The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives

by Shankar Vedantam

  For my father, Vedantam L. Sastry,

  who has braved innumerable obstacles with fortitude,

  and for my daughter, Anya,

  with love and gratitude

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. The Myth of Intention

  2. The Ubiquitous Shadow

  The Hidden Brain at Work and Play

  3. Tracking the Hidden Brain

  How Mental Disorders Reveal Our Unconscious Lives

  4. The Infant’s Stare, Macaca, and Racist Seniors

  The Life Cycle of Bias

  5. The Invisible Current

  Gender, Privilege, and the Hidden Brain

  6. The Siren’s Call

  Disasters and the Lure of Conformity

  7. The Tunnel

  Terrorism, Extremism, and the Hidden Brain

  8. Shades of Justice

  Unconscious Bias and the Death Penalty

  9. Disarming the Bomb

  Politics, Race, and the Hidden Brain

  10. The Telescope Effect

  Lost Dogs and Genocide

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Introduction

  In the spring of 2004, The Washington Post assigned me to track Ralph Nader in New England as he campaigned for president. When I got to Boston, several of Nader’s own aides, mindful of the consumer advocate’s role as spoiler in the disputed 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, told me they were going to vote against him. Since Nader’s campaign was going nowhere, I took a break from the political story and called a local psychologist I’d heard about.

  Mahzarin Banaji agreed to meet me on short notice. We met in the afternoon at her corner office in Harvard University’s psychology department. It was an extraordinary interview: When I left, three hours later, the whole world looked different.

  Banaji studied unconscious prejudices—subtle cognitive errors that lay beneath the rim of awareness. Her research disturbed me because it showed that the way we usually think about human behavior is flawed. Volunteers in Banaji’s experiments believed they were acting fairly, honorably, and wisely, but their actions were at odds with their intentions. They meant to do one thing but did something else. Strangely, until a psychological test revealed the discrepancy, the volunteers were not aware that they had been subtly biased.

  If unconscious forces could influence us when we made swift judgments about other people, could these forces influence us all the time? Upon returning to Washington, I quickly found research that showed how hidden tugs caused people to make grave financial errors and misjudgments about risk. Experiments were showing that voters could be manipulated into choosing one candidate over another—without the voters ever realizing they were manipulated. Unconscious traits explained why some married couples drifted apart and why some teams worked well together. Everywhere I looked, I found evidence of hidden cognitive mechanisms. Unconscious biases in the way memory, emotion, and attention work produced misunderstandings and protracted conflicts between people, groups—even nations. Subtle errors of the mind could explain why we have rushed into foolish wars and why we have sat on our hands as genocides unfolded. Banaji was a social psychologist, but streams of intersecting data about a hidden world in our head were flowing in from other branches of psychology, from sociology and political science, from economics and neuroscience. High-tech scans are revealing brain mechanisms that governed everything from our political preferences to our table manners. Sociological experiments explained why people unconsciously made fatal mistakes during disasters. There was even research into the unconscious biases of suicide bombers.

  Most people equate the term “unconscious bias” with prejudice or partiality, but the new research was using the term differently: “Unconscious bias” described any situation where people’s actions were at odds with their intentions. The devilish thing was that people never felt manipulated. They rationalized their biases away—and even claimed ownership for actions they had not intended. Some unconscious biases were comical, others were innocuous. Many were useful. But the deadly ones conjured a Shakespearean image in my mind: the demonic Iago manipulating the gullible Othello into believing his wife was unfaithful. Like Iago, unconscious bias influenced people subtly, not overtly. It caused them to make serious errors of judgment—and then feel certain about their conclusions. It derived much of its power from the fact that people were unaware of it.

  Theories about the unconscious mind went back centuries, but the new research appealed to me because it was based on measurable evidence. It relied on controlled experiments. It produced data. As a science journalist at The Washington Post, and before that at The Philadelphia Inquirer, I found myself attracted to research that explored complex social behavior using the tools of rigorous science. Where previous accounts of the unconscious mind often produced dramatic theories with limited impact, the new research was producing modest theories about the mind—but they had dramatic impact. In writing a Washington Post column called Department of Human Behavior that I launched in 2006, I learned that one reason unconscious biases were difficult to spot is that they were often mundane. When we saw something as monstrous as genocide, we wanted an explanation that was equally dramatic. We demanded Hitlers to explain holocausts. Dramatic explanations didn’t just fit better—they allowed us to write off systematic errors in human judgment, perception, and moral reasoning as mere aberrations.

  I saw that a vast gulf had grown between what experts were learning about the mind and what most people believed. Important institutions in our society were oblivious to the new research. When disasters trapped thousands, we widened the exits to tall buildings and assumed this would allow people trapped by future disasters to escape. When discrimination reared its head, we passed hate crime laws. When the stock markets acted crazy, we blamed “unreasonable panic.” We believed that frightening teenagers about the consequences of drugs and unsafe sex would prompt them to be careful, we assumed that fact-checking the tall claims of politicians would set the record straight, and we were sure that good laws produced good behavior. All these theories were based on an assumption—that human behavior was the product of knowledge and conscious intention. We believed that if you educated people, and provided them with accurate information, and offered them the right incentives, and threatened them with suitable punishments, and appealed to their better natures, and marked the exits clearly, the errors would vanish. Bad outcomes had to be the product of stupidity, ignorance, and bad intentions.

  Like many assumptions, this one was impervious to contradictory evidence. When teenagers got drunk and wrecked their cars, when voters believed a politician’s lies, and when juries convicted innocent people, we invariably concluded that those particular teens must have been stupid, that those particular voters must have been gullible, and that those particular juries must have been rash. Even when such errors were multiplied hundreds or thousands of times—when large numbers of people failed to flee disasters, when entire ethnic groups subscribed to vicious prejudices, when millions failed to intervene as their neighbors were dragged off to concentration camps—we convinced ourselves that these behaviors were aberrational, not the norm. The new research showed that many errors, mishaps, and tragedies were caused by unconscious forces that acted upon people without their awareness or consent. The irresponsible driver, the apathetic bystander, and the panicked investor were not aberrations. They were us.

  Thinking about human be
havior in the context of unconscious bias explained many things to me that previously seemed inexplicable. It wasn’t just the small stuff—the gifted athlete who choked under pressure, the family feud over something trivial, the misjudgment in risk that produced a fender-bender—it was the big stuff, too. The uncritical decisions of policy makers that led to domestic and foreign policy catastrophes? Check. The stampeding panics that dragged entire economies to ruin? Check. The collective willingness of nations to avert their gaze from oncoming disasters? That, too. Unconscious biases have always dogged us, but multiple factors made them especially dangerous today. Globalization and technology, and the intersecting faultlines of religious extremism, economic upheaval, demographic change, and mass migration have amplified the effects of hidden biases. Our mental errors once affected only ourselves and those in our vicinity. Today, they affect people in distant lands and generations yet unborn. The flapping butterfly that caused a hurricane halfway around the world was a theoretical construct; today, subtle biases in faraway minds produce real storms in our lives. This book grew out of these thoughts. I wanted to place the ideas that I found so exciting, unnerving, and provocative before a larger audience. If science and rigorous studies were to be the backbone of the book, I wanted to show why the research mattered—not just in the ivory tower, but in the public square. I decided to find stories from real life that could illustrate the extraordinary effects of unconscious bias in everyday life. The selection of stories in this book is mine and mine alone. To the extent that they are wrong, misleading, or simplistic, the responsibility lies solely with me. To the extent that they are revealing and insightful—and not merely interesting—the credit mostly belongs to the hundreds of researchers whose work I have cited.

  I made a deliberate decision to personify the hidden forces that influence us in everyday life. I coined a term: the hidden brain. It did not refer to a secret agent inside our skulls or some recently unearthed brain module. The “hidden brain” was shorthand for a range of influences that manipulated us without our awareness. Some aspects of the hidden brain had to do with the pervasive problem of mental shortcuts or heuristics, others were related to errors in the way memory and attention worked. Some dealt with social dynamics and relationships. What was common to them all was that we were unaware of their influence. There were dimensions of the hidden brain where, with effort, we could become aware of our biases, but there were many aspects of the hidden brain that were permanently sealed off from introspection. Unconscious bias was not caused by a secret puppeteer who sat inside our heads, but the effects of bias were as though such a puppeteer existed. The “hidden brain,” in other words, was a writing device, much like the “selfish gene.” Just as there were no strands of DNA that shouted “Me first!” no part of the human brain was disguised under sunglasses and fedora. By drawing a simple line between mental activities we were aware of and mental activities we were not aware of, the “hidden brain” subsumed many concepts in wide circulation whose definitions were frequently the subject of dissension: the unconscious, the subconscious, the implicit.

  If my debt to the researchers whose work I have cited is immense, my debt to those who shared personal stories with me is incalculable. Many stories in this book describe the effects of unconscious bias on people during moments of great vulnerability. The opening chapter is about a woman who made a serious error identifying the man who raped her. It is a story I would have preferred not to tell—journalistic accounts of rape are troubling for many reasons—but sex crimes offer a powerful window into unconscious bias because they allow us to measure the accuracy of human intuitions against the iron rigor of DNA tests. I doubt I would have had the courage to share the story that Toni Gustus shared with me. Her honesty and the honesty of many others in this book reminded me of a great truth: Good people are not those who lack flaws, the brave are not those who feel no fear, and the generous are not those who never feel selfish. Extraordinary people are not extraordinary because they are invulnerable to unconscious biases. They are extraordinary because they choose to do something about it.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Myth of Intention

  Five days before her thirtieth birthday, on August 24, 1986, Toni Gustus was out on her patio. It was a Sunday, about four o’clock in the afternoon, and Gustus was in a T-shirt working on some plants. She had just moved to Massachusetts from Iowa; the only contact she had in town was the person who had hired her for a job at the United Way in Framingham. She had found a small two-bedroom basement apartment with a living room that opened onto a sunken patio. When she stood on the patio, the street came up to her chest.

  A man strolled by and asked for directions. His eyes seemed glassy and his speech was slurred. Gustus did not know how to direct the man, but her Midwestern upbringing kept her from giving a curt answer and turning away. She told him she was new in town and unsure of the local geography. She pointed him in a direction she thought might be helpful. The man did not turn away. He took another step toward the patio and asked if a different street could take him to the same place. She told him what she knew, but she was starting to feel uncomfortable. It was as if they were suddenly having a conversation. The man took another step to the edge of the patio. Gustus told the man she had to go inside. She turned, and he jumped down onto the patio. He grabbed her arm. She raised her voice immediately and told him to leave. He asked for a glass of water. Gustus could smell alcohol on his breath. She protested, and he started to shove her back into the apartment.

  A driver in a passing car saw a man and woman having what seemed to be an altercation on a patio. The driver went to the corner, turned around, and came back for another look. By the time the car got back to the spot, the patio was empty. The driver moved on.

  The intruder was not much taller than Gustus. She was about five foot five, and he may have been five foot nine or ten. But he was considerably stronger. The moment he shoved her into the apartment, she started fighting. She screamed, and he clamped a hand over her mouth. He was carrying a portable music player, and Gustus seized the headphones cord and wound it around his neck. He seized her throat. They struggled, trying to subdue each other, until Gustus felt she was going to pass out. Something more primal than fear kicked in. Gustus let go of the headphones cord and went passive. It wasn’t just that he was stronger: He was so drunk that she feared he might asphyxiate her and not even know it. No matter what happened, she wanted to get out alive.

  The moment he started removing her clothes, another instinct kicked in. Gustus started to memorize details about the man. He was white and in his early twenties. He had a little black cross on one arm that may have been ink or may have been a tattoo. He had dark blond hair that fell over his forehead and his ears. His hair was parted in the middle. His nose was long in proportion to his face. His eyes were blue and relatively narrow. He had a tapered jaw. On and on she went, looking for distinctive features. She swore to herself, I am not going to forget this face.

  After he raped her, the man allowed her to dress. He put on his clothes. He was not done; it appeared he wanted to have a conversation. Gustus could not believe he wanted small talk. In a sympathetic voice, he told her that “Sometimes it is not good for women when it is like this.”

  Gustus was stunned: He had no idea what he had just done. He was subdued for now, but who knew how long it would last? Screaming for help was out of the question; she had tried that, and no one had responded. She had to get out of the apartment. Calmly keeping up her end of the small talk, she told the rapist she needed a glass of water from the kitchen. She asked if he wanted a glass, too. He did nothing to stop her from walking out of the living room. The door to the apartment was next to the kitchen, and Gustus simply opened the door and kept walking. A strange calm descended upon her. She knew what she had to do. From a drugstore, she called her boss and told him what had happened. He drove by, picked her up, and took her to the police station.

  Police officers administered a rape kit, and immedi
ately asked Gustus to tell them everything distinctive about the rapist. Gustus unloaded every detail she had memorized about the man—the nose, the chin, the eyes, the hair. The man had been wearing a blue and white shirt, a blue windbreaker, and jeans. An artist came up with a composite picture that Gustus thought was fairly accurate. She told the police the man’s voice was slurred, but she was good with voices and had memorized how he sounded.

  By the time the police arrived at the crime scene, the rapist was gone, but he had left his windbreaker behind. There was a burrito wrapped in plastic and foil inside one pocket. Police officers traced it to a convenience store. There was a black-and-white-film security camera in the store, and the police showed Gustus the grainy video. She recognized the rapist the moment she saw him even though the tape did not show his face. Gustus had memorized the man’s body language, the way he carried himself.

  The police showed her photos of a number of possible suspects and pictures from local high school yearbooks. None of the photos matched the rapist. About a month after the crime, the police asked Gustus if a drifter they had picked up was the man. Gustus said no. In early December, the police picked up a man who matched the composite picture. Late one evening, police detectives brought Gustus a set of fifteen photos. Gustus pointed to the photo of the man the police had picked up, but she said she needed to see him before she could be sure. Through a one-way mirror at the police station, Gustus thought she saw the rapist. She was cautious by nature, and asked if she could hear the man’s voice. The police held a door ajar so Gustus could hear the suspect speak. Gustus told the police she was 95 percent sure that the man in custody was the rapist. His name, she learned, was Eric Sarsfield.

  Gustus spent Christmas that year with her family, in a small Illinois town across the Iowa border. She had thought a lot about Sarsfield in the days after she’d identified him. She was quite certain he was the rapist but was worried about the sliver of doubt at the back of her mind. Gustus was the sort of person who took responsibility for everything; no matter the situation, she asked herself what she had done wrong, or what she could have done better. Was her sliver of uncertainty only a manifestation of this trait to doubt herself? There was a Presbyterian church in town that Gustus had long known; it was a place of refuge and comfort. She was a person of faith, and the church always renewed her. She used to sing in the choir, and the choir director had been her voice teacher.