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A part of the University of Virginia (UVa) new student orientation course on implicit biases. The course introduces the concept of implicit biases, explaining that they are unconscious attitudes and stereotypes that influence our thinking and behavior. interactive exercises to help learners identify their own implicit biases and understand how they can impact decision-making.
Typology: Summaries
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Welcome to New Student Orientation
This is the course title page, featuring the UVa logo, the course title, a "What Is It?" button to launch the course, and the Project Implicit logo.
Welcome to grounds. This part of your orientation to UVa is about something called implicit bias.
Just click on the “what is it” button, and we’ll get started.
How Does Your Mind Work?
This is a three question self-evaluation, with the questions presented as statements you can respond to:
Oh, I’m Maya, by the way. Before we get started, I have a few questions I would like you to answer from your perspective.
Which Club Would You Fund?
A self-assessment question. Maya tells the audience she is responsible for giving a student group additional funds and asks the learner which group she should fund. The options of clubs are: “Spanish Language Club”, “Christian Fellowship at UVA”, “Cavaliers for Sustainability” and “Wahoo Women in Tech”.
Did I mention that I’m the grad student representative to student council. Just last week I had to decide which student organization should get an additional $250 for the semester.
These are the clubs I had to choose from. Which would you pick?
Influences on Decision-Making
Maya explains what goes into making a simple decision.
As you can see, a simple decision isn’t necessarily all that simple. There’s a lot that goes into our decision-making process.
Many of these processes happen quickly, automatically. We can’t observe all the ways in which our minds operate. We’ll talk more about this in a moment.
We do know that your expectations and past experiences play a big role in how you perceive things.
The mind automatically looks for evidence that supports those expectations.
Finally, implicit attitudes and stereotypes can predict your decisions and behavior. So a simple choice might be anything but.
What Emotion Is David Feeling?
Maya presents David, a baby who is playing with a jack-in-the-box. Then the box pops open, he makes a face. Then she asks learner to select what emotion they think David is feeling: Angry, Afraid, Indifferent, or Bored.
Let me show you what I mean. Little David here was playing with a jack-in-the-box. When it popped out, he made this face.
What emotion do you think he’s feeling?
Color Race: Round One
Maya provides instructions for the color race test as well as a Begin button to start the test. In the test, learners must read the ink color of twelve words out loud (or to themselves) and then click on the onscreen timer to complete the test. The twelve words are as follows: green, blue, red, yellow, blue yellow, red, blue, green, yellow. The ink is the same color as the word - that is, the green word is written in green ink, the red word in red ink and the yellow word in yellow ink. Each word appears three times in the list. When they click Begin, the screen changes and the list of words appears. Maya repeats the instructions and tells the learner to click the timer to begin reading, then to click it again when they've read through the list.
Here’s another way to look at how our mind processes information automatically. In the screen behind me you’ll find a list of words. They are printed in different colors of ink. Behind this instruction screen is a timer that’ll start when you click the START THE TIMER button.
Read the color of each word out loud, or mouth it silently to yourself. Don’t read the word, read the color—so you’d say green then blue then red and so on. Go as fast as you can.
When you’ve said the whole list out loud, click on the timer to stop it and see how fast you were.
Click START THE TIMER and begin reading.
Color Race: Round Two
Maya provides instructions for the second part of the color race test as well as a Begin button to start the test. In this version of the test, learners must again read the ink color of twelve words out loud (or to themselves) and then click on the onscreen timer to complete the test--only this time the list has changed. The twelve words are as follows: yellow, green, red, yellow, blue, red, yellow, blue, green, red, blue, green. In Round 2, the words are typed in a different ink color than their word meaning - that is, the yellow word is typed in green ink, the green word is typed in blue ink, the blue word is typed in red ink and so on. When they click Begin, the screen changes and the list of words appears. Maya repeats the instructions and tells the learner to click the timer to begin reading, then to click it again when they've read through the list. Once the exercise is completed, Maya tells the learner that Round 2 was harder because your brain had to perform competing tasks.
Now do the same thing for round two. The list has changed, but the instructions are the same.
Say the color of each word out loud. Ignore the word itself; just say the color. Go as fast as you can.
When you’ve said the whole list out loud, click on the timer to stop it.
Click START THE TIMER to begin.
Which Tabletop Looks Longer and Thinner?
There are three different exercises for this screen. In the first, Maya asks you to select the table that is longer and thinner. One of the tables obviously looks longer and thinner than the other table. In the second exercise, the learner is told that the tables are the same size--they are told to drag and drop measuring rulers onto the tables to prove this. Then, Maya explains that perception and reality are not always the same thing. Sometimes context (past experiences and beliefs) make us perceive things differently.
Ready for another example of how implicit processes work? Answer this question.
Actually, the two tables are the same shape and size. Don’t take my word for it; use this drag-and-drop angle ruler to measure them for yourself.
Simply click on the ruler and drag it to the tables.
They look the same size now, don’t they? You see, the eye only perceives two dimensions, and the placement and perspective of the table legs fooled your mind into “seeing” the table on the left as longer as and thinner than the one on the right. We learned that our expectations and past experience influence our decision-making as well as our perceptions.
This illustrates a potential problem. We tend to automatically accept that the world is the way we perceive it, but reality and our perception of reality are not always the same thing.
The same thing is true of the tables. We see them as different because of the context we see them in. We also can experience the same event differently, depending upon who performs it.
Because we’re exposed to stereotypes in the media, and sometimes in our families and communities, we learn them, and they exist in our minds, even if we personally reject them.
Knowledge Check
This questions asks learners to select, "Which statement is true about implicit biases?" The choices are: A. They can influence our decisions without us knowing it.; B. They are always consciously controlled.; C. They may not agree with our conscious beliefs.; D. A and C are correct.; E. All of the preceding. The correct answer is D, which is supported by feedback.
That’s right. Implicit biases are mostly automatic and can influence the decisions we make without us even knowing it. Good Job!
