The Hidden Brain

Our unconscious biases.

A Parking Meter Puzzle

An interesting new study has just come out in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Amy Hendren and Hartmut Blank set up a field experiment where they had a person wearing a t-shirt approach strangers and ask for 10 pence to feed a parking meter. In all, 240 strangers were approached. Read More

I have been discriminated against in the Seattle housing

market for the last 3 weeks. I applied to about 50 places and although almost all charged me for the application, only about half told me the outcome of my application. So I was charged but not even informed of the outcome of my application by about half of the places I applied.

When a reason was given (not often) it pertained to my debts on my credit report. But when I got a guarantor without any debt problems, the same places did not respond at all.

Several places lied about an "eviction" which was never on my credit report. When I tried to confront them with the false report, they declined to speak with me.

The lawyers in Seattle love criminals since very few have attempted to do anything about this ongoing crime.

My brother lives in Seattle but he is trying to kill me and wants me to be homeless so that I will die sooner rather than later. He pretends he is a relative man but he hates his sister and is trying to kill her.

I have been discriminated against in the Seattle housing

market for the last 3 weeks. I applied to about 50 places and although almost all charged me for the application, only about half told me the outcome of my application. So I was charged but not even informed of the outcome of my application by about half of the places I applied.

When a reason was given (not often) it pertained to my debts on my credit report. But when I got a guarantor without any debt problems, the same places did not respond at all.

Several places lied about an "eviction" which was never on my credit report. When I tried to confront them with the false report, they declined to speak with me.

The lawyers in Seattle love criminals since very few have attempted to do anything about this ongoing crime.

My brother lives in Seattle but he is trying to kill me and wants me to be homeless so that I will die sooner rather than later. He pretends he is a relative man but he hates his sister and is trying to kill her.

Dude

Time to get back on your meds. No one is trying to kill you.

I believe in you.

Parking Meter Puzzle

We all discriminate all the time with each other. That is human nature. Sex, race, weight, height, clothes, tribe, smell, hair, expression, social status, educational standing, food we eat, etc....

There is always something that pushes our trigger. What we do with it is something else.

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Shankar Vedantam is a science reporter with National Public Radio and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University.

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