Implicit Bias and the Brain!
Have you heard of implicit bias before? If not, implicit biases are biases that we have that are outside of our awareness and that impact our behaviors, including the ways in which we interact with others. Implicit bias differs from external bias in that if someone is externally biased, they acknowledge that they have the bias, whereas when a person has an implicit bias, they deny the bias and are surprised when they realize that they are indeed biased.
Every singe person has implicit biases because we all live in social contexts in which we internalize messages about others from birth. People's biases vary but will tend to be similar to the biases of others' who were raised in similar social contexts. The messages that we internalize can be overt but they can also be subtle. For example, when gay marriage was not legal, that was an overt message of bias towards the LGBTQ+ population. More subtle messages can be watching television for many years and viewing certain groups repeatedly being cast as the role of criminals, or viewing commercials for pink dolls for girls and electronic toys for boys.
Sometimes when an implicit bias is pointed out, people become defensive and deny that they are biased. Some people are fearful of being identified as racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist, or discriminatory in any way, and they may struggle to take in what they are being told. Part of why
this happens at times is that people's understanding of bias is limited to the definition of external bias and to the prohibition of overtly discriminatory behavior. Therefore people may think that because they say they like all groups of people equally, their behavior towards others should be reflective of that. However, this is not true. As we now know, people's implicit biases impact their behavior. So a person may say that they are not racist, but perhaps they are not noticing that their heart rate goes up when alone in an elevator with a person from a particular background.
Implicit bias is real and neuroscience supports that statement. Let's take a look at some research! A study in 2019 in Neuroimage, a neuroscience journal, found that neural signals in the amygdala (a location in the limbic system of the brain) predict implicit bias towards an ethnic outgroup. Using an fMRI scanner the researchers viewed the neural activity of 70 participants in Japan. Historically, in Japan, there has been bias towards the South Korean population. The researchers showed participants images related to South Korea and South Korean people and found that the participants' levels of implicit bias could be predicted by the amount of neural activity in their left amygdala. Even more interesting, even though implicit bias levels could be predicted, explicit bias could not be, supporting the idea that just because we say we are not biased does not mean we are not.
The amygdala is also often called the center of emotion in the brain, so if something about a certain group of people results in activation in this part of the brain, it is a signal of heightened emotion, which certainly influences our perceptions of others and our behaviors, including discriminatory perceptions and behaviors. We all have biases and all of our biases can do damage by hurting other people and not allowing for change to occur. While it is our human tendency to deny our bias, usually because we are not externally biased, it would be such a game changer if people were curious about what their biases are.
It is natural to feel ashamed of one's biases but we must hold on to the reality that we all have them and you are not the only one. So learn about what your biases are. You can do this by trying to be open to listening to others. If they tell you that something you did or said, or something you did not do or did not say hurt them, listen. Try to note if you are being immediately defensive and take that as a signal to try and listen. Also you may want to take the Harvard Implicit Bias Test. There are multiple tests on Harvard's site where you can explore what your implicit biases are. You may be surprised what you find out about your perceptions of others. Give it a try!
Reference:
Izuma, K., Aoki, R., Shibata, K., & Nakahara, K. (2019). Neural signals in amygdala predict implicit prejudice toward an ethnic outgroup. Neuroimage, 189. pp. 341-352.