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Sep 22, 2024 · Unconscious behavior refers to the actions, thoughts, and decisions we make without conscious awareness or deliberate intent. It’s the mental equivalent of breathing – a process so fundamental to our existence that we rarely pause to consider its intricacies.
Dec 4, 2019 · Here are a couple of examples to consider: Subconscious: You dimly recognize that you feel a certain jealousy toward your teenage son. Yet you don’t know why.
- Projection. Projecting is taking a negative quality about yourself and attributing it to someone else. For example, a person who is a spendthrift constantly accusing their partner of being irresponsible with money, or a person with insecurities about their body projecting that onto others by making critical comments about their bodies.
- Displacement. Displacement is another way of redirecting your feelings away from the correct target. In this case, a person transfers their emotional reaction from one thing onto another, such as when a person is having an ongoing conflict at home and takes out their frustrations on their coworkers, or vice versa.
- Denial. Someone is in denial when they refuse to accept reality or acknowledge the facts of a situation, such as when a person refuses to acknowledge their partner is cheating on them despite catching them in the act, or when a woman in a toxic relationship continues to act like there's nothing wrong with how her partner treats her.
- Repression. Repression is a defense mechanism wherein the subconscious mind blocks out unpleased feelings, events, or memories, such as when a trauma survivor cannot remember the actual details of what happened to them despite the fact that they were conscious when it was occurring.
- System 1 and System 2 Thinking
- Implicit Bias vs. Explicit Bias
- What Are The Implications of Unconscious Bias?
- Causes
- Implicit Attitude Test
- How to Reduce Implicit Bias
- References
System 1 is the brain’s fast, emotional, unconscious thinking mode. This type of thinking requires little effort, but it is often error-prone. Most everyday activities (like driving, talking, cleaning, etc.) make heavy use of the type 1 system. The type 2 system is slow, logical, effortful, conscious thought, where reason dominates.
It is also possible that your implicit and explicit biases are different from your neighbor, friend, or even your family member. Many factors can control how such biases are developed.
This occurs when certain actions (or microaggressions) make others feel uncomfortable or aware of the specific prejudices you may hold against them.
We tend to seek out patterns
A key reason we develop such biases is that our brains have a natural tendency to look for patterns and associations in order to make sense of a very complicated world. Research shows that even before kindergarten, children already use their group membership (e.g., racial group, gender group, age group, etc.) to guide inferences about psychological and behavioral traits. At such a young age, they have already begun to seek out patterns and recognize what distinguishes them from other groups (...
We like to take shortcuts
Another explanation is that the development of these biases is a result of the brain’s tendency to try to simplify the world. Mental shortcuts make it faster and easier for the brain to sort through all of the overwhelming data and stimuli we are met with every second of the day. And we take mental shortcuts all the time. Rules of thumb, educated guesses, and using “common sense” are all forms of mental shortcuts. Implicit bias is a result of taking one of these cognitive shortcuts inaccurate...
Social and Cultural influences
Influences from media, culture and your individual upbringing can also contribute to the rise of implicit associations that people form about the members of social outgroups. Media has become increasingly accessible, and while that has many benefits, it can also lead to implicit biases. The way TV portrays individuals or the language journal articles use can ingrain specific biases in our minds. For example, they can lead us to associate Black people with criminals or females as nurses or tea...
What sets implicit biases apart from other forms of biases is the fact that they are subconscious – we don’t know if we have them. However, researchers have developed a tool called the Implicit Association Test (IAT) that can help reveal such biases. Tests are taken online and must be performed as quickly as possible, the faster you categorize cert...
Meditation
Practicing mindfulnessis one potential way, as it serves to reduce the stress and cognitive load that otherwise leads to relying on such biases. A 2016 study found that brief mediation decreased unconscious bias against black people and elderly people (Lueke & Gibson, 2016), providing initial insight into the usefulness of this approach and paving the way for future research on this intervention.
Adjust your perspective
Another method is perspective-taking – looking beyond your own point of view so that you can consider how someone else may think or feel about something. Researcher Belinda Gutierrez implemented a videogame called “Fair Play,” in which players assume the role of a Black graduate student named Jamal Davis. As Jamal, players experience subtle race bias while completing “quests” to obtain a science degree. Gutierrez hypothesized that participants who were randomly assigned to play the game would...
Training
Specific implicit bias training has been incorporated in different educational and law enforcement settings. Research has found that diversity training to overcome biases against women in STEM improved with men (Jackson, Hillard, & Schneider, 2014). Training programs designed to target and help overcome implicit biases may also be beneficial for police officers (Plant & Peruche, 2005), but there is not enough conclusive evidence to completely support this claim. One pitfall of such training i...
Aboud, F. E. (1988). Children and prejudice. B. Blackwell. Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (1995). Implicit gender stereotyping in judgments of fame. Journal of personality and social psychology, 68(2), 181. Baron, A. S., Dunham, Y., Banaji, M., & Carey, S. (2014). Constraints on the acquisition of social category concepts. Journal of Cognition a...
Sep 5, 2023 · Repression is the unconscious blocking of distressing thoughts, impulses, feelings, or memories out of your conscious mind. In psychology, repression is seen as a defense mechanism that helps protect against anxiety arising from thoughts or emotions that are too painful to acknowledge.
Dec 25, 2023 · Cognitive distortions are irrational and biased ways of thinking that can lead to negative emotions and behaviors. Some common cognitive distortions in teens include mind reading, all-or-nothing thinking, and personalization.
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Oct 20, 2023 · Defense mechanisms are conscious or unconscious mental processes that help ease or avoid anxiety. Individuals may or may not realize they utilize these methods, many of which occur as responses to trauma, stress, or anger.
