<How Unethical Are You Essay>

20111057 Jinhyuk Yun

Before I mention about what I felt about this article, I would want to discuss how the behavior of implicit prejudices is developed. When I was young, my parents always stressed the fact that the students who study hard and get good grades grow to be great people; whatever the cases are (being rich, famous, and honorable, etc.) Moreover, most of the television programs showed us good-looking boys, attractive ladies, and well-shaped men. Friends have tended to be nicer to those who are handsome, smart, athletic, or rich. The factors listed above can be categorized in an ENVIRONMENT which has been manipulating us to be biased, explicitly or implicitly. After I read articles, I found out that what articles were all about was quite a shock. I know myself to prefer young to old, rich to poor, and slim to fat; however, I believe myself to behave fairly to everyone. Nevertheless, as I proceeded to read the article, I was wrong. I have tried hard to talk to beautiful girls and ignore not that beautiful ones in a meeting. When an old man approached to me and asked the way, I just said, I have no idea despite I knew the place well. This kind of happenings is taking place every day even though I dont believe them to be biased, and I treat myself to be very ethical and an egalitarian. How fool! Harvard University, thus, devised a test which can let others know how implicitly biased one is. The mechanism is like this; the tested first match a picture of either fat or slender people with the words, obese or slim. Then they are instructed to press a certain key which matches words which give either positive or negative feeling. Then put the pictures and the words together. The tester measures how much time it takes for the tested to match. I tried the IAT (Implicit Association Test) to see how implicitly biased I am. I chose the topic, Obese one. Because the test is made in U.S.A. the standard of being fat and slim is quite different from that of Korea. Thus, I made a number of mistakes. When obese and negative words are categorized together, I could feel I press the keys faster than when obese and positive words are categorized together. Its like subconscious reactions. After the test, I got the result. The results are somewhat, strong, not really have preferences toward slim people, and mine was strong. This is not surprising, for I put much value on body shapes of people. Working out, at least for my case, is a tool to measure how hard one tries

to manage himself or herself. Being fat automatically makes me imagine eating pizzas and hamburgers and watching TV on the sofa.

<My result>

However, being fat does not mean a person is lazy or a loser. For a student, he has no time working out because he studies and studies for most of time. For a worker in a company, he should keep sitting on the chair for at least eight hours per day. They are doing well on their jobs, but they have little time which can be spared for working out. I understand that. I am a rational guy. However, if something is happening without conscious mind, there is nothing I can do to get over it. Without the ethical reasons considered, implicit biases cause several problems in our society. If my race belonged to African American, and I was very capable, I would have higher probabilities to be rejected then White people. This not only causes inequality in the society but also originates tensions between races. Also, the total profit for the whole decreases, for capable men is excluded. The article provided me with some advices to get over the implicit biases. First, get as many data as possible. As more and more data are collected, its less likely to be implicitly biased. Data make us think objectively, which is helpful to reduce the implicit biases. Secondly its good to form the environment. Its surprising that the person who belongs to the implicitly discriminated indeed stands where he or she is not expected to; then biases around him or her decrease. For example if a black person has the profession, teacher, the students who learn from him have lower implicit biases toward black people. Finally its desirable to broaden our decision making. Know thyself Socrates might have been known about the implicit biases. Putting effort on recognizing himself or herself actually decreases the level of implicit biases. Moreover, considering many possibilities wake up the sense of objectivities too.