Book 2 Post 2

Can unconscious bias be measured? Part two of The Person You Mean To Be: How Good People Fight Bias, by Dolly Chugh, takes us further into how to recognize unconcious biases and how to act against them. One way to measure unconcious bias is through an Implicit Association Test. Developed by Harvard psychologistss, the test asks that you react as quickly as possible to a series a questions that reveal your unconscious associations. The test was very telling, as even the open-minded participants were surprised by their results. For example, around 75% of all participants showed conservative-minded bias by strongly associating women to household activities and men with career/working. I like how Chugh went through extensive research to back up her claims of how even good people struggle with biases.

Another chapter that I found interesting brings up how people can accept that one group is disadvantaged while disregarding the advantages they had. Studies showed that White Americans actually emphasized how difficult their childhood was more after they were reminded of white privilege. Rather than acknowledging their privileges, people end up maintaining the falsehood that they also had to overcome adversity so that their achievements don't appear "unearned" or "undeserved". 

I really enjoyed reading this book. I love learning about psychology and have learned a lot about behavorial economics in my free time, so I found it interesting to see similar psychology concepts applied in the context of biases and interacting with different groups of people. One of my big takeaways is that privileged people have the most power to counter these unconscious biases and support minorities. I hope to actively work on my unconcious biases by being more selective about media I consume and continuously educating myself on different groups of people.