As we learned from the friendly puppets on Avenue Q, everyone’s a little bit racist sometimes. If you need someone a little more authoritative than a muppet to tell you, you can take this scientific test yourself to discover your own cringe-worthy prejudices. Regardless of whether or not you consider yourself to be racist, sexist, nationalist, etc., science shows us again and again that a certain level of bias and prejudice is built-in to our brains’ hardwiring.
The good news is we can consciously override these automatic responses and choose to look beyond the surface, making more objective judgements about people and situations based on the facts. But what if these biases are being exploited without our knowledge? Can we override our brains’ natural tendencies if we’re unaware they’re being taken advantage of? At some point, may we even stop having the desire to override them, so convinced we become of our own rightness?
Consider these optical illusions.
Most people can see the alternative pictures after they’re pointed out to them, but not before. Likewise, our own initial perceptions of a situation often miss part of the picture. It can become even more difficult to see an alternate perspective when our own view is being affirmed and reaffirmed at every turn, and no alternative is being fairly represented.
During tumultuous times such as these, some people purge their friends and connections on social media of those they don’t align with politically. While it can be perfectly healthy to rid your life and newsfeed of people you find to be negatively impacting your mental well-being, this can also ensure that the content you’re seeing when you log on to social media is reflective of your own views and values, and is not necessarily well-balanced.
Even if you do maintain connections with people you don’t agree with, you’re still unlikely to see their content if you don’t actively engage with it, such as liking, commenting or even spending extra time viewing it, because of the way content algorithms work. Either that, or you may see an outsized representation of views you don’t agree with if you tend to engage with posts that offend you. (This may explain why some people feel the need to get rid of contacts whose content they disagree with — they may find themselves unable to get away from it because of the times they have responded.)
Either way, what you see being discussed and shared on social media is curated, either for you or by you, and probably both. It’s important to know that you are seeing a limited amount of the information that’s out there, and what you’re seeing feeds into your biases one way or another.
So when you see news stories about dogs finding their forever homes or small business owners helping their communities, enjoy that these stories are being curated to you personally, because they make you happy. But when it comes to important news and information, never rely on your social media newsfeed to get you all the facts.
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