This week I would like to explore a particularly interesting, yet controversial, social psychological study. In 2001, Dr. Keith Payne, a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, conducted a study focussed on people’s automatic thinking.

Automatic thinking is considered non-conscious, involuntary, unintentional, and cognitively effortless. This is the type of cognition that occurs at the biological level when your heart continues to beat and your lungs continue to expand without being constantly reminded to do so.

But automatic thinking also appears when you walk down the street each day, passing by a plethora of people. Would you believe me if told you that even if it feels as though they were in your range of vision for a fraction of a second, you did, in fact, form a judgment about those people? Well, you should….because it’s true.

So, how does this topic of automatic thinking relate to social psychology? Isn’t social psychology is rooted in the situation, the way behavior is affected by certain environments? How do split-second judgments relate to social influence?

In Dr. Payne’s study, he identified racial bias as a form of involuntary, non-conscious, automatic thinking. The effects of racial bias on the social situation are extremely significant. Our perception of every social situation is governed by elements of automatic thinking such as racial bias. Therefore, social psychology and automatic thinking mesh harmoniously, they go hand in hand.

The 2001 study, entitled Weapon Bias, was not incredibly complex but produced groundbreaking results. Payne invited white participants to sit before a screen. These participants would first be shown a photo of a white face or black face; the faces would vary each time. Then directly after the face, a photo of a weapon (ex: a gun, a knife) or a tool (ex: a hammer, a screwdriver) was shown. The participants were asked to ignore the face that was revealed initially and to simply focus on distinguishing between a weapon or tool in the second photo.

The task seems easy enough, right? How hard could it be to identify a weapon or tool? The participants were only given a fraction of a second to see both pictures. The visual flashes were almost instantaneous. Such a minuscule time period was offered, because Payne intended to ensure that only automatic thinking capabilities were activated. Participants could only make snap judgments about what they saw.

Unfortunately, the color of the face shown did affect the participants’ ability to distinguish between a weapon and a tool. All participants made mistakes, whether they were offered a white or black face, proving that automatic judgments are often incorrect. But participants were more likely to make these mistakes after seeing a black face. Following the visual of a black face, participants were more inclined to classify the next image as a weapon.

Remember that these attributions were entirely involuntary and non-conscious. The participants did not actively choose to display racist tendencies; their actions were due to inherent automatic thinking.

While these results are far from flattering, almost disgusting, they were recorded from a valid scientific study. Social psychologists, and psychologists in general, aim to illuminate the faults in human thinking in order to better society. Accepting that racial bias is real and scientifically proven is the first step in improving a culture that is continually plagued by issues of racism and intolerance.