Mindbug Essay

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Recommended: Bias in everyday life

Paper 1 (Draft) Mindbugs. It’s a catch-all term touched on in Chapter 1 by the authors of Blindspot, Banaji and Greenwald. It is defined as: “Ingrained habits of thought that lead to errors in how we perceive, remember, reason and make decisions” (4). They readily supply mistaken ideas about different of human (social) groups. The authors argue that prejudicial thinking is often hidden from our conscious brains. The human brain contains a huge storage space full of associations between individuals and certain characteristics that many times, cause us to misidentify others. These cues are ingrained in all of us which lead to errors. They’re called social mind bugs.
Have I ever misidentified another human being based on his or her facial expressions? …show more content…

As soon as I saw the person behind the wheel, I immediately interpreted the individual as a “bad guy” based on how he looked. I have associated a perfectly fit elderly person as being totally fragile and that turned out to be false. It’s easy to assume that most doctors are males. Although, I know that not to be true! I have seen people who appear to be out of shape and assumed they were unfit. I’ve been proven to be wrong multiple times. I believe that this is all part of living in a human society with a human brain that acts unconsciously. Like Banaji and Greenberg said, “people make assessments within a few seconds or fractions of a second” (16). We as humans do not create biases willingly, but it is important to be aware of them to give us greater control over our choices. According to the writers, “Human beings are considered social animals, first and foremost” (13). As humans, we tend to pay close attention to others. A great example of this is when we make assessments of others based on a simple photograph or even facial expressions of an individual. The book explains how judgments of these kinds “may not just be a little wrong but quite wrong” (15). Sometimes, we as humans perceive …show more content…

It can provide some insight into what creates discrimination of various types. Research can offer us an understanding of how they could occur. They just might offer change through awareness. The understanding of this subject has the potential to change the cultural language. With this knowledge, it should provide some awareness, and in turn, possible behavioral changes in our social environments. Once we can identify our own mindbugs, we then need to acknowledge their existence. They might go against everything we believe in consciously, but it may provide us with the opportunities to make very deliberate choices to go against the hidden biases within us. In doing so, we may need to find others who we normally would not associate with due to their backgrounds being opposite of ours. In other words, we may need to come out of our comfort zones and specific routines when we make decisions. If we do this, it may prevent biases from shaping our behavior as well as our attitudes. Perhaps, it may influence all of us to critically re-think our beliefs in being an honest and fair society. If all of us have the power to weaken mindbugs by examining our own actions, we use it to make a positive change in our lives and the rest of the

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