tavis: good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with "washington post" science writer shankar vedantam. he is out now with a thought provoking new text about the differences between our conscious and unconscious minds. the compelling text, "the hidden brain" examines the science behind the decisions we make every day about politics, race, war and even markets. we're glad you have joined us. a fascinating conversation with science writer shankar vedantam coming up right now >> there are so many things that wal-mart is looking forward to doing, like helping people live better, but mostly we're looking forward to helping build stronger communities and relationships because with your help, the best is yet to come. >> nationwide insurance proudly

supports tavis smiley. tavis and nationwide insurance working to improve financial literacy and the economic empowerment that comes with it. ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] tavis: shankar vedantam, the national science writer for the "washington post." his new book is called "the hidden brain," how our unconscious minds elect presidents, control markets, wage wars and save our lives. great to have you on this program. >> thank you for having me.

tavis: who knew our unconscious minds could do all of that? >> well, i didn't. i thought like everyone else that our minds were conscious and that we did things intentionally and distributely and it turns out we don't. from politics to the criminal justice system, the unconscious plays a significant role in how we react and behave and think. tavis: what does that say about our conscious mind? >> well, our conscious mind is very useful. it helps us think about a lot of things systematically and usefully. we essentially outsource a lot of our thinking to the hidden brain, the unconscious mind. so if we were to do many of these things more consciously, the criminal justice system and politics, i actually think we would end up with better decisions than we often do than what the data reveals currently. tavis: why, then if, we did these things consciously, we would be better off? help me understand the science behind why we do this stuff

unconsciously. >> on a routine basis, if you were to think about everything we did consciously, you would find yourself paralyzed. you and i are sitting here talking to one another. you're not consciously thinking you need to look me in the eye. it is something your hidden brain has learned how the do. you're not thinking about the temperature of the room or what the decor of the wall looks like because it is not important to the conversation that you're having. what our conscious minds do is focus in on things that are important parts of the conversation or the important part s of making a judgment of the criminal justice system or trying to elect a president. without our awareness, however, our unconscious minds are picking up things all the time. signals and cues and they feed these to us as intuitions and feelings that we often have and when push comes to shove and we have to pick one presidential account over another, it is our

-- one presidential candidate over another it is our unconscious mind that makes the decision. tavis: unconsciously, how does race play a factor in a race like for president recently. >> i'll give you a recent example that scientists conducted before the presidential election. they measured the unconscious feelings that voters had between barack obama and tony blair. many voters thought tony blair was more american than barack obama. now what is striking about this if you ask the voters consciously, they would say the question is absurd. blair is a british prime minister and obama is american. we often have an association between whiteness and americanness. white people are seen to be more american than people of color who really are american.

the unconscious bias predicted how people voted and so people who were more likely at an unconscious level to see obama as not being fully american were less likely to support him even if they agreed on his policy issues. tavis: there were a number of women in the race. hillary clinton, our unconscious minds said what to us about mrs. clinton? >> probably said a lot of things about mrs. clinton to us. one of the things that dogs many female sleersd that they like caring, sensitivity. that they are ruthless. what happens when women achieve positions of leadership is that we have a stereotype about who constitutes a leader in our unconscious mind and what a woman is supposed to be like in our unconscious mind. our stereotype about leadership is tied to masculine qualities. we think about it as being a

masculine quality in our unconscious mind. when a female becomes president or wants to become president we think she must not have the qualities that a typical woman has, the carpal and caring side to -- the warm and caring side to her penalty. they need to show they are not more ruthless than men but more sensitive than men. if you think about the breakdown hillary clinton had in new hampshire, many said it would doom her campaign, it actually helped her because the price that women leaders pay is we think they no longer have that soft, gentle caring side to them. tavis: sarah palin was in this race. what did our unconscious mind say to her about class, specific sflip >> i was thinking on this on the plane. i do think that each of the presidential candidates in this

last presidential race showed something interesting about unconscious bias. imagine she was not a vice-presidential candidate or a nationally known politician. what kind of parties would she or obama get invited to. who is likely to have them over for a drink in the evening. you could tell the kind of people that would have barack obama over and the kind of people who would have sarah palin over for an evening. when i think about class issues, i'm not necessarily thinking about income and wealth. i'm thinking about who is considered to be upper class in an educational sense, in a sense of being cultured and knowledgeable about world affairs. when you look at a lot of the reaction that people had about sarah palin, a lot o of the anger directed at her had this undercurrent of class. many liberals were guilty of seeing her as less than who she really was because of the stereotypes they had about her

class background. tavis: let me go back to obama and ask about a strategic question. we all know whether one agree or disagrees, candidate obama did everything he could to stay away from talking about race. he had to at one point around jeremiah wright. everyone knows he astutely avoided talking about race. as a strategy, is this a good strategy or a bad strategy? >> i think with the hidden brain in mind it was a brilliant strategy. i think the conversation that you're having about whether there should be a black agenda in the country or not. we should be able to put race on the table. it is such a huge snu the country. african-americans are 400% more likely to be in prison than whites. more likely to be murdered. the unemployment rate is higher. the black infant mortality rate is higher than the white infant

mortality rate. when you look at the range of these issues, the idea that you need a black agenda seems obvious. this is a group of people that desperately need help. when you think about these issues, with the unconscious mind in perspective, you come at this slightly differently. you might want to have a black agenda but you might not want to make it explicit. when you make it explicit you get from a lot of voters concerns that talking about race often does. i think davered axlerod's strategy, not just with obama but a number of other candidates to try to find a way to get race off the thankful political sli more successful -- politically is more successful. tavis: juxtaposed to science now, with the practical reality of the world that we live in that you so beautifully lay out in terms of these stats. what does it say about the

american people that we can know consciously these issues exist but we hide, as it were, behind our subconscious, we don't want you to put that on n our face. don't call it that. don't call a national meeting about that. what does that say? >> people are sensitive about race. obama found a way to present an african-american candidate in a way white voters did not find threatening. it helped the first non-white president get elected. in order to get a black man elected president he may have to take race off the table but if he were to put race on the table he would never have gotten elected even if he had the same policies. what it says about americans is that we have all of these unconscious biases kicking around in the back of our heads. we don't want to acknowledge it or think about it and when we are reminded about it, we get

defensive about it. tavis: what happens then when accommodating that unconscious, that hidden brain ends up rendering the suffering of every day people invisible. you understand my question? >> yes, i understand the question perfectly. i think you have raised the central dilemma in this. if we were to take into account in terms of politics you would say what obama is doing is politic. it is the smart, strategic thing to do. when you say i can get elected president only if i don't talk about race, at some level you're going along with racism in the country. this is a tension that in some ways is unresolveable. it is not a tension that barack obama can solve himself. the problem does not lie in barack obama. the problem lies in us. until the point that we are ready as a people that we can say we can put these issues on the table and we will not hold people or castigate ohm them or bring it against them for

bringing up race. it is only at that point, that a candidate like obama can probably say what really is in his mind. i think he probably does want to have a black agenda but is not doing so because if he were to come out and say it, he would probably lose the next election. tavis: help me understand the hidden brain, the unconscious mind, then, of african-americans, who understand that the president can't stand up with a black first and run down some black power agenda. >> yes. tavis: but at the same time, recognize in their own conversations all of these things you said earlier about the crushing that they are experiencing. about the hell that they are enduring. for black people this isn't just a conversation. this is a way of life. they are the ones -- let me make it clear. too many folk in this country are being challenged by this economy. but, as you said, the numbers are clear. black folk.

higher unemployment. black folk disproportionately lost their homes. we can do this all day long. you have already laid that out. help me understand the unconscious, the hidden brain of black folk who understand on the one hand they want to celebrate this black american president but on the other hand, subconsciously, unconsciously, have to accept the fact that that mean, it may mean, not that it does mean, it may mean you're not going to get a lot done under this particular presidency because you can't be so aggressive as a black president. does that make sense? >> it does make sense. i'm not saying he can't be aggressive about these issues. i'm saying he can't be explicitly aggressive on these issues. tavis: we agree on that. >> i think you're right on the money. after four years or eight years of an obama presidency, if some of those trends don't go in the

other direction then fact that he was the first african-american president, well, great, but realize, when you're talking about unemployment issues, the criminal justice system, infant mortality, these are african-american babies, newborn babies, 50% more likely to die in the first few weeks of life than white babies. tavis: what i'm getting at then, for an african-american voter who is proud and celebrates barack obama, as many of us do, obviously. how does the black, hidden brain juxtapose the consciousness of knowing this is what we're up against with the unconscious of also understanding that there is a uniquely different way we have to approach this and in four years or eight years, really have been worth it. how do we do that dance, as it were. does that make sense? >> yeah, it does. i think the central challenge that we have alluded to this this conversation, you can't have a conversation about race in the united states. barack obama, i'm sure is the

first person to know that we do not live in a post racial america. i know this for a fact because everything he does is strategic in terms of not making race explicit. if we really did live in a post racial america -- tavis: it wouldn't matter. >> right. the challenge is how do you get these issues before voters most of whom are white and not make them feel defensive. present a model of how to think about race and discrimination that takes the sting out of ideas we have about race and discrimination. the reason whites gets defensive about talking conversations about race is that it suggestses that whites have conscious hostility against blacks. people get defensive about it. i think what a lot of the signs have shown over the last two decades, a lot of racism and prejudice happens unconsciously.

a lot of blacks are unconsciously against blacks as well. so it is not just a white versus black issue. everyone is responsible for it and once you think about this with the unconscious mind and you know, in some ways it takes the sting out of it because you can say i need to do something about it but it is not so much my fault. >> i guess the question for me now is whether or not we are hiding behind the unconscious when it comes to issues of race and gender, sexism, patriarchy. are we hiding behind this hidden brain? hiding behind the unconscious or is this a more damning statement about the fact that we do not celebrate and revel in the humanity of each other? those are two different things to me. >> yeah, i see what you're saying. i think in many ways people can hide behind the unconscious. i think many people don't believe that the unconscious exists. most people don't believe that

ratism exists. because when they look intoj@ their own hearts they feel no animosity toward other groups. that doesn't say anything about how they are acting or judging people in the criminal justice simple or evaluating people for jobs or who gets loans or doesn't, much of that is being driven by the unconscious mind. the irony is a lot of prejudice doesn't arrive because of hostility. this is the civil rights model that we think about racism. in some ways racism has evolved to the point much of it is happening beneath the surface. beneath the awareness of people themselves. tavis: when you said a lot of people don't think the you be consciousness exists. i'm trying to get about whether or not it really is -- this unconsciousness or whether or not it is learned behavior. so it is -- i think it is a learned behavior at some level.

learned behavior that becomes unconscious. >> oh, yes. tavis: not just unconscious for the sake of being unconscious. it is learned behavior. >> absolutely. tavis: that morphs into unconscious so that we start as your research points out when the word welfare comes up, we have an image unconsciously in our brain. when the word comes up, we have an image unconsciously in our brain, it didn't just happen unconsciously. it was learned behavior that led to that unconscious thought. am i right about that? >> absolutely. tavis: it is not just unconscious behavior. it is learned behavior. >> when i say hidden brain, i don't mean to think that we're born with this. it is owl biological. -- all biological. it is driven entirely by culture and politics and history. tavis: got it. >> so if african-americans or africans had come to the new world and taken white people back in chains to africa and

enslaved them for two centuries and deprived them of rights for another two centuries they would have the same unconscious biases about white that whites have about african-americans. it is driven by culture and history. tavis: i can do this for hours. i'm so passionate. let's move on to the markets. so much talk about the markets these days. what's the relationship between unconscious minds and the hidden brain and control of the markets. >> well, there is a whole number of different ways how our unconscious minds affect how we think about the markets and stocks and retirement and portfolios. i'll give you a very small example. they found something remarkable. they saw -- these are companies that have newly arrived on the new york stock exchange. they found that companies with easy to pronounce names and easy to pronounce stock ticker codes did vastly better in the first year they were on the market. than companys with difficult to

pronounce names and difficult to pronounce stock ticker codes. tavis: if you were a stock, you would be in trouble. [laughter] is that your point here? >> i think that is fair to say, tavis. tavis: i digress, sorry. >> i think what's happening in the case of the stocks is people were using a heuristic. were sort of unconsciously using a heuristic that says i have less trouble coming to grips with what this company does so it is probably less of a risk. the difference between these companies was not small. it was like 33% after one year. it was just this enormous difference between companies. we know this was unconscious because if it were conscious, what sane investor would say i'm going to invest in company a rather than company b because company a has this name and company b has that name. tavis: even if i buy your argument and i hear your argument, that our unconscious minds help us elect presidents even when race is an issue. that unconscious minds control

markets. which i accept. the hard part is that our unconscious mind allows us to wage wars. if ever it seems to me there is a clear-cut decision, that seems to me to be so conscious yet you tell me in the book that unconscious minds play a role even in those decisions. >> i think so. if you look at the wars that the united states is involved in today. they can be traced back to a single event, the terrorist eventses of september 11. americans were asked how likely they thought they were going to be personally at risk by a terrorist attack. the number was so large it would have required a 9/11 attack every single day in the united states for that many people to be harmed. what i'm trying to get at is not that 9/11 was not a terrible,

awful events. but there was something about that events that inflated the risk that we feel about terrorism and indirectly led to the united states being immeshed in two wars. i talk in the book about the contrast between terrorism and the phenomenon of suicide. in the eight years since the september 11 attacks, more than 250,000 americans have died as a result of suicide than from terrorism. but we don't think about suicide as a risk. we don't wake up in the morning and say am i at risk for suicide? is my family at risk for suicide? our brains and unconscious minds are predisposed to fear certain threats and not other kinds of threats. we fear the kind of threats that other people pose us. we fear the psycho path on the loose. we don't think we ourselves mark may pose ourselves risk by not exercising or smoking or running

our lives to the ground and feeling like we may need to commit suicide. we are aware about the risks that other people pose us. these translate eventually into policy decisions that affect thousands, millions of lives, including, i think, whether countries go to war. tavis: the last few minutes i have here, thankfully having said all of this, according to shankar vedantam, "the hidden brain," unconscious minds can save our lives. >> one of the chapters in the book look at the events on the morning of september 11 in the south tower over the world trade center. the second tower to be hit that awful morning. there was a 60-minute window between the time the first tower was hit and the second tower was hit. the 88th and 89th floor of the south tower. after the rubble cleared, nearly everyone on the 88th floor exithed the tower and survived and nearly everyone on the 89th

floor stayed behind at their desks and eventually were trapped when the second plane struck. i talked about this phenomenon and what happens to people in disaster situations. how if if we, you and i are influenced in our every day lives by the people around us. if a smoke alarm or fire alarm goes off, our ability to act autonomously decreases further when we're under threat. what happened on the 88th floor, when most of the people left, was driven not by individual decisions that knew that a second plane was coming in 16 minutes but rather by a mass decision, a mass exode us from the floor that prompted many people's lives to be saved. tavis: if you have found this conversation at all fascinating, as i certainly have, let me assure you, you will enjoy the text. it is called prison prison. -- "the hidden brain."

it is written by shankar vedantam. congratulations on the book. >> thank you for having me. tavis: that is our show for the night. catch us on our radio pod cast through our website at pbs.org. i'll see you next time on pbs.org. as always, keep the faith. for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i'm it was a smiley. join me next time with grammy-winning artist dee dee bridgewater. that's next time. see you then. >> there are so many things that wal-mart is looking forward to doing, like helping people live better, but mostly we're looking forward to helping build stronger communities and relationships because with your help, the best is yet to come.

>> nationwide insurance proudly supports tavis smiley. tavis and nationwide insurance working to improve financial literacy and the economic empowerment that comes with it. >> ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.