Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

Summary

Professors Banaji and Greenwald performed a tremendous public service in writing this book. It deals judiciously and scientifically with the sources of human bias in our psychology, upbringing, and culture. At the same time, they wrote for the layperson who may lack a strong background in the study of psychology. The authors use the metaphor of the physical blindspot we all carry in our eyes to illustrate how certain adaptive evolutionary developments in our minds can predispose us toward bias directed at people who exhibit differences from us. The authors describe and offer tests called Implicit Association Tests (IAT) that can diagnose whether our responses to pictures or words suggest that we harbor biases often unknown to us. The authors offer themselves as examples because the tests revealed that they also harbor a degree of bias in specific contexts. Even though they consciously desire to shed the bias, continued testing shows that this is harder to do than we might think.

Context

The authors published Blindspot in 2013, but their connection dated to 1980 when Banaji came to study for her Ph.D. with Greenwald. By 2013 they could describe their field as a “still-growing surge of research on unconscious mental functioning….” Their book is a part of that surge, applying understandings of the impact of unconscious brain work on our understanding of our behavior. Sadly, but with diagnostic credibility, they suggest as their basic conclusion: “hidden-bias blindspots are so widespread that many good people have them.”

Style

Blindspot is a remarkable example of the art of making complicated science accessible to the general public. The painful findings of the book must have made it a complex document to produce. That makes the triumph of the authors in achieving the goal of accessibility all the more admirable. The content of this book makes it a problematic book with which to wrestle. However, it is an easy book to read.

Classroom

Blindspot should have wide use in teaching from high school through graduate. Perhaps most challenged to use it will be the teachers. Teachers may have to reveal their learning of hidden personal biases. In following the example set by Banaji and Greenwald, they will have to negotiate the ramifications of such honesty in their classroom environment.

Bibliographic Information

Banaji, Mahzarin R., and Anthony G. Greenwald, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (New York: Delacorte Press, 2013)
ISBN: 9780553804645 0553804642 9780440423294 0440423295 9780345528438 0345528433 9782012015906 2012015905