'Within five minutes, you have to do something to somebody's mind so that at the end of those five minutes you will now show a lower association of black with bad. All the scientists focused on reducing unconscious racial bias against blacks. Groups of scientists 'raced' one another to see if their favorite techniques worked. The idea, said Harvard University psychologist Mahzarin Banaji, one of the researchers, was to evaluate whether there were rapid-fire ways to disable stereotypes.
(Some academics have also linked the research into unconscious bias to the Trayvon Martin case.)Ĭalvin Lai and Brian Nosek at the University of Virginia recently challenged scientists to come up with ways to ameliorate such biases.
Subtle biases are linked to police cadets being more likely to shoot unarmed black men than they are unarmed white men. Scientists agree there's little doubt that hate-filled racism is real, but a growing body of social science research suggests that racial disparities and other biased outcomes in the criminal justice system, in medicine and in professional settings can be explained by unconscious attitudes and stereotypes. In the popular imagination and in conventional discourse - especially in the context of highly charged news events such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin - prejudice is all about hatred and animosity. Researchers say it may be possible to temporarily reduce racial biases.
