Continue reading to learn about the causes of bias and some steps that can be taken to slow the spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
How Bias Spreads to Others<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s important to understand the causes of bias and how bias spreads in order to understand why racial bias is so pervasive throughout modern culture.<\/strong> Specifically, in the United States, antiblack bias isn\u2019t confined to one specific region or type of person\u2014it spreads through parenting and popular media into every corner of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBiased Parents Raise Biased Kids<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAccording to Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt in her book Biased<\/em>, parents are one of the strongest causes of the generational spread of antiblack bias.<\/strong> Young children form their understanding of the world by watching the adults in their lives. When those adults show racial bias\u2014even through subtle cues like body language\u2014kids pick up on the message: This person of another race is treated badly, so they must be<\/em> bad. The more often they hear that message, the deeper they encode it and adopt it as their own belief.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Implicit Association Test<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
To test the impact of parents\u2019 bias on their children, researchers use the implicit association test<\/a><\/em> (IAT), which is the gold standard<\/a> for testing the strength of implicit biases. The beauty of the IAT is that it doesn\u2019t rely on self-reporting (which is often inaccurate because most people don\u2019t want to admit to being racially biased). Instead, the IAT tests the power of biases operating below conscious awareness by measuring how quickly people associate black and white faces with good and bad words. (Shortform note: If you\u2019re curious about your own implicit biases, you can take the IAT yourself<\/a> through Harvard\u2019s \u201cProject Implicit.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo administer the test, researchers show participants a series of black and white faces on a computer screen interspersed with good words (like \u201cjoy\u201d) and bad words (like \u201cevil\u201d). There are two conditions, both of which use only two buttons. In the first condition, participants push one button if they see a black face or a bad word, and the other button for a white face or a good word; in the second condition, participants push one button for a black face or good word, the other for a white face or bad word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
![](\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/q82k59W_1YSaGTSi-5vXQsSorRy-rT6medajdA86ztPaDNX3eXlwhyMA0fNVa9n2hNg8QQDqWDeQiCHwYmKR4uaoA9B28CnUVHYtYdLQzlA0PZOK0zPKcWnWxuFlIn-IEkhRyekN\")
[image] biased_IATconditions.png<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea behind the IAT is that culturally ingrained bias makes it easier for the brain to associate black faces with bad words (and white faces with good words) than to associate black faces with good words (and white faces with bad words). In the first condition, the task is easy, so response times tend to be quick. But the brain has to work a little bit harder to associate black faces with good words, so the time it takes to push the right button is a little bit longer\u2014the stronger the bias, the harder the brain has to work to associate \u201cblack\u201d with \u201cgood,\u201d and the longer it takes to respond. The IAT estimates the strength of a person\u2019s implicit biases by measuring the difference between response times for the two conditions. When it comes to parenting, the results of the IAT confirm that heavily biased parents tend to raise heavily biased kids<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nParents\u2019 Influence on Kids\u2019 Racial Bias Fades Over Time<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nFor young children, having a parent with strong implicit bias makes them less sympathetic<\/a> when they see a black child being teased versus a white child. Interestingly, older children are typically very sympathetic to teasing victims of any race, regardless of how biased their parents may be. That might be because kids begin to form their own views of the world, separate from their parents, as they grow up and interact with more people.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBias in the Media<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nBias also spreads through all forms of media. Growing awareness of media inequality in the early 21st century led to a major rise in the representation of black characters in leading roles in film and television. Eberhardt cautions that media representation is powerful, but seeing black surgeons and superheroes on screen is not enough to eliminate anti-black bias\u2014in fact, it can even reinforce it. This effect is subtle and often subconscious, but still very real. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To test this effect, researchers took clips<\/a> from shows that have strong, positive portrayals of black characters (including CSI <\/em>and Grey\u2019s Anatomy<\/em>) and muted the sound. Then they compiled a series of clips of various white characters talking to the same unseen character (sometimes black, sometimes white), who was either offscreen or edited out. They showed these clips to study participants who had never seen that particular show and asked them to rate how much the white characters, as a whole, liked and respected the unseen character, based only on the white characters\u2019 nonverbal cues<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe results of this study were significant: The offscreen characters that participants rated as less liked and well-treated by the other characters were significantly more likely to be black.<\/a> In other words, white characters treated other white characters more positively than they treated black characters, <\/strong>and that difference was big enough that viewers picked up on it even without dialogue. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe perceivable bias in well-meaning TV shows isn\u2019t just unfortunate\u2014it\u2019s dangerous. After viewing the clips, participants took an implicit association test. The more negatively they perceived the show\u2019s white characters\u2019 behavior toward the offscreen black characters, the more antiblack bias they showed on the IAT\u2014even when they didn\u2019t know the poorly-treated unseen characters were black. These results show that creating more positive roles for black characters isn\u2019t enough to actively combat anti-black bias in the media<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCould Inclusion Riders Solve Popular Media\u2019s Bias Problem?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAn increase in positively portrayed black characters on TV is a good first step, but the overall media landscape is still far from equal. A study of the 100 highest-grossing films of each year from 2007-2015 found that black characters made up 12% of speaking roles.<\/a> While this might seem promising because black people make up roughly 13% of the American population, it\u2019s not the full picture because a few movies with majority-black casts skewed the results. In fact, in 2015, only 10 of the top 100 films were cast in a way that reflects the actual population (meaning they featured black people in roughly 13% of the film\u2019s speaking roles). Even worse, a full 17% of films featured zero <\/em>black characters in speaking roles. <\/strong>
How can we solve this problem? Inclusion riders are one possibility<\/a>. Inclusion riders (also called equity riders) are contractual clauses stipulating that the cast and crew of a film must include people from underrepresented groups in the industry, like women, people of color, and people with disabilities. If big-name actors and filmmakers add inclusion riders into their contracts, they can leverage their fame to open doors for talented people and ultimately create a more realistically diverse film industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What are the causes of bias? In what ways does bias spread through parenting and the media? How can we try to put a stop to the spread of bias? In her book Biased, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt explains that the two major causes of bias are through parenting and through media. Luckily, parental influence fades over time it’s possible for children to develop their own views. Continue reading to learn about the causes of bias and some steps that can be taken to slow the spread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":41910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,24],"tags":[424],"class_list":["post-41886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting","category-society","tag-biased","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\n
Causes of Bias: How It Spreads Through Generations - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The two main causes of bias are parenting and the media. Learn how bias spreads and what can be done to potentially slow that spread.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/causes-of-bias\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Causes of Bias: How It Spreads Through Generations\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The two main causes of bias are parenting and the media. 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Biased Parents Raise Biased Kids<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAccording to Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt in her book Biased<\/em>, parents are one of the strongest causes of the generational spread of antiblack bias.<\/strong> Young children form their understanding of the world by watching the adults in their lives. When those adults show racial bias\u2014even through subtle cues like body language\u2014kids pick up on the message: This person of another race is treated badly, so they must be<\/em> bad. The more often they hear that message, the deeper they encode it and adopt it as their own belief.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Implicit Association Test<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
To test the impact of parents\u2019 bias on their children, researchers use the implicit association test<\/a><\/em> (IAT), which is the gold standard<\/a> for testing the strength of implicit biases. The beauty of the IAT is that it doesn\u2019t rely on self-reporting (which is often inaccurate because most people don\u2019t want to admit to being racially biased). Instead, the IAT tests the power of biases operating below conscious awareness by measuring how quickly people associate black and white faces with good and bad words. (Shortform note: If you\u2019re curious about your own implicit biases, you can take the IAT yourself<\/a> through Harvard\u2019s \u201cProject Implicit.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo administer the test, researchers show participants a series of black and white faces on a computer screen interspersed with good words (like \u201cjoy\u201d) and bad words (like \u201cevil\u201d). There are two conditions, both of which use only two buttons. In the first condition, participants push one button if they see a black face or a bad word, and the other button for a white face or a good word; in the second condition, participants push one button for a black face or good word, the other for a white face or bad word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
[image] biased_IATconditions.png<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea behind the IAT is that culturally ingrained bias makes it easier for the brain to associate black faces with bad words (and white faces with good words) than to associate black faces with good words (and white faces with bad words). In the first condition, the task is easy, so response times tend to be quick. But the brain has to work a little bit harder to associate black faces with good words, so the time it takes to push the right button is a little bit longer\u2014the stronger the bias, the harder the brain has to work to associate \u201cblack\u201d with \u201cgood,\u201d and the longer it takes to respond. The IAT estimates the strength of a person\u2019s implicit biases by measuring the difference between response times for the two conditions. When it comes to parenting, the results of the IAT confirm that heavily biased parents tend to raise heavily biased kids<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nParents\u2019 Influence on Kids\u2019 Racial Bias Fades Over Time<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nFor young children, having a parent with strong implicit bias makes them less sympathetic<\/a> when they see a black child being teased versus a white child. Interestingly, older children are typically very sympathetic to teasing victims of any race, regardless of how biased their parents may be. That might be because kids begin to form their own views of the world, separate from their parents, as they grow up and interact with more people.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBias in the Media<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nBias also spreads through all forms of media. Growing awareness of media inequality in the early 21st century led to a major rise in the representation of black characters in leading roles in film and television. Eberhardt cautions that media representation is powerful, but seeing black surgeons and superheroes on screen is not enough to eliminate anti-black bias\u2014in fact, it can even reinforce it. This effect is subtle and often subconscious, but still very real. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To test this effect, researchers took clips<\/a> from shows that have strong, positive portrayals of black characters (including CSI <\/em>and Grey\u2019s Anatomy<\/em>) and muted the sound. Then they compiled a series of clips of various white characters talking to the same unseen character (sometimes black, sometimes white), who was either offscreen or edited out. They showed these clips to study participants who had never seen that particular show and asked them to rate how much the white characters, as a whole, liked and respected the unseen character, based only on the white characters\u2019 nonverbal cues<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe results of this study were significant: The offscreen characters that participants rated as less liked and well-treated by the other characters were significantly more likely to be black.<\/a> In other words, white characters treated other white characters more positively than they treated black characters, <\/strong>and that difference was big enough that viewers picked up on it even without dialogue. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe perceivable bias in well-meaning TV shows isn\u2019t just unfortunate\u2014it\u2019s dangerous. After viewing the clips, participants took an implicit association test. The more negatively they perceived the show\u2019s white characters\u2019 behavior toward the offscreen black characters, the more antiblack bias they showed on the IAT\u2014even when they didn\u2019t know the poorly-treated unseen characters were black. These results show that creating more positive roles for black characters isn\u2019t enough to actively combat anti-black bias in the media<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCould Inclusion Riders Solve Popular Media\u2019s Bias Problem?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAn increase in positively portrayed black characters on TV is a good first step, but the overall media landscape is still far from equal. A study of the 100 highest-grossing films of each year from 2007-2015 found that black characters made up 12% of speaking roles.<\/a> While this might seem promising because black people make up roughly 13% of the American population, it\u2019s not the full picture because a few movies with majority-black casts skewed the results. In fact, in 2015, only 10 of the top 100 films were cast in a way that reflects the actual population (meaning they featured black people in roughly 13% of the film\u2019s speaking roles). Even worse, a full 17% of films featured zero <\/em>black characters in speaking roles. <\/strong>
How can we solve this problem? Inclusion riders are one possibility<\/a>. Inclusion riders (also called equity riders) are contractual clauses stipulating that the cast and crew of a film must include people from underrepresented groups in the industry, like women, people of color, and people with disabilities. If big-name actors and filmmakers add inclusion riders into their contracts, they can leverage their fame to open doors for talented people and ultimately create a more realistically diverse film industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What are the causes of bias? In what ways does bias spread through parenting and the media? How can we try to put a stop to the spread of bias? In her book Biased, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt explains that the two major causes of bias are through parenting and through media. Luckily, parental influence fades over time it’s possible for children to develop their own views. Continue reading to learn about the causes of bias and some steps that can be taken to slow the spread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":41910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,24],"tags":[424],"class_list":["post-41886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting","category-society","tag-biased","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\n
Causes of Bias: How It Spreads Through Generations - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The two main causes of bias are parenting and the media. Learn how bias spreads and what can be done to potentially slow that spread.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/causes-of-bias\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Causes of Bias: How It Spreads Through Generations\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The two main causes of bias are parenting and the media. 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The Implicit Association Test<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
To test the impact of parents\u2019 bias on their children, researchers use the implicit association test<\/a><\/em> (IAT), which is the gold standard<\/a> for testing the strength of implicit biases. The beauty of the IAT is that it doesn\u2019t rely on self-reporting (which is often inaccurate because most people don\u2019t want to admit to being racially biased). Instead, the IAT tests the power of biases operating below conscious awareness by measuring how quickly people associate black and white faces with good and bad words. (Shortform note: If you\u2019re curious about your own implicit biases, you can take the IAT yourself<\/a> through Harvard\u2019s \u201cProject Implicit.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n To administer the test, researchers show participants a series of black and white faces on a computer screen interspersed with good words (like \u201cjoy\u201d) and bad words (like \u201cevil\u201d). There are two conditions, both of which use only two buttons. In the first condition, participants push one button if they see a black face or a bad word, and the other button for a white face or a good word; in the second condition, participants push one button for a black face or good word, the other for a white face or bad word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea behind the IAT is that culturally ingrained bias makes it easier for the brain to associate black faces with bad words (and white faces with good words) than to associate black faces with good words (and white faces with bad words). In the first condition, the task is easy, so response times tend to be quick. But the brain has to work a little bit harder to associate black faces with good words, so the time it takes to push the right button is a little bit longer\u2014the stronger the bias, the harder the brain has to work to associate \u201cblack\u201d with \u201cgood,\u201d and the longer it takes to respond. The IAT estimates the strength of a person\u2019s implicit biases by measuring the difference between response times for the two conditions. When it comes to parenting, the results of the IAT confirm that heavily biased parents tend to raise heavily biased kids<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For young children, having a parent with strong implicit bias makes them less sympathetic<\/a> when they see a black child being teased versus a white child. Interestingly, older children are typically very sympathetic to teasing victims of any race, regardless of how biased their parents may be. That might be because kids begin to form their own views of the world, separate from their parents, as they grow up and interact with more people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bias also spreads through all forms of media. Growing awareness of media inequality in the early 21st century led to a major rise in the representation of black characters in leading roles in film and television. Eberhardt cautions that media representation is powerful, but seeing black surgeons and superheroes on screen is not enough to eliminate anti-black bias\u2014in fact, it can even reinforce it. This effect is subtle and often subconscious, but still very real. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To test this effect, researchers took clips<\/a> from shows that have strong, positive portrayals of black characters (including CSI <\/em>and Grey\u2019s Anatomy<\/em>) and muted the sound. Then they compiled a series of clips of various white characters talking to the same unseen character (sometimes black, sometimes white), who was either offscreen or edited out. They showed these clips to study participants who had never seen that particular show and asked them to rate how much the white characters, as a whole, liked and respected the unseen character, based only on the white characters\u2019 nonverbal cues<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The results of this study were significant: The offscreen characters that participants rated as less liked and well-treated by the other characters were significantly more likely to be black.<\/a> In other words, white characters treated other white characters more positively than they treated black characters, <\/strong>and that difference was big enough that viewers picked up on it even without dialogue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The perceivable bias in well-meaning TV shows isn\u2019t just unfortunate\u2014it\u2019s dangerous. After viewing the clips, participants took an implicit association test. The more negatively they perceived the show\u2019s white characters\u2019 behavior toward the offscreen black characters, the more antiblack bias they showed on the IAT\u2014even when they didn\u2019t know the poorly-treated unseen characters were black. These results show that creating more positive roles for black characters isn\u2019t enough to actively combat anti-black bias in the media<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n An increase in positively portrayed black characters on TV is a good first step, but the overall media landscape is still far from equal. A study of the 100 highest-grossing films of each year from 2007-2015 found that black characters made up 12% of speaking roles.<\/a> While this might seem promising because black people make up roughly 13% of the American population, it\u2019s not the full picture because a few movies with majority-black casts skewed the results. In fact, in 2015, only 10 of the top 100 films were cast in a way that reflects the actual population (meaning they featured black people in roughly 13% of the film\u2019s speaking roles). Even worse, a full 17% of films featured zero <\/em>black characters in speaking roles. <\/strong> What are the causes of bias? In what ways does bias spread through parenting and the media? How can we try to put a stop to the spread of bias? In her book Biased, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt explains that the two major causes of bias are through parenting and through media. Luckily, parental influence fades over time it’s possible for children to develop their own views. Continue reading to learn about the causes of bias and some steps that can be taken to slow the spread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":41910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,24],"tags":[424],"class_list":["post-41886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting","category-society","tag-biased","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\n
[image] biased_IATconditions.png<\/p>\n\n\n\nParents\u2019 Influence on Kids\u2019 Racial Bias Fades Over Time<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bias in the Media<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Could Inclusion Riders Solve Popular Media\u2019s Bias Problem?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How can we solve this problem? Inclusion riders are one possibility<\/a>. Inclusion riders (also called equity riders) are contractual clauses stipulating that the cast and crew of a film must include people from underrepresented groups in the industry, like women, people of color, and people with disabilities. If big-name actors and filmmakers add inclusion riders into their contracts, they can leverage their fame to open doors for talented people and ultimately create a more realistically diverse film industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"