How Do our Conscious and Unconscious Biases Differ?

          Sometimes we may do something that we know are a bad idea, but we still do it anyway. Why would we do this? Maybe because even though we know it is not a good idea, on an unconscious level in our mind, it seems like the right thing to do. Take Warren Harding for example. He may not have proven himself as a good leader, but since he was tall and handsome, the people automatically wanted him as a leader. This story stood out to me in a chapter Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" because it is a real story of how everyone had an unconscious, or unknowing, bias for Harding to be their leader even though he hadn't proven himself worthy yet. The takeaway message from this chapter for me is that even though we have automatic preferences we can't control, we should get to know someone before we make a judgement about them.

             We should take this unconscious bias idea into consideration when electing leaders by really getting to know the leader and their policies, philosophies, ect. before making them our leader. Can we undo unconscious biases? Yes, but it takes a long time to and is hard since your unconscious bias isn't even up to you. However, we can try and ignore them when making an important judgement and see the whole picture, not just one quality such as height. There are many other qualities we can look for in a leader, such as honesty, trustworthiness, listening to the people, having the approval of the people, good morals, and many others. Physical attractiveness has absolutely no correlation with being a good leader, so if someone wants to be a good leader, they must possess those qualities along with many others.

           All this talk about how important unconscious biases can be got me wondering, "Do I have any unconscious biases?". With this on my mind, I hopped onto my computer and went to https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ to discover the answer. After I was done, some of the results surprised me, while others didn't. After taking the race IAT twice, my results varied. The first time my results said I "moderately prefer African Americans over European Americans", and the second time the results came back as "The data shows no automatic preference for African Americans or European Americans". I believe the second test is the most accurate, since in my own controlled conscious I am not racist, it doesn't surprise me that my uncontrolled thoughts aren't either. Another IAT I took said I automatically associate European Americans with weapons over African Americans with weapons, which doesn't surprise me either because in many of the action movies I watch either the protagonist or antagonist(s) are White. While my unconscious bias was linked with my conscious bias, many people do not unconsciously agree with what their conscious minds decide. However, no matter what our unconscious biases may be, we should not let them affect our conscious when trying to make the right decision.