Professional Development

With

UW-Eau Claire and the Eau Claire Area School

District

The Power of the Subconscious Mind: How

people can inadvertently alter outcomes
for other people
June 16, 2009
Aram deKoven
UW-Eau Claire

Objectives:
To reveal that racism is alive and well in the

United States today

To demonstrate that the subconscious is a
powerful cognitive force
To show how subconsciously held biases
can effect how you treat others
To explain how the effects of subconscious
biases can change outcomes for others

FBI Data on hate crimes in

the U.S.
Incidents

Fewer hate crimes now since the 50, 60,

and 70s but

2005..7,163
2006..7,722
2007..7,624

*The FBI numbers only reflect reported acts

of violence and aggression

Southern Poverty Law Center

The Southern Poverty Law Center has

documented 926 hate groups operating in

our country a more than 50% increase
since 2000.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/in

trep.jsp
Impossible to accurately record the
number of hate crimes Mark Potock, SPLC

The reporting of hate crimes in

the media
Only the most egregious of hate crimes get

reported
Many dont even make headlines
Leaving the public, especially white
members of the public to believe that hate
crimes are down or done with altogether
The election of President Obama

Subconscio
us Acts of
Racism
Conscious
Acts of
Racism

What is consciousness?
Consciousness is a quality of the mind

generally regarded to comprise qualities

such as subjectivity, self-awareness,
sentience, and the ability to perceive the
relationship between oneself and one's
environment.

Control
When the thought is subconscious then you

cant modify or control for its effects

Once it becomes conscious then you can

work with it (if you want to)

If you can talk, write, or think about it

then it is conscious

What do you see here?

What do you see here?

Psychological tactic called:

Priming
Five words sets: Make a grammatical

sentence out of each: Scrambled sentence

test.
him was chocolate she always
from are Florida oranges temperature
ball the throw time bread
Wendys give replace old the
he observes occasionally ice cream

Priming
Students thought they came to take a

simple word test

In fact they were tricked and primed to
feel what?
a) Old
b) Sleepy
c) Hungry
d) Pretty

John Barge Experiment

Priming
Two groups of undergraduates used as

subjects
All received scrambled sentence tests
Two groups with words mixed in like:
A) Rude, impatient, interrupt, aggressive, bother
B) Respect, considerate, yield, polite, courteous

John Barge Experiment

After subjects took the word puzzle they

where then told to talk to someone else

in another office down the hall to get
the next steps in the study
In all cases, that someone else that
subjects were to talk with was always
busy talking to someone else
A confederate (an actor) recorded how
subjects in each of the two groups
behaved while waiting to speak to the
person they had to speak with
What do you think they found?

What do you think?

How did subjects act while waiting to speak

to the person they were told to speak

with
Group
A) Primed with: Rude, impatient, interrupt,

aggressive, bother
B) Primed with: Respect, considerate yield,
polite, courteous

Results
+Primed with rude words:
interrupted on average before 5 minutes

+Primed with polite words:

82% never interrupted at all (experiments
ended after ten minutes)

How Powerful Is Our Subconscious Mind?

I can make you less likely to fight by

changing the color of the walls

I can make you more productive at work by
changing the brightness of the lights
I can make you spend more money by
playing certain music
I can guess who you will hire for a job
based on the name of the applicant

Let us make a connection

You now know that subtle and

subconscious messages are able to affect

your thinking and behavior (these effects
can be seen in very short periods of time)
Now think about what the cumulative effect
is for feeling, seeing, and hearing
messages about a group of people

Where in society do these implicit and

explicit messages come from?

Hidden Racism
Yeah I just found out the Cleopatra was

actually a Black woman.

What?
That cant be true, Cleopatra was beautiful!
(p124)

85-90% of the white population say that they

are not racially biased but Dovidio and

Gaertner are concerned that they may be
acting in another way, a way that is not
supportive of diversity. (page 133)

More evidence for the fact that what we say

doesnt always translate into what we do!

Dating..
On popular dating sites like match.com about

50% of white women and 80% of white men

state that race is not important
However, 90% of these men sent e-mails only
to white females and of the white females
97% sent e-mail only to white men
o

S.D. Leveitt and S. J. Dubner

Are environmental and social

factors a kind of priming?
Yes!
The mind silently crunches all the data we

take in from all the books, the TV shows,

music we hear, people we meet, lessons
we have learned, movies we have seen,
and from the places that we have been
and this information is used to form an
opinion or a feeling.

From these sources we learn about the

people of this world and about ourselves.

In some cases we do not know that these

opinions even exist in our minds, and in

some cases we do not know how they play
out in the way we act toward others.

Now Lets Connect All the Parts.

Do all people have subconscious thoughts?
Yes
Are these thoughts powerful enough to change

your behaviors?
Yes ( Especially so when pressed for timethe
brain automatically reverts to the subconscious
when stressed or pressed for time)
Subconscious biases can impact the way one
treats people, without even knowing it
Social and environmental factors can act as a
sort of priming that send people messages
about who they are and how much they are
valued by society

Why do teachers especially need

to be in contact with their
subconscious?
Education holds (some of) the keys to

breaking free from poverty and oppression..

The Good Life

Teachers are one of the first gate keepers

Teachers can inadvertently suppress the

creativity, productivity, and intellect of a

student

How can they do that?

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

Study Done By: Jacobson and Rosenthal
Harvard Acquisition of Knowledge
Teachers told who did well and who did not
Results were bogus, actually subjects were

randomly assigned a group

Actual test at the end of the year produced
significant and real differences in actual
learning

What did the researchers

observe?
Teachers held higher expectations and

demanded more of students who they thought

were smarter
Teachers treated students differently who
they thought were smarter
Climate: warm and supportive
Input: taught more material
Response: given more air-time in class
Feedback: more detailed feedback

If a teachers first impressions are positive,

then this will help the student succeed.
However, if the teacher has negative first
impressions then the student will suffer.
If teachers treatment of the student is consistent over time,

then the students behavior will reflect the teachers

expectations

Teachers form first impressions of students almost

immediately, causing some students to start at an

advantage over other students.

Gender
Race
Dialects
Body build
Physical attractiveness
Beauty
Socio economic status
Language skills

It is simply not enough to say that

we are not racist, we need to be
actively anti racist.
B. Tatum

The hints of unchecked prejudice and

racism can be seen in much more subtle

acts like:
Posture
eye contact
laughter
Hesitation
fidgeting
Silence and/or wait time
Arms crossed

This in turn effects the person you are

communicating with and they then feel

uncomfortable or undervaluedand they may
then treat you differentlyand cycle continues.

What can you do?

Acknowledge the power of the

subconscious
Acknowledge that it is difficult to be in
touch fully with your subconscious
Admit that people have biases
Seek to be color conscious not color
blind
Try to know your biases
With others or on your own seek to
understand where these hidden biases
originated

..more you can do

Remember, once you know you are being

primed it doesn't work anymore

Meet, work with, play with, and get to know
people from a wide variety of backgrounds
Be reflective and contemplative
Turn off the emotional and intellectual
autopilot

Questions