Biases that people hold below the surface are influencing how they view this electoral season, as well as major political issues before them, such as race relations, gun control and immigration, according to a researcher.
Vanderbilt professor , author of , is available to talk about 鈥渋mplicit bias.鈥�
P茅rez, associate professor of political science and sociology at Vanderbilt, calls implicit bias 鈥渁n umbrella term for a variety of attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and stereotypes that we all carry to some degree. They tend to be automatically triggered, hard to control and can often influence what we say and do without our awareness.鈥�
P茅rez says our mind picks up on patterns that we see in society, the media and other places and forms snap judgements before we have time to process all the information in a more deliberative and controlled manner.
鈥淥ne of the best examples in the United States concerns its racial hierarchy: the idea that racial and ethnic groups are arrayed in descending order of social status and dominance, with whites atop and minorities to varying degrees below. Even if someone explicitly disavows this state of affairs,鈥� P茅rez explains, 鈥渁 part of one鈥檚 mind recognizes that in the U.S., whites are more socially esteemed than non-whites.鈥�
Latinos and immigration
Perez gives the example of immigration.
鈥淚’ve done work showing that many people in the mass public have an implicit attitude toward Latinos, which tends to be negatively charged and opposite of what they self-report to pollsters. This implicit attitude emerges, in part, because people鈥檚 minds detect patterns in immigration news coverage, where one group is constantly paired with negative information, irrespective of whether the information is valid or not. Part of our mind learns a negative evaluation of this group and stores it in memory. So, when the issue of immigration is broached, it draws out this implicit attitude, which colors people’s thinking about immigration politics.鈥�
Police, guns and African Americans
P茅rez says despite all the training police officers receive, when it comes to split decisions, implicit bias often comes into play. And that implicit bias often consists of a mental association between African Americans and weapons that many people鈥攊ncluding trained police officers鈥攑ossess.
鈥淓ven with all the motivation in the world to make a calm and controlled decision, implicit bias can get the best of people if they don鈥檛 have sufficient time and clear enough information to wholly analyze a situation,鈥� said P茅rez.
Politics
P茅rez says studies show that people in polls who claim to be undecided actually have an implicit preference for a candidate as much as four weeks before an election. That implicit preference ends up predicting who they vote for.
And often, instead of spending time getting more information, people try to rationalize their initial thoughts. P茅rez says if there is 鈥渏ust something鈥� about Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump that a voter doesn鈥檛 like, without digging deeper into substantive issues, it鈥檚 probably because that person is relying on their implicit attitude toward either candidate.
鈥淎 lot of what we consider to be deliberation is, at the end of the day, a verbal rationalization of those implicit responses we all have,鈥� said P茅rez
Testing implicit bias
One way to reliably measure implicit bias is through the (IAT), a timed computer-based measure that can detect 鈥渂lind spots鈥� in one鈥檚 thinking.
P茅rez believes continuing this area of study will help us go beyond the traditional public opinion survey to better understand what voters really think.
鈥淚n many ways, what we鈥檙e learning is that implicit cognition is primary to what we characterize as explicit cognition. So that means that the tip of the iceberg鈥攐r what people are willing to talk about in a survey鈥� is often heavily influenced by what is submerged below鈥攖hings that people either don’t want to or can’t report,鈥� said P茅rez. 鈥淣onetheless, these thoughts still leave an imprint on what individuals ultimately believe.鈥�