This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
I was on Facebook the other day when a friend request came in.
I don't have a great memory for faces and names, so I found myself trying to figure out if I had met this person somewhere.
But then at the back of my mind, I remembered a study.
It said my friendship choices on Facebook might be shaped by biases outside of my conscious awareness in my hidden brain.
Michelle Hebel is a psychologist at Rice University who ran the Facebook study.
She designed fictitious profiles for two men and two women.
Both men were named Michael Davis.
Both women were Jennifer Davis.
All the characters were african american.
The only real difference between the profiles were the photos.
One photoshopped version of Michael Davis and Jennifer Davis had lighter skin.
The other had darker skin.
Mickey Hebel sent out friend requests on Facebook on behalf of these fictitious characters to more than 1000 people in a big american city.
Since these were invented characters, most of the requests were declined.
But there was a big disparity in how often whites accepted friend requests from the darker skinned Michaels and Jennifers.
People were less likely to friend them.
They were less likely particularly to friend the dark black males.
If you follow these kinds of experiments, this finding is disappointing but not surprising.