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Malcolm Gladwell Bias

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After the devastating and nation-shocking murder of the beloved Martin Luther King Jr., a new generation of determined activists came into light. Jane Elliot, an American third-grade teacher, won the National Mental Health Association Award for her research on the effect of outside influences on the human mind. Her research, found on http://www.janeelliott.com, was named “The Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes Exercise.” In this exercise, she told her impressionable students that those with blue eyes were superior to those with brown eyes. She gave the students with blue eyes the characteristics of being more intelligent. Even though she did not treat her blue or brown eyed students any differently, the blue-eyed students began to thrive while her brown …show more content…
Biases on these topics are always affecting the way we make a choice. For example, the impact of biases on decision making is analyzed and evaluated throughout the book Blink, written by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell explains to his readers that biases on gender or race are always affecting the way we act. He states that, ”if you have a strongly pro-white pattern of associations, for example, there is evidence that that will affect the way you behave in the presence of a black person” (Gladwell). Despite what we believe and the morals that we associate with ourselves, we are always acting in a racist and sexist manner. Gladwell’s theory that biases are controlling the way we act and think is extremely relevant because it contributes to the multitude of other pieces of evidence, in relation to the biases in life and how they affect everyone. Everyone is affected by these biases; even people with strong incentives to act and make decisions against them. For example in “Professors are Prejudiced, Too”, authors Dolly Chugh, Katherine L. Milkman and Modupe Akinola examine the biases that are seen within the classrooms of “trained” professors. They discover that

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