That title because i think it conveys the area that we really need to focus on uncovering the hidden prejudice shapes what we see, think and do. Welcome. Its great to be with you today. Host in the buck you talk about what i would say how we are conditioned, and i will use that word to respond to certain people in certain circumstances and what you referred to as implicit bias. You talked about how it can show up in any profession and spent 27 years as a Law Enforcement officer at the chief of police and im particularly interested in how it can show up in that profession, but you show how it can show up in any profession. So can you take a moment to talk about your background because i think that its so impressive and then if you explain to us how does an implicit bias differ from what we all know and in many instances have experienced . Im a professor from Stanford University and studied race and inequality and ive done a lot of work on racial bias in particular. A lot in the criminal justice is the also education, the workplace, ive done work looking at how people think about housing and how they evaluate. There is no real area of life that cant get under our skin and started to influence how we think and make decisions and how we act, so that is what the book is about, trying to kind of follow that across all these different pieces to understand how people grapple with race. Some asked about how we can start. Host it isnt necessarily the product of racism. Guest to some extent it is just how our brains are wired, we are wired to categorize. The Decision Making and actions even when we are aware of it so that is the definition. People who were burning crosses. Despite their intentions and motivations. Host sa so you are saying an implicit bias can affect all races and people. Its more deliberate behavior. A lot of people talk about that as oldfashioned racism but this implicit bias is something that you may not even know you have and even if we know what the stereotypes are, we dont always know that they are influencing what they are doing and how they are treating someone. Host what you referred to in the because the Toxic Association and it was kind of fascinating to me how you talked about how that influences a person and how they say things and experience things and experience people, but you also mentioned that our brains are wired to categorize people and things. Can you tell us a bit more about what you mean by that . Guest we make sense of all of the stimulus out there in the world. We have to figure out a way to organize and make it coherent to say that we have some sense of control and a better idea of what it is thats out there so we can make good decisions and have its almost like the brain cant handle everything that it is exposed to and so there are these sort of techniques that our brains use to deal with all that information. So, categorization is one of those things and we do not just categorize people, we categorize animals and furniture. All sorts of things. But that categorization allows us to engage in the world becomes more coherent because of the categorization. Its also something that we deal with people. We develop beliefs about people in that category and they are called stereotypes and the feelings of prejudice and together that is called by us. Host that is pretty amazing. You also write about what you referred to as a cringe worthy expression. The cringe worthy exception that they all look alike. As i think about the term that ive heard before, anyone that would utilize that cringe worthy expression must be a function of biology and exposure. What did you mean by that . Guest babies as much as three months of age already are showing their own race so its something that starts early and part of why the preference is to show an has to do with what you are exposed to. So most homes are interracial so you kind of learn your brain is kind of tuned in on the basis of your own growth and because we live in segregated spaces and neighborhood you dont come into contact as much with people of f the different ways, so your brain understands that sort of practices processing all of one type and gets really good about at the expense of being able to process and recognize other races and so you kind of developed a diminished capacity to recognize those spaces. Host so the whole you look alike, how does that translate if you will into the negative behavior or bias or racism or behavior that is inferred. The. There is also that kind of association. Guest it is a precursor for bias. Again this fundamental thing that is how our brains are built to categorize but it is a precursor to the bias because once you are pleased in that category and you cannot distinguish one state from another in the category then they become interchangeable and once they become interchangeable, then the belief that we have people can be applied to all in that category. Host its scientific and you also never think about the unconscious bias having a scientific or biological kind of meaning or origin. But i think that you use the example very well in the book and talk about the police department, but you also talk about a situation where the there was a problem with robbery and the systems were unable no matter how long they were with the suspect what they were exposed to it were totally unable to identify the persons that robbed them or identify them at all. Can you talk more about the work that you have done in that particular example . Guest this was back in 2014 there was a series of strong armed robberies in black teenagers were going to chinatown to the. Even when they had a chance and they clearly saw this even when the police would go to the one they asked these teenagers why do you go there, why is it a focus on chinatown and they said well, we go there because they cannot tell us apart thats why they go. They knew we could robbed them at will and not because because of the family couldnt id them. Host even when i also read their word training sessions to try to help women like that or others to become better at recognizing their attackers, what was the result . Guest Pay Attention to things that are distinctive white did he have dreadlocks or short hair or a gold tooth, all kinds of things like that. But they couldnt just do that. They couldnt get past it even though they were motivated to come and that is because they had been exposed to something that they didnt know really how to process. They didnt know how to recognize those spaces. I had the same experience when i was young i was 12yearsold and moved from an allblack neighborhood to an allwhite neighborhood. I was a little girl worried about how i would be accepted and so forth, but the girls were so nice to me they went out of their way to welcome me to the school didnt invite me to things and so forth. They knew i have problems recognizing in figuring out. But they thought it had to do with the fact i was new but i couldnt remember their faces. I couldnt distinguish one face from another. So that hindered my ability to make friends. Host i thought it was kind of surprising to me that this concept that you are talking about do they all look alike, while we might associate it with racism, it works both ways. You started to come up with distinguished remarks and these were not people that they were afraid of are that you feared in any way. These words your friend. Guest its people i would sit with at lunch and the next day think is that the person or is that the person. It was hard. I thought something was wrong with me. Like why cant i do this basic thing. I lost my ability to distinguish one face from another and it wasnt until years later that i recognized it had a nam name and there was a lot of scientific studies. So it is all over the world. With every group. Its one of those things they call it the other race affect. Its something that is common but is not insurmountable. The not just that i wanted to, that i was exposed to the faces over and over again. We moved to that neighborhood and they were exposed every day and it took a little time to catch up with my new environment, but it did catch up and i was able to recognize their faces. Host that was a very welcoming and loving environment where they were friendly to you and kind to you and that was your experience day in and day out but it was an experience where there was not the case and you may not know the other group very well. You dont know their characteristic is. Infinite space in our actions and thoughts. Guest thats correct. Host Something Else you talk about in the chapter transition of fire, and you mentioned a little bit with babies, but how children will pick up on the characteristics of their parents. They love you with your parents love you or they will shun you. I know that there were studies done we know the disparities often with africanamericans and how they are viewed and received and there was a study looking at africanamerican actors and actresses and fluff off was maybe if we portray them, if their experience was always a negative one lets look at i muse portray them in a more positive way with the show them on television now doctors and lawyers, Police Officers then it might make a difference how africanamericans are perceived in the community or society, did it make a difference it was this the result of that . Guest that study was conducted by several researchers and they were interested in sort of looking at what actors in these powerful roles having a really positive effect on people that were watching the shows and so the first thing they did is take these popular shows like csi and grays anatomy and what they did this gave 102nd clips to look at and they would cut out for the people on the scene were looking at and either the person, the black actor or the white actor they simply would ask, showing they images they would ask do they like this person or ask them to describe how they imagine that person is being evaluated by then and the finding was when the black actor was the target of these nondurables, they were more in negative. It could be like really subtle things but when they ask them why it is a thought this person was being perceived more negatively they could tell you so its often subtle but they were picking up on it so the finding basically was that they thought they were treating them more negatively. Then the other thing about it you get this contagion because it wasnt just the people i on e movie set with a tv set. It was also the people that watch those shows. That increases your own implicit bias. Thinking sometimes this is the answer but it has a way of still sneaking in. Host if you think of the person in any profession in their exposure as we already talked about has been negative, negative and then even in a very controlled situation where they play a positive role, you talk about how those watching the footage put out very minor flaws if you will and that appeared to have blown up to see that person solely as an africanamerican playing a very positive role. There is a study on that as well where fourth and fifth graders who were shown a clip and they took on the attitudes of the person trading that person well or negatively and so bear they are watching what we do to figure out how we should act and who deserves the treatment and who deserves better treatment. Host wow. You know, i have loved being a police officer. I did it for a lot of years and you have pointed out in your book that as we talked about some of the challenges with police and community relations, you pointed out in your book that 99 of the Police Encounters with citizens wouldnt result in any of these people but certainly the ones that result in deadly force we pay a lot of attention to it as we should. It can be a very dangerous job so as we are talking about people whether consciously or unconsciously are trying to decide what action are they going to take certainly i would think they certainly played a role. If you like the community they are trying to protect and serve may not protect and serve them. But it may not be on their side. You point out a couple of incidents that took place. How do you believe the shooting that occurred and you went to visit his sister and heard a story about her brother i know youve personally experienced the pain because youve met her and spend time with her. I know you spend time with his twin sister and they also studied the shooting. How do you believe the unconscious bias played a role and ultimately what happened in those cases . Guest as a social scientist it is hard for me to say what happened in one particular case. So im not what i do is try to look at these kind of cases and isolate the features and study them. So, we dont know even when we find that there is a correlation between race and a negative outcome, we dont know how much race is driving that particular factor or others or correlating with it. So, we focus for us to do that we can take a situation and create to have the same situation we can present them with a case and say we want you to evaluate the situation. The same situation that we are going to change for some of the participants they see a black person taking this action or the target of some action for another group of subjects that might be a white person taking this action and then got allows us to isolate and we are in a better position to make the statements in any one case it could have been because the location where the car stopped or it could have been how he moved. There is lots of factors. We dont really know the one case, but that is the value of the finances is that you can step back and look at lots of cases and look at how people are responding acrosstheboard more systematically. I will give you an example of some of the studies that are done. There is a study that was conducted decades ago by a social psychologist who was interested in how people read the body language of black versus white so they kind of staged this argument. A study participant between a black person and a white person and then one of them shoves the other. So they had these different conditions were set up for the study of the various subjects or participants and what they found through the aggressor, the person that shot the person most white so we have a white person and say shoving a black person about 17 of the people o by the white aggressor and violence. Now you have a black person shoving a white person, 75 participants say that action is violent. I remember reading about that study and controlling the factors. The action was the same, the only difference was the individual. They were more inclined to say they were just fooling around, 42 of them said that. But i think it was only about 6 of people characterized the actions in that way you can see the difference it made. Host how do you take that information that is clearly there are no extenuating factors because this isnt a situation in a community or on the streets or neighborhoods. This is a controlled situation that has been set up. What do you do with that information . If you are using that as a training tool for any group of individuals helping you take that information . What they wan want the student o understand about the scenario and walk away with . Guest its how people respond and behave in that you are presenting them with a situation that is identical. People understand it. They get that okay it wasnt this, that or the other. So then to think about how it might play a role in these other situations that may be we hadnt thought about before. Host it is still an issue that we struggle with in terms of having honest and open discussion about it. Do you in a very controlled situation like that, do you hear denial. Guest sometimes you do. You might have to pass it repeated and come back up. It allows us as a social scientist to approach the study with more rigor but if you keep doing the studies. A lot of the reason why his people might be resisted because there is a sort of underlining feeling sophisticates back to the earlier conversation about how we are even defining bias so if it is accepting this work and if it means i have to think about myself and the person, that is going to be hard for me to do so i am going to be resistant to it and maybe i am not going to be willing to accept it that easy. If we understood these are good people and it can influence how we are seeing things, then that is a good story and you can actually hear it and think about how this might play out in your own life and your own discussions and your own actions that you are taking. Host do you think that is the reason people are so fearful to discuss race and you see it on both sides. Is it that you are going to label them if they question in any way and honestly open my express their fears or beliefs or how they were raised or how theyve been influenced that they feel they are going to be labeled, and when labels in america it is kind of have to overcome. Guest its one of the worst things you can call someone is a racist and they think that is what you are saying as they point out that theyve behaved differently to this person versus the person or that its based on race. But the science allows us to do is take a step back from all of that and actually got it without accusations but we are understanding how it is affecting us with the goal of making things better. That is the one of the big values. Host in your opening chapter you talk about your work with Police Officers and your early training sessions and overwhelmingly welcomed discussion and its what i dont have the problem, maybe you do. Like im going to resist everything you have to offer to me. We want better relationships in the community. The bath you use the story of your son when you all were on a plane to break the ice. He was looking around and is so excited to be on a plane and up in the air and he was checking it out and then he sees this guy on a plane and says that guy looks like daddy and i am telling you he didnt look anything like my husband, nothing at all. I look around and i noticed hes the only black guy on the plane. You are going to get the talk. This leads to the discussion that we had earlier. He thought all black people looked alike so im going to have to have a talk with him about that. This was i didnt want to hear that obviously, what mother would want to hear that. I looked at him and said why would you say that. Why would you say that. They had a sad face and said i dont know why i was thinking that. Host the answer i think can be transferred to every profession. Maybe they really dont know because it is unconsciously we get there in an unconscious way. Guest something happened where he said that he didnt understand it. I wish that it hadnt happened. I wanted him to reflect on his words and ask themselves if why am i thinking that are saying this. I feel like that is the role as parents to help our children with this. Host im not sure how i would have handled it as well as you do, but i think that it was so important you didnt say dont say that in the discussion and we have a tendency to do that because its an easier way to deal with those subjects and situations. Guest its also not dont say that but youre not supposed to notice race. So they get some adult the good way to be a good person is to be c