Media Post 10

For my last Media Post I found an interesting article online titled "The Psychology of Stereotypes Survival of the Fittest: Like Animals, Humans Are Biased". I thought it was very interesting because it talks about why people, like animals are biased and even if they dont want to admit to it, we all stereotype even at a young age. The authors John Stossel and Kristina Kendall start the article by talking about animals and how their basic instinct can tell them to snap at a predator. Chimpanzees attack other chimps that arent part of their group and even fish of the same species will attack each other if they are not hatched in the same lake. The article says that psychologists think that we are wired to stereotype automatically. We stereotype mainly by age, race and gender. Mainly the authors say that we do this as humans and animals because we need to distinguish who is our friend from foe. So although our readings clearly show the unfair side of discrimination, there is also a side that everyone is guilty of doing because it benefits us as people. We want to know who we can trust and who we cant, so race aside we can discriminate according to age or gender. An example is when I walk home alone at night from a late class and it is dark I clench one key in my hand, just incase someone stronger (maybe older and more likely a male) try to steal me. It is an honest bias I am looking out for my self interest, I have heard about attacks on campus as early as 7 at night so I am skeptical when it is about 9 pm. The article cites an experiment done by 20/20 where kids look at two different races of people and distinguish what they think about them. A man asked the children who they thought was nicer, The Arab man or the Chinese man both pictured at the top of the article. The children responded, "The Chinese man because he had a smile" but both men were smiling. Another experiment done with the children and a picture of Timothy McVeigh and Harvard professor Roland Fryer. The children said that Timothy McVeigh looked nice but mad about something and when the children were asked about the black man they said "he looks mean". When asked who was a criminal they pointed to Roland Fryer, when asked who they thought was a teacher they pointed to Timothy McVeigh. These findings show that children at a young age can recognize bias. I want to cite Johnson Chapter 2 when he says that people are "naturally afraid of what they dont know or understand", maybe those children dont understand? Or they are victims of their environments which says that a criminal looks like this. The article also continues to talk about bias in more detail and with students as volunteers for the experiment. The test results showed subconcious bias against things like career women, the elderly, gays, arabs and blacks. The test results also showed interesting results in one category, The researchers also found about half of the black people who took this test showed bias against blacks. One researcher says "many people discover they have biases that they wish they didn't". At the end of that case study the authors say "Of course, the biases in our head are only harmful if we act on them". I agree with this statement because it is possible to have a bad experience with someone of a different culture or even the same as your own but that doesnt necessarily mean that the whole ethnicity should be frowned upon. Johnson says in Chapter 2 "Privelage, Power and Oppression" that difference is not the problem. I disagree because in our society difference is the problem, we are taught at a young age about difference and everyday we are subjected to difference and have to act on what we have learned some obviously different than others. The last study in the article dealt with police and drawing their guns and who they were more likely to shoot at. The experiment opens with a story about how four cops shot down Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, while he reached into his pocket for what the officers feared was a gun but turned out to be his wallet. The experiment took everyday police officers and gave them targets, black and white and the targets would flash on a screen either holding a gun or an everyday object such as a cell phone or wallet. The experiment concluded that "They shoot very quickly when an armed target is black. They take a little bit longer to shoot when the armed target is white,". This by the way is not just a white police experiment, the results showed that even black cops shot faster at the target when it was black rather than white. The authors ended the article with asking one of the experimenting psychologists what we could do about our subconcious bias, he replied, "If we're just aware that it exists, it gives us a chance to do something, to be vigilant to not let our unintended biases -- our implicit biases -- take over our behavior, which can happen unintentionally,". I really liked this article because it subjected me to something different than our readings and I found it to be a very interesting article. I agree that we have subconcious bias whether it is because of a past experience or things that we have witnessed we are ALL guilty for judging someone by gender, race, or age. Sometimes I think it is meant to be harmless where we are only looking for our own self interest, like the animals mentioned early on in the article, but than other times I think that we judge too quickly and assume one person to be a whole culture and overlook the good for the bad. What does this tell us? Well, maybe like the professor said, if we all make ourselves aware of the fact that we are guilty of this we can have more control over it and maybe one day it wont be an issue at all.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=2442521&page=1