A Thought About Prejudice

I read a couple of days ago that something like 30 percent of Americans admit to being prejudiced. The good news is that the percentage has gotten so low, and that we now use the word "admit" when in the past prejudice was often proudly proclaimed. The mixed news is that prejudiced people are likely to lie about their prejudice; they realize that it is socially unacceptable to admit prejudice, but they can vote that prejudice in the privacy of the voting booth. The bad news is that we are not aware of many (most?) of the prejudices we hold. I would guess that everyone who votes acts in unreasoned ways that give advantages to some groups and disadvantages to others which I would find unfair.

First of all, it is adaptive to behave in this way. We read that some products manufactured in China have been withdrawn after a few cases of illness have been traced back to those products, and we increase the caution we use in buying products made in China. I recall in the 1950's, as Japan was creating a world class manufacturing industry based on what was then cheap labor, it too had a reputation for shoddy products and we consumers required price breaks to justify the added perceived risk that Japanese products would not last. Today, of course, Japanese products often command a higher price because of their reputation for high quality. While these kinds of heuristic product prejudices can lead to errors in consumer choice, they are obviously often useful.

My point is that they are mentally similar to the prejudices we form about groups of people. I was recently on a grand jury and asked to review a large number of charges of felonies. I live in an area in which perhaps one-third of the citizens are foreign born, and a comparable people are from racial minorities. Yet it certainly seemed that minorities were the majority of the people charged with felonies, and especially violent street crimes. It is rational to be more concerned with ones personal safety when confronted with a group of young men from a minority ethnic group than when confronted with an equal number of older, white women.

I suspect that cultures have evolved to inculcate such habits and indeed that they may be instinctive in our species. The good news is that we can rationally decide to substitute evidence-evidence based decision making for prejudice based reflexive action, and that we increasingly do so for important decisions. The bad news is that we are not as rational as we think we are.

I recall studies that find that reviewers of scientific papers are more likely to recommend them for publication if they are signed John Smith rather than Mary Smith, even though the reviewers would deny gender bias and would indeed not be aware of that bias. I think Hilary Clinton was the subject of gender bias as she pioneered the role of major candidate for president as a woman, and I think the wives of both candidates will in the next few months be similarly subjected to gender biases, in part because they are common and involuntary, and in part because professional politicians have discovered that pandering to prejudice can be effective in advancing a candidacy and prefer winning to ethical behavior.