Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

Most of us would like our behavior to be consistent with our values; Blindspot helps explain why they are not always aligned by providing readers with a simple, scientifically-based understanding of “implicit bias”. The book is a resource you can use to educate yourself and others.

In Blindspot, my colleague Tony Greenwald and I explore hidden biases that we all carry from a lifetime of experiences with social groups – age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, or nationality.

We use the term “blindspot” as a metaphor to capture that portion of the human mind that houses these hidden biases. Just as our eyes contain a blind spot where visual information cannot be seen, we ask about the extent to which social groups shape our likes, dislikes, and judgments about people’s character, abilities, and potential – without our awareness or conscious control.

In Blindspot, hidden biases are revealed to readers through hands-on experience with Implicit Association Test. This test has influenced the way scientists learn about the human mind and gives us a glimpse into what lies within the metaphoric blindspot.

The title’s “good people” are the many people – the authors included – who strive to align their behavior with their good intentions. The aim of Blindspot is to explain the science in plain language to allow well-intentioned people to better achieve that alignment. Venturing into this book is an invitation to understand our own minds.

Blindspot is written with a non-academic reader in mind.