Movies Prove we Subconsciously Judge
Orange County, CA - April 26th, 2019 - Unconscious bias is a social stereotype about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their conscious awareness. It is defined as prejudice against one thing, person, or group as compared to another, in a way that is usually considered unjust. Researchers suggest that unconscious bias automatically occurs as the brain makes fast judgments based on past experiences and background.
A new study from researchers at Aalto University shows that not only does the brain unconsciously biased towards people based on what we know about the person, and on their appearance. Study author Mamdooh Afdile created a 20-minute stimulus from the film Priest. The film analyzed two groups which covered males who were heterosexual and homosexual.
“If knowledge gained from our social environment can implicitly bias how we perceive each other, this should hold true to characters in movies as well,” mentions Afdile.
The movie starts by giving the viewer the impression that the priest is heterosexual and in love with a woman. However, halfway through, the viewer discovers the priest is in love with a man. Afdile repeatedly showed the priest for a short 40 milliseconds before and after the film. Regardless if the viewer couldn’t recognize there was a face, or recognize who it was, their subconscious brain responded to the face based on whether or not they had become biased. An MRI showed how individuals biases could change with new information.
“This study shows the brain can be biased based on learned knowledge and not only by external factors,”Afdile explains.
“By combining movies with subliminal measurement, we can now investigate the subconscious brain in ways that were extremely difficult before.”
The response to the priest’s face at the end of the movie, versus the response to the face before, differed significantly between the two groups. The results from the homosexual group showed an extreme ‘in-group’ response in empathy and favoritism, while the results from the heterosexual group showed a very mild negative bias response.
The findings of this study appear in the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience peer-reviewed journal.
