Analysis Of Blindspot: Hidden Biases Of Good People

“True, we have evolved to be social animals with both positive and negative traits, demonstrating strong tendencies for cooperation and altruism as well as conflict and violence” (Banaji and Greenwald 124). This quote is derived from Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, and gives insight to the larger meaning of the text. There are many lessons that one can take from this book including that humans live in a world full of mindbugs, which can be described as “ingrained habits of thought that lead to errors in how we perceive, remember, reason, and make decisions” (Banaji and Greenwald 4). One can also learn that we live in a world of categories, and these categories create ingroups and outgroups. Going even further, these ingroups and outgroups create stereotyping between opposing groups. By the end of the book each reader should be able to suggest how we come to know ourselves and others. All life starts in the womb and continues in the infant stage. During this stage children will start their …show more content…
The moral of the story is, even if you find yourself holding a certain mind bug or bias you can still be considered a good person. In fact “we do not yet know how to go about either eliminating or outsmarting self-directed mind bugs. However, they may prove modifiable by exposure to role models” (Banaji and Greenwald 164). In fact, it would take generations to condition our brains to not hold these stereotypes about others and to stop the judgement. If there is one lesson to be learned from this book it is that yes, we will hold biases about others that may or may not be true. But the way that we deal with them internally says a lot about the type of person we are, and the type of people we would want to associate