Incognito by David Eagleman

say?”
    But if someone is unwilling to
say
something, are there ways ofprobing what is in the unconscious brain? Are there ways to ferret out subterranean beliefs by observing someone’s behavior?
    Imagine that you sit down in front of two buttons, and you’re asked to hit the right button whenever a positive word flashes on the screen (
joy
,
love
,
happy
, and so on), and the left button whenever you see a negative word (
terrible
,
nasty
,
failure
). Pretty straightforward. Now the task changes a bit: hit the right button whenever you see a photo of an overweight person, and the left button whenever you see a photo of a thin person. Again, pretty easy. But for the next task, things are paired up: you’re asked to hit the right button when you see either a positive word
or
an overweight person, and the left button whenever you see a negative word
or
a thin person. In another group of trials, you do the same thing but with the pairings switched—so you now press the right button for a negative word
or
a thin person.
    The results can be troubling. The reaction times of subjects are faster when the pairings have a strong association unconsciously. 8 For example, if overweight people are linked with a negative association in the subject’s unconscious, then the subject reacts faster to a photo of an overweight person when the response is linked to the same button as a negative word. During trials in which the opposite concepts are linked (thin with bad), subjects will take a longer time to respond, presumably because the pairing is more difficult. This experiment has been modified to measure implicit attitudes toward races, religions, homosexuality, skin tone, age, disabilities, and presidential candidates. 9
    Another method for teasing out implicit biases simply measures the way a participant moves a computer cursor. 10 Imagine that you start with your cursor positioned at the bottom of the screen, and in the upper corners of the screen you have buttons labeled “like” and “dislike”. Then a word appears in the middle (say, the name of a religion), and you are instructed to move the mouse as quickly as you can to your answer about whether you like or dislike people of that creed. What you don’t realize is that theexact
trajectory
of your mouse movement is being recorded—every position at every moment. By analyzing the path your mouse traveled, researchers can detect whether your motor system started moving toward one button before other cognitive systems kicked into gear and drove it toward the other response. So, for example, even if you answered “like” for a particular religion, it may be that your trajectory drifted slightly toward the “dislike” button before it got back on track for the more socially appropriate response.
    Even people with certainty about their attitudes toward different races, genders, and religions can find themselves surprised—and appalled—by what’s lurking in their brains. And like other forms of implicit association, these biases are impenetrable to consciousintrospection. *
HOW DO I LOVE THEE? LET ME COUNT THE
J
’S
     
    Let’s consider what happens when two people fall in love. Common sense tells us that their ardor grows from any number of seeds, including life circumstances, a sense of understanding, sexual attraction, and mutual admiration. Surely the covert machinery of the unconscious is not implicated in who you choose as a mate. Or isn’t it?
    Imagine you run into your friend Joel, and he tells you that he has found the love of his life, a woman named Jenny. That’s funny, you consider, because your friend Alex just married Amy, and Donny is crazy for Daisy. Is there something going on withthese letter pairings? Is like attracted to like? That’s crazy, you conclude: important life decisions—such as who to spend your life with—can’t be influenced by something as capricious as the first letter of a name. Perhaps all these alliterative alliances are just