Trump and American people force obama to show BC today!

The birth certificate in all its long-form glory has been revealed to a panting public. And so even the most hardcore so-called birther will now acknowledge that Barack Obama is legally entitled to serve as President of the United States, right? Well, not so fast.

In my October 2009 "Antigravity" column ("Birth of A Notion"), http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... f-a-notion I discussed the research of Harvard University psychologist Mahzarin Banaji on "implicit social cognition, http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -prejudice which involves the deep-rooted assumptions we all carry around and even act on without realizing it."

Harvard University psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is a leader in implicit social cognition research. She excavates the hidden beliefs people hold by measuring how fast they make value judgments when shown a rapid-fire succession of stimuli, such as photographs of faces.

At a talk she gave in October 2008 to a group of science journalists, Banaji discussed research she did with Thierry Devos, now at San Diego State University, that examined bias against Asians. They found that volunteers linked white Americans more strongly than Asian-Americans with, well, America. Banaji and Devos then decided to do what even they thought was a “bizarre” study: they had people gauge the “American-ness” of famous Asian-Americans, such as Connie Chung and tennis player Michael Chang, versus European whites, such as Hugh Grant.

The study found that white Europeans are more “American” than are nonwhite Americans in most minds. That result helps to explain how MSNBC’s Web site in 1998 could have run the remarkable headline “American Beats Out Kwan” with a story on how Tara Lipinski defeated fellow American Michelle Kwan in a figure skating competition.

Even in people with genuinely egalitarian views, Banaji and her colleagues find that bias is ordinary and ingrained and remains active outside our awareness. When the team realized the power of unconscious attitudes in everyday decision making, she says, "we knew the right thing was to take this to the public." On an IAT Web site (implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/), users can try 14 measures--to find out whether they automatically favor young over old, for instance, or prefer thin to overweight. Ten new sections include country-specific IATs, such as Muslim-Hindu and Pakistan-India associations.

At least two million people have tried the tests online so far, and many have offered suggestions.As a research tool, the IAT has fed close to 300 papers in fields ranging from neuroscience to marketing. It has also fueled academic challenge and debate, with a few social psychologists accusing the team of liberal bias and overinterpretation of the results. Some critics insist that the test does not really measure unconscious prejudice, only harmless cultural knowledge that differs from true racism. Psychologists argue over the underlying cognitive mechanism. One project found that some people will show bias just because they fear they will.

After finishing a meta-analysis across 61 studies, however, Greenwald and Banaji decided that the validity of the IAT holds. Fortunately, our brains do not seem permanently stuck on bias. Powerful cultural signals push in one direction, but awareness, close relationships and experience can push back. By weaving awareness into our day, Banaji states, we can help our conscious attitudes take charge.