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Article: “Built In Bias”
Article-Author: "Brooke Gladstone
Magazine: Muse
Issue: April 2012

This article is about psychology and our decisions and personalities.

It starts out with the butterflies. It’s not the brain sending messages to your gut that you’re nervous and that you should now feel all fluffy, but actually the other way around.

For instance, warmth makes us feel good. (Which is probably where the whole chicken-soup thing comes from.) Researchers did a study where they pretended to be fumbling with a whole pile of stuff in their hands and then handed a cup of hot or iced coffee to people. They then described an unknown person based on a packet of information and asked the person holding the cup what that person’s personality may be like. The test subjects holding a hot cup of coffee rated the person noticeably higher for “warmth” than those with iced coffee. In another study, test subjects holding a hot therapeutic pad chose more gifts for a friend, while those with a cold pad chose gifts for themselves.

There are many other examples such as these that showed that we are unconsciously biased under certain atmospheres, and even under certain appearances such as gender and weight. Also, scientists did a study where they could predict people’s decisions up to seven seconds before the test subject was aware of making them. It seems our choices are already made and can’t really be hindered much in a short period of time. They even say that if we’re predisposed to believe myths, we actively block out any contradictory information.

This all adds up to whether we really make our own choices or not, and when we truly make our own decision, without any outside influence. Do we ever? And if not, what happens to the justice and ‘fairness’ of the world? Are we grumpy in the winter and happy in the summer? Will people at a social disadvantage always stay that way? And how can we fix it?

I also have another question that I know will not be answered any time too soon, but—the article generally implies that warmth=happy, positive-ness and cold=selfish, unfriendly. Not to the degree that when we’re cold, we hate the world and everything in existence, but to a noticeably greater degree than those with something that is warm. Which leads to my question—then what about hot? Why are we prone to be grumpy when we’re outside on a super-hot humid day? What makes us cheerful when we’re outside in the winter?

This almost ties up with a book I read recently, called The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci. In the book, a character says that everyone has a line of reality, and if you cross it, they just won’t listen (or something like that). It kind of makes sense, now, because we don’t hear things we don’t want to hear. In other words, we block out the truth when it hurts most.