And it made her wonder what might have happened if she hadn't received the best treatment. Kaplan told Banaji that she was able to go back to quilting, but that she still occasionally feels a twinge in the hand. 'Somehow,' Banaji says, 'it must be that the doctor was not moved, did not feel compelled by the quilter story in the same way as he was compelled by a two-word phrase, 'Yale professor.' ' They operated for hours and tried to save practically every last nerve.īanaji says she and Kaplan asked themselves later why the doctor had not called in the specialist right away. The hospital tracked down the best-known hand specialist in New England. Kaplan told him she was.Įverything changed in an instant. He asked the bleeding young woman if she was a Yale faculty member. 'The student saw her, recognized her, and said, 'Professor Kaplan, what are you doing here?' ' Banaji says. In the book, Banaji writes that Kaplan once had a terrible kitchen accident. 'You would often see her, sitting in the back of a lecture, quilting away, while she listened to a talk,' Banaji says. Banaji says that Kaplan had a passion - quilting. At the time, both Banaji and Kaplan were faculty members at Yale. When we help someone from one of these in-groups, we don't stop to ask: Whom are we not helping?īanaji tells a story in the book about a friend, Carla Kaplan, now a professor at Northeastern University. In each case, however, Banaji, Greenwald and DiTomaso might argue, we strengthen existing patterns of advantage and disadvantage because our friends, neighbors and children's classmates are overwhelmingly likely to share our own racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds. We feel like generous people when we give our neighbors extra tickets to a sports game or a show. We feel like good parents when we arrange a class trip for our daughter's class to our place of work. We feel like a great friend when we give a buddy a foot in the door to a job interview at our workplace. The insidious thing about favoritism is that it doesn't feel icky in any way, Banaji says.

Discrimination today is less about treating people from other groups badly, DiTomaso writes, and more about giving preferential treatment to people who are part of our 'in-groups.' In many ways, the psychologists' work mirrors the conclusion of another recent book: In The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality without Racism, sociologist Nancy DiTomaso asks how it is that few people report feeling racial prejudice, while the United States still has enormous disparities. In that sense, her decision was a form of prejudice, even though it didn't feel that way. She would not have changed her mind for another reporter without the personal connection. Take Banaji's own behavior toward the reporter with a Yale connection. Yet, far from springing from animosity and hatred, Banaji and Greenwald argue, prejudice may often stem from unintentional biases. Traditionally, Banaji says, psychologists in her field have looked for overt 'acts of commission - what do I do? Do I go across town to burn down the church of somebody who's not from my denomination? That, I can recognize as prejudice.' In a new book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, Banaji and her co-author, Anthony Greenwald, a social psychologist at the University of Washington, turn the conventional way people think about prejudice on its head. Of course we'd help someone with whom we have a personal connection.įor Banaji, however, it was the start of a psychological exploration into the nature and consequences of favoritism - why we give some people the kind of extra-special treatment we don't give others. For most people, this would have been so obvious and self-explanatory it would have required no further thought.

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