The Neurology of Bias, and a Visit with Thundercat

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most of us have biases and prejudices we don’t acknowledge—or aren’t even aware of. Admitting those biases is a baseline of political “wokeness.” But measuring and proving bias, and showing how it works, is another matter. Jennifer Eberhardt is a social psychologist at Stanford University who studies these issues through neuroimaging and other experiments. Bias, in her view, is not merely a learned phenomenon but one that involves neurological patterns that are “tuned” by cultural experience. And it may operate most prominently in situations where people have the least time for reflection. Eberhardt says that intervening on a policy level to reduce the consequences of bias involves slowing down decision-making in critical situations such as policing. She spoke with David Remnick about her new book, “Biased.” Plus, Briana Younger, a music editor at The New Yorker, visits with the bassist and producer who helped make Kendrick Lamar’s album “To Pimp a Butterfly.” He goes by Thundercat.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:09.8	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In recent years, it's fair to say that we've become more and more aware of bias and prejudice, especially among white people.
0:22.4	And by that, I'm not talking exactly about white supremacy and the people who marched in Charlottesville. I mean a recognition
0:27.8	that in a society where racism absolutely does exist, we are all shaped by it, you, me,
0:34.2	everybody, to various degrees. And we're aware that subtle biases shape how we perceive people and how we behave toward them,
0:42.4	even if we never quite express our thoughts out loud.
0:46.1	Now, the fact that we have unconscious biases is hardly a secret,
0:49.6	but measuring bias, proving it, and showing how it works in the brain is quite another matter.
0:56.1	Jennifer Eberhard is a social psychologist at Stanford University who studies these issues,
1:01.7	the science of them and the sociology of them and the psychology of them.
1:05.4	She's published a book called Biased.
1:08.8	Dr. Eberhardt, your new book starts out with a discussion of how our brains are in some way
1:14.7	wired for bias. We wouldn't have assumed this. I would have assumed that's just socially
1:20.2	acquired. Can you explain the face recognition study that you worked on so hard and what
1:26.0	conclusions that led you to in terms of bias?
1:28.8	Well, we've done a number of face recognition studies. So one study we did was a neural imaging
1:34.4	study. And there we were interested in whether there was a neural component to what researchers
1:41.0	call the other race effect, that we recognize faces of other races less well
1:47.7	than our own.
1:48.6	In other words, the serious manifestation of so-and-so looks all alike, that terrible
1:54.9	manifestation.
1:55.8	Right.
	...

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