JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2001

PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE AGENDA

Ordinary Prejudiceby Mahzarin R. Banaji, PhD, Yale University

8

SCIENCE BRIEFSSCIENCE BRIEFS

It is Fall 2000, and I am teaching In-troductory Psychology. We havecompleted a discussion of Stanley

Milgram�s demonstration of obedienceto authority. Given the pace at whichthe topics must move in such a course,we are onto a different subject the fol-lowing week, and a group of studentsstays behind to discuss the question ofracial profiling. Articulate and angry, astudent speaks about the shooting ofAmadou Diallo, shot 41 times for beingBlack. I attempt to keep the discussionfocused on the psychological and socialmechanisms that led Diallo to be shotfor a crime he did not commit, but it isfast becoming clear that in the heat ofthe discussion nothing from the previ-ous week�s lecture about the power ofthe social situation is even remotely ontheir minds. I prompt the students toimagine being a police officer in thatsituation and to predict their own re-sponse�would they have behaved dif-ferently? The angry student is incredu-lous that I would suggest any similaritybetween her and those police officers.Another sheepishly offers that he mighthave responded similarly. Yet, he toocapitulates and, with a nervous laughakin to the twitch of Milgram�s ownsubject, concludes, �But I would nothave fired as many times.� I am suffi-ciently disappointed at the robustnessof their deflection that I assign myselfa score of 60 out of 100 for teachingability and, even with grade inflation,that�s a straight D.

I do not study the issues that StanleyMilgram did, nor do I bring to mywork anywhere the same talent or flair.But in my work on unconscious socialcognition, I�ve noticed that the re-sponses to the discoveries themselvesshare something in common�surpriseat the outcome and, often, a tenaciousrejection of the relevance of the findingto oneself. The former I understand,perhaps because I too was surprised, infact numbed, by evidence of the biasesin my own mind. Tenacious rejectionthat such thoughts and feelings areone�s own I can also understand, but

not easily among those who have theprivilege of formal education. What so-cial psychology has given to an under-standing of human nature is the discov-ery that forces larger than ourselves de-termine our mental life and our ac-tions�that chief among these forcesare our individual learning historiesand the power of the social situation.As reasonable as this idea may seem,and as willingly as it might be acceptedin the abstract, the discovery that learn-ing histories and the immediate situa-tion may have their influence outsideconsciousness is hard to contend with.The students in my class are only onedatum, but they are an important one

because at this school the Milgram dis-cussion is always intense and especiallypoignant. The inability to draw the par-allel to oneself, to realize the possiblelack of control over one�s thoughts andactions is stark and, I would add, psy-chologically interesting in its own right.It is difficult to see the power of thesituation in oneself when the outcomeis unpalatable, just as it is difficult tosee the influence of any cause that isnot immediate. Consciousness, the fea-ture at the center of what makes hu-mans unique, is the culprit, for it per-mits a view of who we are and whatwe are capable of that is independentof the knowledge and feelings that maydrive beliefs, attitudes, and behavior.

Our minds contain knowledge ofwhich we are unaware. Our feelingscan be impervious to the assertion ofconscious will. Our behaviors subsumeacts that are unintended, even opposedto those that are intended or con-sciously desired. In the social world, aseach act has its influence, the effectsare sometimes benign and even benefi-cial, at other times harmful and damag-ing. Among those who study thebounded rationality of human thoughtis a subset of investigators who havechosen to examine automatic thoughtsand feelings that concern what may bethe most important object in ourworld�other humans. To what extentdo we, when making assessments ofothers, unconsciously use knowledgeabout the social groups to which theybelong? To what extent is such knowl-edge discrepant from or in line withmore deliberative and consciousthoughts? Are such unconsciousthoughts and feelings themselves sus-ceptible to influence, even if not to con-scious will? What are the implicationsof discoveries about unconscious formsof stereotyping and prejudice in indi-vidual minds and in societal aspirationsof equality and justice? To answer thesequestions we have followed a researchtradition that begins with the radicalidea that interpersonal benefits andharm that accrue through stereotypes

Mahzarin Banaji earned her PhD fromOhio State University, completed post-doctoral work at University of Wash-ington, and now teaches at Yale Uni-versity. Her research focuses on uncon-scious processes in social judgment,with a focus on implicit forms of preju-dice and discrimination. She is an APAfellow and currently a member of itsBoard of Scientific Affairs. She is a fel-low of the American Psychological So-ciety and served as its secretary. She isalso a member of the Society of Experi-mental Social Psychology and hasserved on its Executive Committee. Herresearch is supported by both the Na-tional Science Foundation and the Na-tional Institute of Mental Health. Sheserved as associate editor of the Jour-nal of Experimental Social Psychologyand Psychological Review. Amongother awards, she has received Yale’sLex Hixon Prize for Teaching Excel-lence, the Gordon Allport Award for In-tergroup Relations, and a 1997 fellow-ship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2001

PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE AGENDA

9

Prejudice... continued on page 10

and prejudice are ordinary in origin�they operate via the routine mecha-nisms of perception, memory, categori-zation, and decision-making. Just asthese processes operate outside aware-ness, control, intention, and self-reflec-tion, so do their more value-laden ver-sions concerning stereotypes and atti-tudes about individual humans and thesocial groups to which they belong. Ac-companying such interpersonal deci-sion-making are evaluations of whetherone is a �good� person or not, and it isperhaps this feature that dictates the as-sessment of the findings themselves(i.e., their acceptance or rejection).

My colleagues and I have conducted re-search on implicit social cognition, firstby offering demonstrations that ourminds contain knowledge about socialgroups (stereotypes) and attitudes(prejudice) toward them�whether wewant to or not. We expect that suchprocesses operate in ordinary ways inthe course of everyday life�whetherwe wish them to or not. And the impli-cation of this discovery poses a chal-lenge to those who argue in seminars,in diversity training workshops, and inprivate decisions that all we need do isto simply rise above social group cat-egories, to put them aside in our judg-ments. That may be a luxury affordedto conscious thought and feeling, notnecessarily to judgments that have theirbasis in implicit social cognition.

In this research we have used variationsof procedures used in many other labo-ratories, with the nuances of particularprocedures constantly under discussionand undergoing improvement. We as-sume that: (1) strength of evaluative(favorable-unfavorable) and other at-tributes (say American-foreign) elicitedby a social object can be measured; (2)such associations between object andattributes are revealed in the ease withwhich they are mentally paired withthe object; (3) one measure of thestrength of such associations is themental speed involved in makingobject+attribute pairs; and (4) the men-

tal strength of object+attribute pairs isa measure of automatic stereotype, atti-tude, and identity. For instance, thestrength of the elderly+good pairing istaken as a rough index of automatic at-titude, the strength of elderly+frail pair-ing is taken as a measure of that auto-matic stereotype, and the strength ofthe elderly+me pairing is taken as ameasure of that automatic identity be-tween self and elderly.

We have moved beyond demonstra-tions to investigate the mechanisms bywhich such effects assert their presence,their boundary conditions, their rela-tionship to their conscious counter-parts, and where they have their �fieldsof application and adaptation,� as Wil-liam James said. In all of this researchruns a thread that shows the ordinarynature of unconscious knowledge andattitudes in two senses. Ordinary firstby comparison to a psychodynamic un-conscious, as John Kihlstrom pointedout, and ordinary again in the sensethat such expressions are not restrictedto a fringe group whose conscious atti-tudes and values lie at the periphery ofcontemporary American attitudes, be-liefs, and values. The measurements wetake are from ordinary folk, college stu-dents as well as drop-in participants ata website (www.yale. edu/implicit). De-veloped in collaboration with BrianNosek and Anthony Greenwald, thewebsite currently functions as a demon-stration site at which over a milliontests measuring automatic versions ofrace preference, gender association tofamily-career, attitudes toward aca-demic fields such as science and arts(and gender associations to them), self-esteem, age bias, and political attitudesin the last alleged election were com-pleted.

Of the basic findings regarding implicitsocial cognition we have to date, thefollowing summary may be offered:

(1) There are strong automatic prefer-ences for in-groups, and such prefer-ences may develop easily and quickly.Such preferences are not equally strongamong members of all groups. Groupmembership effects on automatic atti-tude (i.e., liking for one�s own group)are moderated by the evaluative impri-matur of the larger culture�membersof groups that are socially liked, (i.e.,considered �good�) show stronger lik-

ing for their group (e.g., White Ameri-cans, females) than those who are, bycomparison, not (e.g., Black Ameri-cans, males).

(2) Knowledge associated with socialgroups is automatically activated (e.g.,Black+athlete, White+American). Suchactivations accrue in the minds of bothmembers of the group and non-mem-bers. As the attributes associated togroups increase in evaluative- ness(good vs. bad), group membership ef-fects become more visible (with groupmembers showing stronger associationsbetween favorable qualities and theirgroup).

(3) Full dissociations between implicitand explicit measures may be foundsuch that mean values on one type ofmeasure may reliably reveal positiveevaluation while the other may revealnegative evaluation. Such data suggestthe possibility of distinct, psychometri-cally meaningful constructs capturingimplicit and explicit social cognition.

(4) Yet, the two forms, implicit and ex-plicit social cognition, are not so disso-ciated at the individual level. Correla-tions between implicit and explicit atti-tudes are routinely positive (albeit insome cases quite low) and, after mea-surement error is accounted for, oftenrise to substantial levels. Shown in re-search by Cunningham and Nezlek,those individuals who score higher onconscious levels of prejudice towardfive different social group dichotomiesare also higher on unconscious levelsof prejudice.

(5) Automatic attitudes and knowledgeare sensitive to recent experience. In aseries of experiments conducted in sev-eral labs (Blair, Dasgupta, Hardin) anda dissertation conducted at Yale (Car-penter), there is now evidence that ex-posure to associations that are notdominant (e.g., female+strong, Black

Our minds contain knowl-edge of which we are un-aware. Our feelings can beimpervious to the assertionof conscious will.

To what extent do we,when making assessmentsof others, unconsciouslyuse knowledge about thesocial groups to which theybelong?

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2001

PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE AGENDA

10

SCIENCE BRIEFSPrejudice... continued from page 9

+good) can sufficiently reorient the rep-resentation of the attitude object, so asto elicit attitudes that reflect the influ-ence of the most recent representation.

There is no question in my mind thatthese initial results are only the begin-ning of new learning about the natureof unconscious social cognition and itspervasive influence in human affairs.Some of the discoveries to date areones that we would not have antici-pated and even fly in the face of com-mon sense and our own predictions.For this reason, it is important that les-sons from an earlier social psychologybe readily available. Just as socialpsychology�s demonstrations of thepower of the social situation revealedsomething stunning and even jarringabout the ordinary nature of horrificbehavior, research on unconscious so-cial cognition has the potential tonudge us similarly toward unappealingconclusions about ourselves: that thestuff in our minds about ourselves andother humans, about our social groupsand theirs, can be activated automati-cally and that once activated they canpotentially produce psychologically andsocially beneficial and harmful effects.

For the students discussing the shoot-ing of Diallo who had difficulty imag-ining their own vulnerability given thepress of a social situation, I began classthe next day with a few lines from Mid-night Salvage, a poem by AdrienneRich:

lucky I am I hit nobody old or youngkilled nobody left no tracepracticed in life as I am

When the behavior in question is notthe firing of an automatic weapon, butthe firing of an automatic feeling orthought, infinitely greater luck is re-quired, practiced in life as we all are.

For students of mind and social behav-ior, the first step is to come to termswith the blunt fact of our bounded ra-tionality and its ethical and moral con-sequences for giving �mental due pro-cess,� even if, and especially if, theview of ourselves it reveals is notcharming. ■

Distinguished Scientist LecturersChosen for 2001 Regional Meetings

David Buss, Ed Diener, and Peter Salovey have been chosen to partici-pate in the 2001 APA Distinguished Scientist Lecture Program. As partof this program, which is sponsored jointly by APA�s Science and Educa-

tion Directorates, four of the seven regional psychological associations� annualmeetings will feature an address by one of the 2001 Distinguished Scientist Lec-turers. The remaining three regional meetings will feature a G. Stanley Hall Lec-turer. The Board of Scientific Affairs (BSA), with the support of the regional as-sociation presidents, developed the program 11 years ago as part of its ongoingmission to promote scientific psychology.

Buss will present his research on �Jealousy, infidelity, andwhy men and women torture each other� at the Midwest-ern Psychological Association meeting in Chicago, Illinois,May 3-5, 2001, and also at the Rocky Mountain Psycho-logical Association meeting in Reno, Nevada, April 20-22,2001. He is a professor of psychology at the University ofTexas at Austin. Buss is most well known for his theoreti-cal work in evolutionary psychology and his empiricalwork on the strategies of human mating.

Diener is the Alumni Professor ofPsychology (a distinguished chairendowed by the alumni) at theUniversity of Illinois, where he hastaught since 1974. He studies subjective well-being, atopic on which he has published widely and recently ed-ited three books. Diener will speak on �Are some societ-ies happier than others? An examination of subjectivewell-being across cultures� at the New England Psycho-logical Association meeting, Octo-ber 19-20, 2001, in Danbury, Con-necticut.

A professor of psychology and ofepidemiology and public health at Yale University,Salovey also serves as the department chair for psychol-ogy. His research focuses on the psychological significanceand function of human moods and emotion. He also stud-ies the application of social psychological principles tomotivate health protective behaviors. Salovey�s address,titled �Preventing cancer and HIV with appropriatelyframed messages,� will be featured at the SouthwesternPsychological Association meeting in Houston, Texas,April 20-22, 2001. ■

DAVID BUSS

ED DIENER

PETER SALOVEY

Call for Nominations for Distinguished Scientists

Do you know someone who would make an excellent Distinguished Sci-entist Lecturer? BSA is currently seeking nominations for the 2002 Distin-guished Scientist Lecture Program. All nominations must include a letterstating the nominee�s qualifications and an updated curriculum vita.Nominees must be actively engaged in research and be excellent publicspeakers. Please send nominations by February 15, 2001, to Kate Haberin the APA Science Directorate, 750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC20002-4242. For more information, call (202) 336-6000 or e-mailkhaber@apa.org. ■