Juan Williams and knowing your unknowable self

In September I introduced the idea (not to the world, but to this blog) that the notion that we can ever be rational is a foolish one. Not that reason doesn't play a role in how we make decisions; it certainly can. But at the end of the day, every decision we make - and every thing we do - is mixed with at least a dash of emotion.

For most of us most of the time, that dash is more like a tanker-full. A common metaphor among social psychologists is to equate our emotions to a two ton elephant, with our "rational" brain as its 100 lb driver, hopelessly trying to steer the mammoth thing in the direction we think wisest.

To natural emoters like me, it may be patently obvious that the elephant is in charge. No matter how much our reason counsels us to not be nervous or not be upset, we still find ourselves trembling as we stand up to give that board presentation or when we bump into our ex-lover at a cocktail party with his new girlfriend. For those of us who go through their day relatively unperturbed, however, it may be less evident that emotions run the show.

This is, of course, because not all emotions manifest themselves as crying jags or fits of rage; most are quiet operators that work below the radar. Indeed, some social psychologist define emotions as those forces that work at the unconscious level.

Your mind-body complex has an endless array of ways to slyly guide your behavior via emotion. I'll dig into many on this blog, but for starters let's look at stereotypes and prejudice.

In the wake of the Rick Sanchez' and Juan Williams' firings for voicing questionably anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic comments, I was reminded of how little we like to consider ourselves bigots. Sure, other people are - but I don't let my actions towards other be shaded by racial or ethnic prejudice. Or do I?

A couple years ago I took a few spins on Harvard's "Implicit Association Test" site to discover that, yes, just like everyone else on this earth (maybe excepting the Dalai Lama) I have my hidden prejudices.

The social psychologists that design the IAT know that you can't find out if someone has a prejudice by asking them; outside of Aryan Nation rallies, most Americans like to believe they are color-blind and will report so. So researchers use a trick. They depend on the brain's way of associating words and concepts. If two words - say, cat and dog - are associated in our mind, they'll have a strong neural connection. When I say "cat", all those words associated with cat will get activated, consciously or subconsciously - so if I next ask "what does 'god' spell backwards' you'll be that much quicker to say "dog" than if I just asked the question out of the blue. (This is a phenomenon known as "priming," which marketers love to exploit.) To look for hidden prejudices social psychologists will hone in on those milliseconds more it will take you to make connections with and without priming.

Suspecting I had a - maybe not so hidden - bias against overweight people, I just took the IAT's fat-ist test. Sure enough, I have a "moderate" prejudice against the overweight. (I have plenty of company; of those who have taken the same test, most have negative views of pudge.)

But what does that mean? Rationally, I know that there are many reasons why people may be overweight and - to my knowledge - there is no correlation between being overweight and being "bad" in any other way. In fact, anecdotally, I'd say that most overweight people I know are kind, intelligent and interesting people. Most importantly, it's no skin off my back if someone else carries a few extra pounds.

So, why in heck do I associate being fat with being "bad?" I have no idea (but could make a few guesses - in another post). The point is that in spite of priding myself in being supremely rational, my subconscious is supremely irrational - and whether I like it or not it's running the show much of the time. The important thing is to be aware of the fact - so you can take precautions against it.

That's one of the reasons the Juan Williams story was so disappointing. On his stint on Fox, Williams admitted that he gets fearful when he sees Muslims at the airport but also pointed out that it's important to put that irrational fear aside when thinking about policy. What I heard was "I'm bigoted just like everybody else, but we need to get past our bigotry when we come together to talk about national issues." What the media - and NPR - heard was "I'm an unabashed bigot."

Too bad. Williams was helping us to be aware of our prejudices and asking us to know our unknowable selves. Instead of thanking him, we canned him.