Automatic Attitudinal Response

The Automatic Attitudinal Response is a real issue I have come to find with myself. As I have just finished dissecting all of the information I have posted about throughout the semester on my blog, there have been several occasions where I found obvious barriers within my own thought. It’s really weird to think of actually, and it has definitely opened my eyes.

The example I would like to present is with my Racism 2.0 post. While I didn’t make a very good argument for myself to begin with, I found multiple barriers to my thinking. The argument I made in this post was basically explaining how “people aren’t as racist as we think” and that we perceive people more based on how they represent themselves (ie. “thugs”, “hippies”, etc.).

I wrote, “Self-presentation is probably more of an influential "quick-to-judge" feature than the color of someone's skin in today's society… We may be far past being an anti-racist society, which is likely an impossible Utopia, but we certainly have made strides in a more reasonable direction toward equality”.

I now see this entire post as a hidden assumption. When I first thought about writing about racism, the first thing that came across my mind was, “I’m not a racist”. I wrote my entire post on the hidden assumption that that is how I felt; that I believe all people are equal and racism doesn’t exist in my eyes. This was my perception growing up in a middle-class, white, Christian family in a small farming community. I expected everyone would have this same perception as me and I made my argument with the hidden assumption that this was the case. The truth is, because of how I was raised, ethnocentrism is a part of who I am. I went to high school with as many African-American kids as I can count on one hand. I know nothing about racism. I saw them as equal. They were treated like every other white kid in my school. It was part of the culture I grew up with and that yields my ethnocentric behavior and feelings about how I perceive my life; this making my post about racism entirely flawed.

 Another example throughout my writing was an automatic attitudinal response I had with my OTM- Zika Virus post. I wrote, ”Every time I see news of some sort of virus coming to America, it seems as though it is a blown out-of-proportion frenzy by the media to "warn" us;  just like Ebola. Once I saw that this was about yet another virus, I immediately stereotyped it, just like I'm sure others have. It's a taboo really; I know of zero people personally who had any sort of connection with Ebola, just as this is the first time I've even heard about the Zika Virus”.

I think in this situation I already recognized the automatic attitudinal response that I held. I judged the Zika Virus and was immediately skeptical when I first even saw the word “virus”. What made me think this? Why was I conditioned to think like this? I think the primary reason I was skeptical is obviously from the Ebola issue in America. But furthermore, I think it’s because I didn’t really think twice about it. What I mean by that is I was more skeptical of me ever getting the virus than the virus actually existing itself. From the egocentric culture I have been around my entire life, there was no way I could get the “Zika Virus”. I have been conditioned my entire life to not worry about anything like this; to the point where the virus seems fake to me. It is not surprising to me that I had this immediate reaction towards the Zika Virus, and I certainly recognize it now.