Translator: Viviana Quarto Reviewer: Michele Gianella How many of you believe, women are as talented in hard sciences, such as mathematics, engineering or physics as men? Raise your hands, please. Alright!
The majority of you. But are you really sure about that? Are you really sure that, in your mind, men and women are equally associated to scientific disciplines?
Well, I want to run a test with you in order to show you that, actually, you aren't aware of your true core beliefs, namely the ones encoded in your mind. In this test you’ll have to rank some words into four categories, by saying “right” or “left”. Here you can see the words and the four categories they might belong to.
The test is divided in two parts. In the first part, you’ll have to say “left” if the word on the screen belongs to “humanities” or “female” categories. You’ll have instead to say “right” if it belongs to “scientific disciplines” or “male” categories.
So, for example, if you see the word “Laura”, what will you say? Left. Great.
And if you see the word “Marco”? Right. And what if you see the word “Physics”?
Right. Perfect. And if you see the word "Art"?
OK, let's do some tries before the real test. Remember: "Left" for humanities and female; "Right" for sciences and male. Are you ready?
Let's go! Okay. You kind of got it.
I saw someone in the back who was looking around, trying to understand whether to say "left" or "right". No need to worry; it's normal to make some mistakes. Now let's move to the real test.
Once again, remember: "left" for humanities and female; "right" for male and scientific disciplines. Are you ready? Let's go!
Very good. You’ve been quite quick. Your average answer time is roughly 700 milliseconds.
Now let's move to the second part of the test. You will be giving the same words as before. Let's see if we can see them on the screen.
There they are. Perfect. So, the same words as before.
But now you will have to say “left”, if the word belongs to “humanities” or “male” categories; and “right” if instead these words belong to “scientific disciplines” and “female” categories. OK. Don't worry.
Here too we'll have some tries before starting, ok? Remember: "Left" for humanities and male; "Right" for science and female. OK?
Let's start. OK. You made it, more or less.
Now let’s move to the last part. Once again remember: “left” for “humanities” and “male”, “right” for “science” and for “female”. Ready, steady, go!
So. . .
In this test, your average answer time was around 1. 000 milliseconds. As you can see, you were slower in this second part of the test than in the first part.
What does it mean? It means that it's easier for you to link the concept of “female” to humanities and the idea of “male” with STEM, not the other way around. This therefore suggests, there are in your mind implicit gender stereotypes, that you are unaware of, and lead you to link sciences to men over women.
You and I, as the majority of people, show this stereotype. I still remember the first time I've done this test and showed these same results. I asked myself: “how is that possible?
" How can a researcher like me, who firmly believes that men and women have the same skills in scientific fields, show such a stereotype? I was really astonished to discover this hidden side of my mind. But, actually, this gender stereotype in the scientific field is only one example of the different stereotypes and prejudices we may have in our minds.
We can have stereotypes and biases linked to different social characteristics, such as: skin colour, ethnicity, sexual, political and religious orientation, weight, age, physical diseases, disability and mental illness. But what are the consequences of these unconscious biases and stereotypes? Scientific research showed that these biases and stereotypes affect the way we perceive and relate with others.
For example, a study published on the scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America" showed that choosing a male candidate, over a female candidate - to carry out an arithmetic task - all skills and qualifications being equal, is linked to the gender stereotype in the scientific field. Moreover, some researchers of the Harvard University showed that race biases even influence the decisions of doctors and other professionals in the health case industry. In particular, it has been demonstrated that doctors who show a strong preference for white people, compared to black people, recommend less often a treatment for the latter, even when they show the same health conditions and the same medical needs as white patients.
So how can we free our behaviour from these unconscious stereotypes and biases? How can we consciously align our behaviours to our conscious beliefs and intentions? Over the last years, this need has been widely recognised.
For example, companies like Google, Facebook, Starbucks or universities like Harvard and even Police departments like NYPD organised lectures for their employees, in order to raise their awareness about these unconscious stereotypes and biases, and how they act and influence our behaviour. In particular, over the last 20 years researchers have tried to create interventions and strategies to tamper these stereotypes and biases. For example, it was shown that it's possible to reduce the ethnical and racial prejudice by giving information against the same stereotype, for example by presenting an aggression scenario where the white person is the aggressor and the black person is the rescuer.
These interventions though, despite being effective, proved to be limited, especially over time. Their effect, in fact, only lasts for some hours or days. The idea I am working on with my research, is that these stereotypes and biases are so deeply rooted in our mind that in order to change them, we have to change our brain's biological mechanisms that create and maintain them.
In particular, my research aims at introducing a new technique, called "Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation", which belongs to neurosciences, a different science field. These non-invasive techniques are considered safe and they allow, through small electric impulses in the brain, to change the biological mechanisms responsible for producing and controlling our behaviour. The studies that use this technique in the field of stereotypes detected some specific areas of the brain that are involved in these processes.
These regions are known for their perception function, as the area of the striatum, or areas involved in processes linked to moral decisions, as the Inferior Parietal Lobe; areas linked to control processes, as the prefrontal cortex; and areas linked to semantic memory, like the anterior temporal lobe. These studies showed that, by increasing or decreasing the activity of some of these areas, for example the anterior temporal lobe, it is possible to reduce stereotypes, such as the gender one in the scientific field or the bias which, in someone's mind, ties Arabs to terrorism. I see some stunned faces.
Some of you is probably thinking, I want to do a remake of Kubrick's “A Clockwork Orange” and start to brainwash people. To be honest, I’ve always loved Kubrick’s movies and especially that one. But you must know that, even if Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation techniques are hardly ever used in the field of social stereotypes, they are really popular in the medical field.
They are used, for example, to diagnose motor system disorders, for example after a stroke; or to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as the chronic neuropathic pain, the Parkinson disease or depression. In particular, it was demonstrated that these techniques are really effective in treating drug-resistant depression, that is, when drugs fail to work in the patient. These studies demonstrated that, by stimulating a particular area of the brain, the Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex, depression symptoms improve in 60% of patients.
One third of them even shows a full remission from illness. In a society like ours, where globalization has led to the coexistence of different cultural and social groups, these non-invasive brain stimulation techniques can be critical to free our behaviour from biases and stereotypes, especially in those situations where, as we've seen, they can produce serious consequences. But there is more: these techniques could also be used to reduce biases and stereotypes, which concern us first-hand and influence our life.
It has been proved that prejudices and stereotypes don't only influence our behaviour with others: but they can also affect our very performance. A study that monitored 34 countries for eight years showed that the performance of girls aged between 13 and 14 years, in mathematics and other scientific fields, is closely linked to the strength of the gender stereotype in the scientific field. These results therefore lead to suggest that stereotypes can potentially influence us and prevent our access to specific business fields, or hinder our potential.
and the one of the next generations. The introduction of the Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Techniques can finally bring about a bias-free society, one that is focused at strengthening the talent of its citizens towards science and progress. Thank you very much.
