Today is May 26 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “When you want to think differently, are you merely rearranging your prejudices?”
Back in 1998, researchers Anthony Greenwald, Debbie McGhee, and Jordan Schwartz introduced something called the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
The IAT measures the milliseconds that it takes to connect pairs of ideas. The test is based on the concept that you will be faster putting together ideas you already associate with one another. So for example, if you automatically associate female with family and male with career, then you’ll be fast placing nouns that relate to female/family or male/career in the columns. But if the columns are titled male/family and female/career and those are not the associations of your unconscious mind, it will take an extra millisecond or two to sort the nouns properly.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote about IAT in his book Blink. He took one on race and was mortified to find out that his unconscious association with Caucasian-European was “good” and his association with African American was “bad”—even though Gladwell himself half-black!
In an interview later he said that experience has taught him to disregard his first impressions of people and to take time to know them before passing any judgement. We all have these associations, many of them unconscious. You can work with the unconscious to unearth these associations and align them more closely to your values and goals.
When you do, you tap all the power the unconscious has to offer. But even before you engage the unconscious as a productive partner, you can start living a life that is more responsive and less reactive simply by paying attention and noticing when what you do or say feels off-center.
Being dedicated to truly thinking differently requires a great deal of intentional effort.
William James noted “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
When you want to think differently, are you merely rearranging your prejudices?