Some weeks ago, my supervisor at the college sent one of his “diversity moment” emails with a link to this article. Intrigued, I decided I needed to read Blindspot.
I was concerned that it might be a dull or dry read, but it is not. (I finished it in about a week.) I was fascinated from the first page when they show an optical illusion involving two table tops, as an example of how our minds cause us to see things in ways that don’t match reality.
A large portion of the book is devoted to the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a tool developed by the authors to uncover people’s hidden biases. Because these biases operate below the conscious level of our minds, we are not aware of them. If asked directly, people will often deny having such biases, and at the conscious level they do not.
Posted by Pauline