DOLLY CHUGH: Super grateful
to be here, and to Lakshmi
and Robin and Liz
and the whole team
for putting on yet another
amazing, rich, nuanced,
interdisciplinary,
interpractice gathering.
This is really wonderful.
I would love to
just start us off
with a quick two minute video.
If you've seen it before,
watch your friends.
If you haven't, watch the video.
Here we go.
RICHARD WISEMAN: I'm
Richard, this is Sarah.
And we're going to
preform the amazing color
changing card trick with this
blue backed deck of cards.
Now the idea is very simple.
I'm just going to spread
the cards in front of Sarah,
and ask her to push any
card towards the camera.
SARAH: All right.
OK, let's see.
I'm going to go
for this card here.
RICHARD WISEMAN: OK, now Sarah
could have selected any card
at all from the deck.
But she selected the card which
is now face down on the table.
And what I'm going
to ask her to do
is show us which
card she selected.
SARAH: All right, so
the card that I chose
was in fact the
three of diamonds.
RICHARD WISEMAN: The
three of diamonds.
OK, an excellent choice.
That card goes
back into the deck.
Now we're just going to spread
the cards face up on the table,
do a little click
of the fingers,
and you'll see that Sarah's card
here has now got a blue back,
not particularly surprising.
What's slightly
more surprising is
all of the other cards
have got red backs.
And that is the amazing
color changing card trick.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi, I'm Richard, this is Sarah.
And we're going to
perform the amazing color
changing card trick with this
blue backed deck of cards.
Now the idea is very simple.
I'm just going to spread
the cards in front of Sarah,
and ask her to push any
card towards the camera.
SARAH: All right.
OK, let's see.
I'm going to go
for this card here.
RICHARD WISEMAN: OK, now Sarah
could have selected any card
at all from the deck.
But she selected the card which
is now face down on the table.
And what I'm going
to ask her to do
is show us which
card she selected.
SARAH: All right, so
the card that I chose
was in fact the
three of diamonds.
RICHARD WISEMAN: The
three of diamonds.
OK, an excellent choice.
That card goes
back into the deck.
Now we're just going to spread
the cards face up on the table,
do a little click
of the fingers,
and you'll see that Sarah's card
here has now got a blue back,
not particularly surprising.
What's slightly
more surprising is
all of the other cards
have got red backs.
And that is the amazing
color changing card trick.
DOLLY CHUGH: If you hadn't
seen the video before,
what just happened?
Who on the first time through
the video saw all four changes?
Three?
Two?
One?
Oh, please somebody join
me in the zero club.
I see zero.
Oh, good.
Oh my god, good, good, good.
Most of us, so what happened?
Why didn't you see the changes?
Were you not paying attention?
Were you on your phone?
Did you tune out?
Were you still thinking
about Kyra's awesome talk?
Because I was.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Editing.
DOLLY CHUGH: Editing, Say more.
AUDIENCE: Well, the tight
shots of the individual hid
what was going on
behind the scenes.
DOLLY CHUGH: Yeah,
some stuff just
seemed to be in the background.
But it was in
front of us, it was
within your field of vision.
I will say that.
[INAUDIBLE]?
AUDIENCE: I was
focusing on the cards.
DOLLY CHUGH: You were
focusing on the cards,
you were doing exactly
what you were asked to do.
You were on task, you
were performing well.
And yet, somehow you, like me,
while performing well missed
something that was literally
right in front of us.
Let's go back to our other deck.
Some of you in the
room are faculty,
some are not, but
let me just give you
a taste of a few things
that could happen.
Perhaps you assign
a reading that you
think is a great classic in the
field, a student emails to say,
sexist.
You use a case about the
NYPD to teach in class,
don't take into account that
it ignores the civil rights
implications of stop and frisk.
A teaching assistant
observes you
calling on men more than women
or interrupting women more
than men.
You assign a syllabus that
seems to have overwhelmingly
white male protagonists.
Assume a student's one race,
only to be corrected by them.
Mispronounce the same student's
name over and over again,
no matter how many
times you're corrected.
Avoid calling on
students whose names you
don't know how to pronounce.
That's fair.
Confuse two black male
students for each other
who look nothing alike--
foot apart in height--
two Indian female students,
two overweight female students.
Somebody makes a racist
comment in class,
and you fumble on the response.
Every one of these
is me, every one.
And I had so many
more, I just can't
make the font much smaller.
But I could have
really kept going.
And so all of these things
were right in front of me, just
like that video.
They were things
I could have seen.
And it wasn't that I wasn't
trying, I was trying.
I was on task, and yet
somehow certain things
that were right in front
of me were escaping me.
Sometimes I wasn't noticing
them in the world around me,
and sometimes I wasn't noticing
them in the world within me.
My colleague and
mentor, Max Bazerman
has written a book,
The Power of noticing.
And that word,
noticing, has really
influenced how I
think about issues
around diversity and inclusion.
That is this the skill that
will actually move us forward
if we just could see the
things right in front of us?
I took my kids to
Disney once, fun times.
And I say that with mixed--
if you've ever taken
your kids to Disney.
And they wanted to do
the animation workshop.
And the way it works is you
wait in this pretty long line,
you get to the
front of the line.
And I thought and
my husband thought
when we got to the
front of the line,
we'd just do one of these.
And the kids would
be safely engaged
in the animation
workshop for 40 minutes,
and we'd catch up on our
emails and that kind of thing.
And we got to the
front of the line,
and there was a place to sit.
And before I knew it--
because this is Disney--
the seat was moving, and a
seat belt was strapping me in.
And I'm like, I'm on a ride.
And I'm in the front
row-- like right
where Kathleen is-- of
the animation workshop.
I'm like, oh, no,
how did this happen?
And this is particularly
problematic,
not just because I needed
a teeny little bit of me
time, but also
because I can't draw--
like at all.
I have 50 years of data
that support this claim.
I cannot draw.
And yet I'm in the
front row, and now I've
got to pretend that I can draw.
Why?
Because what do
we tell our kids?
You're not allowed to say
the word can't, right?
So I've got to fake believe
for the next 40 minutes
that I can learn to draw, that
this is a learnable thing.
And that if I in fact engage
with a little bit of effort,
and a little bit of instruction,
and make mistakes, and then
learn from the
mistakes, then maybe
I could actually do something.
So I'm thinking all I got to
do is convince them of this.
But here's what happened,
I convinced myself.
Unbeknownst to me, I had
just activated a belief
that this was a learnable skill.
And y'all, who is that?
AUDIENCE: Olaf.
DOLLY CHUGH: Olaf
from the movie Frozen.
I drew that.
I drew that.
One drawing class
is all it took.
Do you see the gridlines?
I don't know if you can see
it from where you're sitting,
they're very faint
pencil gridlines.
It turns out that's
the insight, that's
how you learn how to draw.
I didn't know that.
And so Olaf, in
fact, was my moment
of experiencing the power
of Carol Dweck's research
on growth versus fixed mindset.
So many of us are
admirers of this work.
There may be people
in the room who
are contributors of this work.
And what Carol
Dweck reminds us of
is that we have beliefs
about different domains,
different skills, and
different abilities.
And we have a
portfolio of mindsets.
Sometimes we on a particular
belief-- in my case drawing--
have a belief that
there's no room
for being a work in progress.
And when we have that belief--
because we either think
we're really bad at something
or maybe we think we're really
good at it--
we don't see the
value in mistakes.
We don't see the value
in effort or coaching.
And in a growth
mindset, of course,
we have a different perspective.
We view the particular
skill as something
that could be advanced
with effort, regardless
of where we're starting-- up
high, or down low, or somewhere
in the middle.
And our brain activity
actually goes up
when a mistake happens because
we actively notice it and then
start trying to figure
out what happened.
We may not be happy
about the mistake,
but we're not going to quit.
Some of the responses in a
fixed mindset are that we quit,
we cheat, we blame someone
else for the mistake,
or we deny that there
even was a mistake.
Those are common reactions in
a fixed mindset to a mistake.
In a growth mindset, we have
a different perspective.
And in my moment of fake
activating a growth mindset
for the sake of my
children, I somehow
actually fooled my own
mind into believing
this was a learnable skill,
and in fact did learn.
And it got me thinking
about all this work
we're doing in diversity and
inclusion and gender and race
and bias and inclusion--
I've said that--
all of them, bias--
I said that one too--
all of them, equity.
Is there room for a growth
mindset in this work?
Is this a place where
we might actually
be able to push forward
on the threads of our last
two days about self-awareness,
and vulnerability,
and starting here,
and moral courage,
and all the work
that we're beginning
to really push ourselves on,
not just the world around us.
And that makes sense
based off of the research
on unconscious bias.
I know we have a wide variety
of experience in the room.
Some folks are deeply
entrenched in the work
on unconscious bias, some
folks might be new to it.
So let's do a quick little
brief reminder of what it is
and how it operates within a
mind that we'd like to think
is more deliberate
than it often is.
So quick exercise.
What we're going to
do here-- and I'm
going to use my pointer.
What we're going to do, if
you're able to perceive color,
we're going to say
the colors out loud.
So this is green, red,
purple, like that.
And we're all going to
do it out loud together.
On this side, if you're going,
we're going to go like that.
All right, so on three.
1, 2, 3.
Green, red, purple.
AUDIENCE: Green, blue, blue,
yellow, blue, red, purple,
green, yellow, red,
purple, yellow.
DOLLY CHUGH:
Awesome, keep going.
AUDIENCE: Green, red,
purple, green, blue, blue,
[INAUDIBLE] red--
DOLLY CHUGH: Oh,
look at you guys.
Oh, look at you guys.
HBS Gender Initiative does
not quit, to and and through.
I love it.
What happened on
the second slide?
KATHLEEN: It's two processes
going on at the same time.
DOLLY CHUGH: Kathleen says there
were two processes going on
at the same time,
that, in fact, we
had a mental collision
between two processes.
And let's be clear, they
were automatic processes.
What do we mean by automatic?
Something that's happening
within milliseconds,
something that's effortless.
Specifically, if you're
able to perceive color,
you perceive color
with no effort.
You don't have to tell
your brain it's time
to go decide what color that is.
You simply know as
soon as you see it--
like that.
If you're able to read,
the same thing happens.
When you see symbols
on the screen,
you somehow infer meaning
from them within milliseconds.
We're talking 200 or 400 or 600
milliseconds, under one second.
And what happened with those
two mental processes colliding--
in what's called the Stroop
task by cognitive psychologist
Stroop--
what we experience is how
those automatic processes
happen quickly, effortlessly,
outside of our awareness.
And if we pit two against
each other, chaos.
And that moment is a
wonderful illustration
of one estimate of how the human
mind is working at all times.
That in that time I just
took to snap my fingers,
11 million thoughts
are sitting in my mind.
Some of you are like, it's
actually more than 11 million,
you have no idea what's
going on in my life.
Right, exactly.
And others might be
like, really, 11 million
seems like a lot.
And yet, look at
everything you're
able to perceive in
the room around you--
just even the colors in the
room, the shapes, the fact
that you know what
I'm saying, that you
know to face this way and not
that way, to sit, not lie down.
There's a gazillion--
I know, stay with me.
There's a break coming.
But 11 million,
but only 40 of them
are sitting within our
conscious awareness.
Those of us who are familiar
with system one versus system
two thinking, system one
fast and effortless--
11 million, autopilot-- system
two slower, more deliberate,
we can see those thoughts--
40.
That means that
99.99997% of our thoughts
are happening outside
of our awareness.
And if that's true, what are
the implications for noticing
something that is normally
outside of our awareness
and then somehow comes
within awareness?
How might a growth mindset
allow us to notice more?
Many of us know the work of Herb
Simon on bounded rationality,
on Kahneman and Tversky
on heuristics and biases,
on Richard Thaler on nudges.
These three Nobel prizes
in the last 50 years
were essentially hinging on this
insight about the automaticity
of our mental processes.
And it leads us to this
sometimes painful noticing
moment where, "It ain't so
much the things that we don't
know that get us into trouble.
It's the things we know,
that just ain't so."
It's the systems we
believe are fair--
that we are the winners in--
that just aren't fair.
It's the moments
when we're sure we're
inclusive in our interactions
with the people around us,
and then they tell us we're not.
It's those moments.
There's so many advances
within social psychology
that have taken us away from
a simple survey, a Likert
scale, that does nothing
more than measure the 40,
and even that in a way that
may not be completely reliable.
It moves us towards
measuring the 11 million.
The IAT, many people
in the room may
be familiar or have taken it.
For those who
aren't, you can visit
implicit.harvard.edu, a research
website, participate completely
anonymously.
And after 10 minutes
of playing a little
what feels like a video
game of reacting quickly,
again millisecond
level responses,
you can get a score
that represents
at that moment at
that time on that day
what your implicit bias
might be on whatever topic
you chose to explore.
And what we know about
implicit bias so far
is that these
mental associations
that occur under conditions
of automaticity so fast.
If I say peanut
butter, you say--
AUDIENCE: Jelly.
DOLLY CHUGH: See how
fast you did that?
And for folks who aren't
from the US or aren't
from a community where
peanut butter jelly
is a thing, that may have just
been like, why'd they just say
that?
Peanut butter jelly is
a learned association,
it's one that was shaped by the
cultural influences around you.
The fact that we have
11 million, 40, that's
the architecture of our brain.
That's how the brain works.
But the fact that the
actual associations
within that 11
million might happen
to be peanut butter
jelly, that's learned.
That's a learned
association from what?
I'm going to also shout
out Dr. Beverly Daniel
Tatum for her work,
which she calls smog.
The stuff we've breathed in
since the moment we were born
without even realizing it,
everything we've seen, heard,
been told, consumed watched,
listened to, observed
in the world around us.
And the thing with smog
is that sometimes we
know we're breathing it in,
and often we have no idea.
That smog she says can
be completely invisible,
leaving us to not
realize the moment
we learned peanut butter jelly.
None of us remember that
moment, that precise moment
where that became a
thing in our brain,
where I couldn't even separate
peanut butter and jelly.
And what the IAT does then is
offer us one potential moment--
a moment of education,
a moment of awareness.
Not the deep learning work
that Kyra was describing,
but an entry point
into it, of not
what our explicit beliefs are,
but perhaps part of who we are.
Perhaps not necessarily
the person we want to be,
but perhaps part of the
person we are in that moment.
Developmental
social psychologists
say that by the
age of five or six
we look like the adults in
our community and culture
on those questions
of implicit bias.
And that, in fact, what we see--
what Masri and Banaji calls the
thumb print of our culture--
reflected in the
aggregate IAT data
that, in fact, men
are more associated
with math and
leadership and career,
that blacks are
associated with things
that are bad, with danger,
with lack of intelligence.
And that these associations,
these peanut butter jellies,
reflect not something
we necessarily
believe, but something that we
don't remember how we learned
or why, where that
smog came from,
and how we internalized it.
I don't know if everyone
can read that caption.
What it says is, "Daddy works
in a magical, faraway land
called academia."
My co-authors, Katie Milkman and
Modupe Akinola, all three of us
were PhD students together.
We were interested in whether
that magical, faraway land
of academia might be a place
where implicit bias was also
playing a role.
We ran a field experiment or an
audit study, or as some people
like to call it,
a sting operation.
What we did was we constructed
email addresses that reflected
names of different identities.
We used a gender binary--
male, female-- and
then we said, white,
Hispanic, black,
Chinese, Indian.
So that was five.
Five times two, 10.
I've got 10 identities now,
multiple names per identities.
And each of these fictional
students emailed one professor.
We randomly selected
one professor
from every PhD granting
department in the United States
in every discipline using the
US News and World Report list.
And they received
an email saying,
I'm really interested in your
research and your PhD program--
a lot of us get these cold
call emails from people
we don't know--
and would you be willing to
meet with me and talk more.
Notice because this
is a field experiment,
our faculty do not know
they're in a study.
This looks like a real
email from a real person
in their inbox.
Everything went
through the IRB--
very carefully, very carefully.
And what we found was our white
male students, 87% of them
received a response back.
62% of our non-white
male students
received a response back.
I don't have an IAT score or
any implicit bias measure.
But I think based on what
we know about the data
and from other studies and
about our colleagues, is
it's doubtful this was a
fully intentional act of bias.
My guess is there were all
sorts of unconscious things
that people weren't
noticing in there
11 million peanut butter jelly
moments that were activated
when they saw that name, and led
them to either respond or not
respond to that
email in that moment.
When you write op-eds, you
don't get to write the headline.
That's not a very
nuanced headline,
it did get a lot
of clicks though.
It's not a very
nuanced headline.
But it says something
about, is it possible
that even those of us who
are particularly interested
in this subject, particularly
stereotyped as even being
bleeding heart
liberals, might we even
also be contributing to some
of the biases around us?
In what ways can we notice it?
In what ways might
we be holders?
In what ways might we
be targets of biases
that are hard to notice?
And so in my book
what I try to do
is talk about how
a lot of the action
begins with the
noticing, noticing
the ways in which
we may be carriers
or barriers on these issues.
And that most
importantly, when a system
of bias or our own bias is made
visible, what is our reaction?
Is it a fixed mindset reaction
where I have no room to grow,
or is it a growth mindset
where we may be mortified,
but we find the
learning in the mistake?
Is there a space for
noticing that allows
us to go beyond the
definition of good person
where a good person
is someone who
is free of bias and mistakes?
Notice what a tight
corner that is to be in.
When you are free of
bias and mistakes,
you're in a tight
corner with no window
because there is no
assumption for the 11 million.
There is no room for a mistake.
Not because the
mistake is something
that you want to minimize,
but because you're not
even willing to
acknowledge it can happen.
Because if you do, you are
not a good person anymore.
If you acknowledge the
mistake, you've given up
you're a good person identity.
And the research on moral
identity says that many of us
care deeply about that identity.
I'm on a campaign to get us to
give up being a good person,
that this is no longer
serving us well.
That we want to actually let go
of being a good person in order
to become a better person.
That once we let go
of being a good person
and embrace the idea of
being a goodish person,
that we have all
sorts of room to grow.
It's a higher standard
than being a good person,
however, because when
you're a goodish person,
you're always in learning mode.
You're admitting mistakes
when you make them openly.
You're sharing them
with other people.
You're noticing them, you're
owning your blind spots.
If you're walking
around thinking
you have no blind spot,
that is your blind spot.
I don't know who said
that, I'm quoting someone,
but I don't know who it is.
But I love that.
You're taking ownership
for your own learning
and not putting
it on anyone else.
So being a goodish person
is the path towards actually
being the people we want to be.
My favorite part of
writing the book-- it
has a lot of social science
in it, and my research,
and a lot of other
research, a lot of research
of people in this room.
It was wonderful and exciting
to curate that science together
and create a toolkit
for a general audience.
My favorite part was getting
to play amateur journalist.
And amateur journalists get to
go out and talk to real people
in the real world.
And what I was looking
for were stories
that supported the
science, and then science
that could support the stories.
And I interviewed more than
40 people, this is just some
of them up here.
And I want to end and allow
us to open up for discussion
with my favorite story.
There are so many
wonderful ones in the book.
My favorite story
amongst all these people
of ways in which people
have noticed something
they weren't noticing before
and what they did about it.
I'm going to tell
you about Joe McNeil.
Look in the bottom left
corner, that's Joe.
That's not going
to work that way.
But you see him,
bottom left corner.
That's Joe McNeil.
My suspicion is he's not a
name that's familiar to you,
but this picture might be.
You're looking at
the Greensboro Four.
Greensboro Four was the four
young men-- college freshmen,
18-year-olds, first generation
college students all of them--
who were attending college at
North Carolina A&T frustrated
with the segregation that
did not allow them to go
into so many public spaces.
Including the Woolworth's
lunch counter,
which was like the
Panera of the day
where you would just
grab a quick bite.
And they couldn't go
get the quick bite,
or they'd be asked to go to the
back, told to go to the back.
And they became frustrated, and
would sit in their dorm room
at night and discuss this issue.
And they concocted a plan.
Their plan was they were going
to put on their best clothes,
carry their schoolwork, go into
Woolworths, buy something--
so they had a receipt showing
they were paying customers--
and then sit down at the lunch
counter and politely order
lunch.
They knew they would not
be served lunch, that they
would be asked to leave.
And their pledged to each other
was we will stay in our seats
until we're killed, arrested,
dragged out, or they
close early.
They closed early.
The police were called, the
police said shut it down.
So they came back the next day,
and they brought a few more
friends from their dorm, and
the next day, and the next day.
And we know how this story goes,
it became a national movement.
Thousands and
thousands of people
sitting in at Woolworth's
lunch counters.
These four young men were
smart, they deliberately picked
a place that they knew
had a national network,
so there would be an opportunity
for impact in other places.
And in fact, later that year
Woolworth's would desegregate
their lunch counters
nationwide--
1960, so this is early.
Nelson Mandela would say the
Greensboro Four inspired him,
just thinking of
what they were doing
served as inspiration for him.
Joe is-- on the top picture,
he is on your right,
on the bottom picture,
he's on your left.
And he's been gracious
enough to come
be a guest speaker in my classes
where I teach MBA students
for several years.
I know, right?
Very gracious, and he
comes in the first time--
this was like-- by the way,
you don't know until you ask.
I just cold called him.
I completely stalked this man.
I learned he lived three miles
away from me on Long Island,
and I found him.
And to my surprise--
so he comes in to
speak the first year.
I don't know him
well at that point.
And he gives these beautiful
remarks, very inspiring,
so humble.
If you're picturing some sort
of grabbing all your attention--
no, super soft
spoken, lots of dad
jokes, just very low key guy.
And I'm so proud of my MBA
students because I was worried.
Are they going to get it?
Do they understand
how big a deal?
No, they totally got it.
They lined up with questions.
They showed respect and
honored his courage.
And one of them got up to the
mic and said, General McNeil--
he served in the military--
General McNeil thank
you for your courage,
thank you for your service.
Sir, I have a question, what
are your views on gay rights?
Joe McNeil stumbled publicly,
badly, in front of everyone.
And I was like next
question, who's next?
Let's keep this moving.
And I didn't know what to say to
him, I didn't really know him.
And so I said nothing
because I'm a wimp.
And a year went by,
and I invited him back.
He came back.
And same format, he gets
up to give his remarks,
a lot of the same stories,
a lot of the same dad jokes.
And then he says
something different.
He starts talking
about this journey
he's on trying to learn
more about gay rights,
and how it's something that's
challenging for him because he
grew up in a time where
things were a certain way.
And that was just
how he was taught.
And now he was talking
to some of the younger
people in his family,
and he was reading,
and he was paying
attention when something
come on CNN about gay rights.
And he was really starting
to understand it better,
but he knew he had
a long way to go.
Wow, again, I don't have the
courage to say anything to him.
But over the years, I develop
a friendship with him.
My husband and I go on double
dates with him and his wife
twice a year.
I know, right?
That's normal.
And a trust develops.
I ask him if I can
interview him for my book.
And he says yes.
The last question I ask him
in the interview is, Joe,
do you remember the first
time you visited my class?
Do you remember the Q&A?
And I didn't even have to
prompt him, he said, oh, yes.
I said, Joe, what happened
between year one and year two?
He said, I said to myself,
McNeil, it's time to grow up.
It's time to grow up.
You got to look at this.
I said to myself, being a good
person isn't easy, it's work.
And in that moment when
I heard him say that,
everything was clear to me.
If he-- a man for whom statues
have been built, museums exist,
literally, if you go to
the Smithsonian in D.C
there's a whole wing in the
Museum of American History--
if he still has room to grow.
If he's allowing
himself that space,
if he can be goodish
rather than good, if he can
have a growth mindset.
If he can do it,
even after all he's
done in his life, all
the courage he's shown,
I think I can do it too.
Thank you.
