I just completed reading the book blink – The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. I discovered the book when someone referred me to one of the author’s other books, The Tipping Point. Malcolm Gladwell’s blink caught my interest more, though, because it examines how we make choices, suggesting we need a better method. The comparisons between my own Choice – The Meaning of Life and blink are uncanny. We both have completely different approaches stemming from the same belief: We can accomplish much more, much quicker, with a better decision-making system. Both Malcolm and I examine many of the same human traits from different angles with the same results. Unlike my work, which teaches you to root your decisions in a foundation that varies for each by answering the same four questions (BLC’s) and implementing a structured process to make good choices (the COR and five questions for principles), Malcolm suggests we learn how and when to use our unconscious mind to make choices, which often proves to provide better decisions than our conscious one. The book is intriguing and I’ll put up a complete review under “Resources” in the next week or two, once I get all my thoughts and comparisons to Choice formulated. I highly recommend the book, as it is both insightful and intriguing.

There are many things we don’t realize about ourselves that our unconscious can reveal to us. For example, most of us are predisposed to -ism’s; such as ageism, racism, and sexism. There is a test called the Implicit Association Test, created by psychologists to find such ism’s tucked away in the unconscious. You can take the test yourself online here on Havard’s site. There are tests on a variety of topics, the most famous (and perhaps most notorious) being the Race IAT. (I don’t know if I’d call it a race IAT as much as a black and white IAT, as it involves only blacks and whites.)

After finishing blink, in which Malcolm shares the aforementioned IAT link, I swallowed hard and went to the site to take the Race IAT. Now I consider myself to be a fair person, always seeking to practice rationale rather than assumption. (When we get to discussing inhibitors of good choice, I’ll shred assumption.) But I was about to take a race test and our unconscious minds tend to be tainted because of stereotypes to which we have been exposed. Were my own stereotypes vanquished by my experiences and beliefs or were they still there, in the recesses of my mind? I suspected I would find that I am biased toward preferring white people over black people, especially given that 70% of the test takers, regardless of race, score results showing an automatic preference for whites over blacks. The IAT won’t let you hide your unconscious biases. I hoped I’d be only slightly biased or neutral but figured I’d be biased and didn’t give it much thought; I just wanted to take the test and see the results.

Well, the results staggered me (especially since I felt slow on some of the responses regarding black images) and showed that your unconscious can be swayed from stereotypes based on your own experiences and dedication to making good choices. I argue that once you get used to the COR-system, you implement it without thought; it becomes natural, much like your unconscious mind. (Malcolm Gladwell shares a similar argument in blink; again, I’ll discuss in full when I review the book. I’ll post it under “Resources” and also put up a blog post letting you know when the review is posted.) An unconscious shifting from stereotypes would go along way toward illustrating my argument. So did I strongly prefer whites? Moderately? Slightly? Or was I neutral?

Actually, much to my surprise, I fall into the small 4% who have ”moderate automatic preferences” for blacks.

HUH?! How could that happen? How could a white male fall into that 4%? Again, you can’t hide from your unconscious. Once I thought about it for a moment, it made complete sense. In my lifetime, I have found black strangers to be far more friendly and approachable than white ones. I’ve traveled all over the contiguous U.S., hitting small towns and big cities alike, and found that to be the case in every place. I am far more apt to make a joke to a black stranger or strike up a conversation with one than with a white one, as blacks tend to be more jocular, inviting, and responsive. I often make light of the fact that you can hear a pin drop on a subway car full of white people while a subway car full of black people is full of chatter. White strangers are simply less likely to chat while blacks are more likely to chat. I make jokes all the time to people I meet in a moment–people in line, the cashier, the mailman… I am far more likely to make a joke in any of those scenarios if the person in line, the cashier, or the mailman is black.

Do I have a lot of black friends? Nope; I don’t frequent the same places. (I had more back when I was younger, as I had far more contact with them.) If you’ve read God, you know I tend not to be attracted to black women because most I’ve tried to date in the past were too hung up on the race card; repeatedly over the years, that has simply left me unattracted to them. So my test results seem to be out of whack with my social life; but, this is really not the case, given my very outgoing personality. Since I am outgoing, I am drawn more to outgoing people, a higher percentage of which appear to be among the blacks I’ve met than the whites. Generally speaking, I’ve found conversations with black people, friends or strangers, to be more intriguing and engaging, often simply because they have more and broader experiences than whites; they have input that whites don’t that add to the conversation and make me think about details I might have otherwise overlooked.

After years of such experiences, traditional negative biases toward blacks appear to have been replaced in my unconscious with positive biases. I am more likely to associate words like “social,” “friendly” and “community” with blacks than with whites. So when I took the IAT, this unconscious bias toward blacks, of which I was unaware, came out. Sorry my white brothers and sisters… I encourage you to take the test yourself. You might be surprised!

Here are the actual results of my IAT: 

IAT Results

The complete COR-system in action, my own experiences and life serving to demonstrate.