooth skin, round faces, oval faces. You have to generalize by race, of course, and bypass those descriptions.

I'm white, and the test concluded I'm biased in favor of blacks. But what about beauty? Did that influence me?

Or was I influenced by the fact that the little pictures get mixed up, and sometimes I'd pick the face by typing with my left hand, and sometimes with my right which I may favor. Sometimes I'd get 4 in a row of one race. Sometimes not. Yes, I was thrown off by the switching, but was it enough to throw the test?

While the topic is interesting, the writing doesn't carry it.

The authors use clever analogies - the blind spot in the eye like blind spots in our thinking, and optical illusions representing the ways our mind misleads itself - but have a tendency to beat dead horses. They make a point, then make it again, then a third time just in case.

Further, if you've ever read anything about the Implicit Association Test before, about a quarter of this book will be redundant.

It seems that there is now quite a bit of science to back up what most people have always known: we all have deep prejudices and biases that we would rather not accept or even acknowledge. Some may be so engrained that we truly are unaware of the influence they have on our behavior and thought processes. This book is user=friendly, in that it gives example quizzes to take to put you right in the thick of the research, giving a very clear understanding of the ramifications of this information. The test didn't work quite as promised on me, I ended up less biased than predicted, less than eve I would have guessed.

This is a "science book" that is made very palatable for the average, interested reader, which I always appreciate, but it didn't hold many surprises.

I picked this book up as it looked like a very interesting read on hidden judgments that good people in general have. While this certainly is the premise, it is but the tip of the iceberg of the book itself. The author covers years of research and studies, statistics and hypothesis to back up all of what are completely hidden prejudices to the conscience mind. Not only do the facts back up the writing, there are several included IAT (Implicit Association Test) included for the reader to explore for themselves to see just how valid this research really is. The results may surprise you, and retaking the tests won't change them, which is what makes them so effective. There are even included site links so that you may go online to continue testing yourself and discovering your own Blindspots, or Mindbugs as the book aptly refers to them.
Several of the studies were very interesting to read, such as the one on short term memory loss patients. While they remembered everything up to a point, they can't form new memories, yet research shows that their subconscious mind does retain these memories, which was very interesting reading!
Also interesting was how much influence one can have over another person simply by the way they word their questions, something that has proven to be very misguiding in not only police crime scenes and investigations but prosecutions as well, often sending innocent people away for crimes they did not commit.
I don't want to give anymore away about this book as it would surely spoil it for the next reader, but I cannot recommended it enough. It was inspiring, frightening in the sense that so much of our subconscious makes decisions we aren't even aware of, and very eye opening. While reading this I just kept thinking of everyone I absolutely have to share this book with, and The answer is everyone! It's educational, factual, and informative with the data to back it up. Do yourself a favor and pick this book up today, knowledge is always power!
Highly Recommended to all, but especially if sociology, psychology and philosophy are of any interest to you! 5 stars plus!

In the spirit of such authors as dan ariely, this book examines the hidden biases we have without realizing them. Using the Implicit Association Test (a study of reaction times with paired content) they realized even the most progressive minded individuals often have unrealized prejudices towards certain groups. Lots of facts, figures and sample tests are included which some may find dry but nonetheless were presented in an entertaining way.

This isn't just about race, it's about any "us" vs "them" mentality. This is somewhat obvious, but these biases are the springboard towards more interesting discussions.

Once establishing these facts, the authors analyze how these hidden biases impact subtle decision making even among those that truly believe they don't discriminate. Which patient gets the best care? The one that is most similar to me. Who will I hire? The person that I identity with. These blind spots allow decades and century old biases to continue.

The best part of the book is towards the end when the authors talk about ways, once accepting that we all have these biases, how to work around them. Our cars have blind spots and instead of denying them, we learn in drivers ed to work around them. This book serves that same function my drivers ed instructor taught me: check your mirrors because what you think you see isn't always what is actually out there

This book is important to psychology, because it explores so much about why we don't think and behave the way we think we do. It also explores why we come to so many incorrect conclusions, because of patterns in our brains.

This is something that those involved in working with people who need help really do need to read. As the authors say, there is much work they still need to do--and others need to join them in doing--to figure out ways to correct the blind spots that cause big problems in many lives.

I have seen in my life several situations where my thinking about things was led by experiences and by things I read. It has been a God thing for me. That Holy Spirit, he can truly lead!

Interesting, there was one set of three questions that each had two choices for answers. I answered all three of them, and then read that I had answered all three the way that most people do not answer them. And my answers were right! It's a God thing!

And then skip the others.

Lots of books covering similar ground recently, and if you've read them, you don't need one more. If you haven't, then go back to the five-star reviews and follow their guidance.

I am one of those people, apparently rare, who's pretty clear that I am prejudiced, make judgements about people based on externals, and am a less-than-stellar driver. (At the same time, I've done big sister work in the prison, so if you're making judgments about what you just read, figure out a way to incorporate that.)

I'm not shocked at this book's lessons. I get that.

What matters is, how do you act, and, can people tell?

I got tired of being told I wasn't as good as I thought I was, when I'm pretty clear, I never was that good anyway. Maybe you'll find yourself more enlightened than I did.

The book starts simple and uncontroversial with the "Turning the Tables" illusion. Illusion or not, I still pulled out the ruler and measured the tables. The book continues to talk about mindbugs and the different kind of lies we tell. Then it introduces the IAT (The Implicit Association Test), one of the cornerstones for the research in this book.

Then the uncomfortable stuff begin. Chapter after chapter the book points out the various ways we humans have hidden biases of all different kinds. Not necessarily out of ill will or hatorade, but it's the sum of all our parts. It doesn't take a research project to tell us that we are all influenced in many different ways by everything that happened to us before, but this book with the IAT is a scientific attempt at what most people knew or suspected, if not about themselves, certainly for "other people".

A lot of people have trouble coming to terms with this. Very few people want to see themselves as biased or unfair or attached to any of the -ists and -isms. But the book is not about shaming. It is about understanding.

Granted, this is research in progress, and as it is often the case with cutting edge research, not everything stands the test of time. So, this book is not necessarily something to take as written in stone, but as food for thought.

There are quite a few exercises in the book, some using the IAT method. It can feel like homework because these are not simple connect the dots type of exercises.

The book is not as fluid as some of the other pop science books. It can be rather dry at times, compounded by waves of dense paragraphs. This is also not the type of a book you can jump chapters or read different sections out of order.

Over the past few years I've read a handful of great books about cognitive biases; Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland, Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow, and now I am happy to add Blindspot to this list. What makes this book different, however, is that its focus is a little more specific: how cognitive biases (or as Banaji and Greenwald prefer to refer to them, Hidden Biases) affect the way we interact with different groups of people.

Going by the subtitle, the content within might sound a little mysterious, but their subject is pretty straight-forward. The authors show that even the most egalitarian people hold biases against other groups of people based on their gender, religion, ethnicity, etc., and this bias they hold is often totally unbeknownst to themselves. The authors walk you step-by-step through their methods, drawing you to their conclusions in a very straight-forward manner. They even have a test you can take yourself in the book (though they provide links to take the test online, a much easier alternative) to see whether you hold any of these hidden biases.

Overall, the book is well-written and informative. At its core, it's a pop-psychology book, which means it's both fun and interesting to read. And though it may not blow you away if you're already familiar with the subject, it is a book which you find yourself thinking about long after you've finished it. Definitely recommended.

This is an extremely thought provoking book that certainly helped me to understand my unconscious motivations for the choices I make. The authors write persuasively and back their research with a huge amount of science and research. Since I am now aware, I can consciously choose to override and make informed choices that aren't the whim of a subconscious fancy. For that result alone, the book far repaid its cost. (As a side note, I took the tests linked within the Kindle edition and I am, as it turns out, ridiculously egalitarian when it comes to race. Whew!) Despite those test results, I find that this book caused me to examine my comfort zones and step outside them. Highly recommended, especially for those who may benefit from such self-awareness in the workplace.

This book focuses on what are probably not really "hidden" biases for most of us...we just don't talk about them: white vs. black, young vs. old, heterosexual vs. homosexual. We all have preferences, whether we'll admit them or not. I actually found some of the persistent illusions some of the most thought provoking topics in the book---even when you KNOW the colors are the same, one looks darker; even when you KNOW the two table tops are the same shape, they don't look the same. To me, the idea that even when you KNOW something, it may not affect the way you think is pretty important. Even with evidence, humans don't like to change their minds. The various tests at the Harvard IAT site are fascinating. The idea of doing research about what people prefer based on sorting is certainly important, as is the idea that small "lack of preference" attitudes can cause long term harm. It is good to know that we are not exhibiting truly hostile prejudice in our country any more, and we can hope that blind testing (as for concert musicians) will allow talented humans of any color, gender, or orientation to excel to the full extent possible in their chosen area of expertise in the future.

Interesting, well researched with some encouraging examples of modifying blindspot mindbugs. Once one gets past the belief you're NOT prejudiced and explore personal blindspots and mindbugs there's room for broadening and improving perspectives and actions. In short, mindbugs require awareness, coupled with a a desire and methods for improvement.

The book explains the Implicit Association Test (IAT), loads of research, and other researchers work that takes IAT findings to the next level of understanding mindbug elimination by de-sensitizing/uncoupling negative perceptions. Although perception and prejudice have been studied incessantly, it is still around. Mindbugs thought to be vanquished since segregation was ruled unlawful are slowly being eradicated but is still alive and well in post-racial USA. Since the election and re-election of President Barack Hussein Obama, the amount of blatant racism has increased while acceptance has too. Researchers might want ot further study that phenomena.

This book makes me wonder "How and what will it take for us to really make significant change as individuals, a society, and the systems we navigate?"

"Blind Spot" was really very good. Excellent even. And uncomfortable because it showed me just how biased I am about things.

Not going to lie though, this book should make people uncomfortable and push against it because it really challenges our hidden biases on many sides.

Although it focuses on the biases against targeted groups (minorities, gender, seniors, etc), I found my biases against the 'power group' to reveal itself and at certain points, I would say, "No, no, no," but the more I read, the more I'd say, "Yes, I do use that generality. I didn't even know it." The chapter on stereotyping (Homo categoris) was especially enlightening for me.

I do recommend this book but I recommend it be read slowly (I know that I read it too fast and will re-read soon). But be prepared to not like everything in it because as the saying goes, "The trait that irritate us most in others is a trait that one possesses."

You may resist. You may say it 'ain't so', but we do have blindspots.

While many are just open and believe what they believe...others can often delude themselves into a false sense of being fair, not coming to rash conclusions etc.

Righteousness, judgment, reality of visual perceptions, experience in differing situations, as well as emotions play into our everyday exchanges.

One can simply look at the studies, view examples, and read over case scenarios to see how it all happens.

Very interesting and intriguing presentaion.

How we make decisions, our unconscious biases and how that impacts actions are all of interest to me. I say that because the thesis of this book is something I enjoy learning about. That being said at times I found the book hard to wade through.

The appendix covering topics such as are Americans Racist and Race, Disadvantage, and Discrimination were even harder to wade through.

Good critical book that is important not only for self reflection but awareness of how our culture shapes our future

This book totally surprised me. It goes to the very root of our behavior and biases, which has helped me immensely as a manager at to be honest with myself. It is a deep look in the mirror, but it is also a very excellent study on how to detect and try to filter out the biases of others. I found every chapter to be fascinating and engaging. I usually buy books like this to help me in my managerial job, and this one is very different than every other management book I have read. It complements those books very well, giving me an additional management angle to work with. You will be surprised at how much our innate wiring does the thinking for us. When you know what to look for, you can catch it and manage it. Fascinating book that I highly recommend. Just don't bring an overly high opinion of yourself to the book; it has a way of bringing the reader back to reality!

First of all, I loved the interactive nature of the book. Do the quizzes, do the tests. Don't just skip over them and laugh, haha, okay, I get it without doing it. DO it. Get involved. Go online to the websites and take the tests. I was surprised. Also, since racism is something that I have had to puzzle over many many times in my career and with the people I love and work with, I've also been exposed to the very subtle nature of "blind" prejudice and favoritism. So yes, I came to this very interested in the topic, and no, I haven't been overexposed to similar books. This book goes into the science of it. The studies, the nature of and the reason for the nature of inherent "racism" if you will. It does not clearly answer some questions, but it does touch on some answers -- for instance, like learning a language, becoming fully amassed in the culture and with the people whom you are "blindly" biased against, will definitely ease and sometimes transform and reverse that bias. But first, you do have to know it exists, and you do need to know it exists in YOU... and why. Only then can you actively pursue change. If you need change. Maybe you're already pretty accepting. It is an excellent book too if you are one who travels or goes into different territories and cultures. You will be much more tolerant of other people's intolerance/curiosity if you have a good understanding of why it's there to begin with. Read it. Do the exercises. Take the tests. It's fun, and you may very well learn something about yourself.

Two activities that we tend to engage in automatically when processing information are forming associations and categories which, according to the authors of this book, can impinge upon our reactions to certain groups of people without our conscious awareness.

Describing how the Implicit Association Test (IAT) they've devised can probe the nature of such associations, the authors go on to report that majority of the people who have taken their tests, while describing themselves as having no conscious ill-feelings towards any particular group of people, have been shown to have stereotypes of blacks, homosexuals, and the aged that are less positive than their stereotypes of whites, heterosexuals, and the young, respectively.

The authors believe that these findings indicate that their IAT methodology can expose hidden biases that people have against certain groups of people, but they won't go so far as equating such hidden biases with prejudice. They do think, however, that having such hidden biases is not a good thing, and that the more we can minimize the role that such biases can play in various kinds of decision making, the better off we can be as a society. Having said that, however, they acknowledge that that is easier said than done, because the problem is currently a very difficult one to tackle.

I feel that this book leaves too many questions unanswered, and when you discount the fact that people can harbor unconscious or hidden biases against blacks, homosexuals, and the elderly as something most people already know, then all you have left is a description of a research methodology that so far has mostly been used to infer stereotypical biases quite pervasive in our society (and, therefore, easy to demonstrate and document), but not so much to provide a better understanding of how those biases really differ from prejudice, and how to get in front of those biases in order to lessen their negative impact on society.

The implicit association test (IAT) is a look at unconscious biases and prejudices that we human beings are generally associated with. Based on simple tests developed by researchers, one has identified the typical biases society has (e.g. Black/weapons, male/career, women/family). The analysis did not go into details of how these biases statistically affect our societal behavior.

In the last decade, Mahzarin Banaji, Anthony Greenwald, and a score of other scientists have discovered that we have unconscious biases against other social groups, these unconscious biases predict prejudiced behavior, and ways to inhibit the influence of these unconscious biases on our actions. Unfortunately, most people who are not social psychologists are unaware of these discoveries or the implications that they have for almost every sphere of our lives.

In Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, Banaji and Greenwald introduce this research to a general audience. Using clear, concise writing, these authors provide an overview of the scientific study of prejudice, from its history to its latest findings on how racist and sexist attitudes exist outside of our awareness. This is the first book to bring much of this research to the attention of non-psychologists. Previous popular press books about psychology research have either avoided this subject completely or referenced it briefly (e.g., Blink). This is the first in-depth treatment of this work by scientists who contributed to these discoveries.

Two more things. First, readers interested in reading more about this research will find the extensive reference section helpful in tracking down the work that is referenced in the book. Second, the book provides readers with a paper and an online version of the test that measures unconscious racism and sexism.

Full disclosure: Mahzarin Banaji is my PhD advisor.

I thought this book sounded like it would be really interesting to read and the concept of it drew me in, but I found it to be a dry read that I couldn't get into and barely skimmed it. Gave me flashbacks to college text books. I think they should have been less technical with the presentation of the information because it really is an interesting subject.

I quite like the way we're led into this with classic optical illusions illustrating just how our brain interprets data presented to it. It takes a bit of time, but we're eventually brought to the point of examining our biases and I do warn you that this book is liable to expose biases you may deny having. Read this, take the tests, and learn..

This is a pretty interesting book by two psychologists. We learn about the origins and also the consequences of our hidden prejudices, but more importantly how we can learn and grow from them. We learn that prejudice is NOT conscious as many of us believe. I believe this is the first book about the science of prejudice, a groundbreaking topic for those interested in the subject.

This book will help you understand your own blind spots and hopefully allow you to be more open and not let your blind spots run your life. You will probably never get away from them totally but if you remember you have them, you can be less influenced by them.

In the same way, it can help you understand people that you may not have understood before. They can be operating out of their blind spots. You can learn to be less judgmental and have more compassion when this is happening, thus making your life a little easier for yourself.

I highly recommend this book to help you uncover your hidden biases and the biases of those that you are close to in hopes that you will have some type of personal growth experience come out of it.

While the 'house' built upon this book's foundation has some interesting aspects, the foundation of this book, that snap classification of people is always wrong and harmful, is plain silly politically correct balderdash. Throughout the book, the authors blather on about how harmful are assumptions about people and situations are so from their view, our best strategy would be to always 'zero base budget' when we need to decide about how to deal with people.

In fact, depending on your personal view, as either an evolutionary result or a gift from God, we have a well honed and very useful set of prejudices we'd be idiotic to ignore. Two much better books on prejudice are The Gift of Fear and Blink. Both these books, especially the former, explain that our fears exist to guide us into safer paths.

Is this fear and prejudice always good? Hardly and there exists a good deal of injustice due to it, but for these authors to condemn our evolutionary / gift from God ability to form judgments because such judgments fail to adhere to today's political correctness as espoused by such centers of practicum as Harvard and the University of Washington (authors' schools) is laughable.

Even the examples of harm they produce are laughable. For example, they use Madoff's scamming of Jewish charities as an example of how these charities' trust of the Jewish Madoff led them into trouble. What's they fail to say or comprehend is that this trust of Jews for other Jews is based on reality and that in fact, Madoff's cheating them is not a rule but an exception and a very rare one too. These charities were right to trust Madoff even though it didn't work out this time because the vast majority of the time such trust will pay off.

A second (of many) foolish and unsupported examples the authors give is the Zimmerman / Martin killing in Florida. They outright baldly state that due to racial prejudice alone, a 'vigilante' (sic) killed a perfectly innocent fellow for no reason whatsoever. Curious that they can publish a book full of the facts of the matter even before the trial starts. Why can they do this? Because in their tortured politically correct world, when a non-black kills a black, the only rationale for the act is race hatred. These authors should be ashamed of themselves condemning Zimmerman even before the trial starts or the facts of the case are established. I'm not surprised that they did this. After all, one teaches at Harvard and the other at the U of Washington.

In a similar vein, if you are interviewing a person for a job and get a very bad 'vibe' from that person, look to Blink for guidance rather than this book's advice to ignore your 'gut feeling'. In fact, you may overlook the better employee by going with your gut, but most of the time your instinctive reaction is the right reaction. Part of the reason you can read this review is that your ancestors went with their gut rather than this sort of laughable political correctness to take everybody at the same level.

While some aspects of the book, such as the IAT to uncover hidden biases, are interesting, they exist in support of a fallacy so fail due to that. I cannot recommend this book beyond a good example of how rampant and idiotic political correctness has gotten today. The book also illustrates what passes for intelligent thought at two of our supposedly respected institutions.

There was an excellent summary done of this book by the Wall Street Journal. I would highly recommend reading it before purchasing this book. Type in "Wall Street Journal Blindspot" in an internet search and the article was written by Daniel Levitin (I don't believe I'm allowed to post external links in product descriptions).

The poor scientific assumptions come out when Levitin references a meta-analysis done by the authors of this book back in 2009. This analysis is a standard tool for scientists to use to compare their findings with the findings in the rest of the scientific community. Here's a quote from the article:

"The authors themselves published one...[a meta-analysis] reviewing 184 independent samples and nearly 15,000 experimental subjects. The result: The IAT [the primary test referenced in "Blindspot"] was very weakly correlated with other measures, failing to account for more than 93% of the data. Interestingly, Ms. Banaji and Mr. Greenwald don't report this in their book. Perhaps a blind spot?"

"Blindspot" is a book that brings up a point worth discussing, but it is not a book based on any kind of scientific fact. Anytime we are found trying to guess the hidden thoughts and motives of another person we are going to be left with unpredictable and inaccurate data. Each of us has too much personalized experience for any one test to be able to account for all these variances in our perceptions.

I am not saying don't buy "Blindspot," but I am saying to approach it for what it is: a conversation piece and not a scientific work.

Derek

This book had all the earmarks of an outstanding story - interesting premise, intriguing stories and some great twists and turns. What a disappointment to get to the "pay-off" (last) chapter and be told that because I am white, I am a racist. Seems like the authors are hiding a few deep-seeded personal hang-ups.