Today, society preaches to condemn bias and judgment, yet in Gladwell's paper, he proves that everybody has a subconscious bias. What was most interesting in this chapter, was how Gladwell was able to prove his point of unconscious bias by performing simple test throughout his essay. With simple name recognition, he was able to prove how gender has been taught to us with the fast paced test provoking the taker to have to thing as stereotypes become less vague and seemingly contradicting. I personally feel that I am apart of this bias, but these actions are not what they should be. Gladwell hopes to help realize this so that we can be aware and choose leaders appropriately and not solely based on appearance.
Leader's ideally reflect what the majority of the people want to resemble their ideals. Beyond ideals, they hold the weight of what others by themselves cannot. I feel that personal appearance is strongly correlated to our choice of leader. People was a whole tend to lean toward leaders who hold a physical appearance of what is the social ideal of popular. Gladwell tied the election of Harding into senate to his strong 'roman' physical characteristic, which made people feel like he was a leader. However, instead of choosing leaders by their appearance, people should be more aware of their subconscious bias, and choose leaders for their attitudes, ideals, acceptance to criticism, and willingness to help others.
The IAT test proved that I was indeed bias much like Gladwell proved in his essay. The race test attempted to show that one was either biased towards whites or blacks. I feel that this test accurately proved his point. While it is the social stigma not to judge a book by its cover, Gladwell and the IAT test proved that subconsciously, I did have a personal bias.
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