Agency and Automaticity: Examining implicit prejudice through the lens of Deweyan habits Open Access

Abstract

In this thesis, I claim that people have the capacity to exercise indirect control over their own implicit prejudice. I argue that implicit prejudice, which is described in psychological literature as an automatic process, should not be taken as a deterministic threat to agency because the fact of its automaticity does not necessarily preclude deliberate control on the part of the agent. Agency and automaticity are not incompatible with each other, despite automaticity posing a legitimate challenge to immediate and direct forms of agency. However, the current landscape of interventions that are designed to help people combat their own implicit prejudice are ineffective, in part due to their treatment of agency as a subjective and individualistic pursuit. Using John Dewey’s reconstruction of agency as degrees of flexibility, I show that agency is a social and interdependent process through which individuals may gain, in degrees, the ability to intelligently deliberate between possibilities. Through this lens, I evaluate how implicit prejudice is a socially constructed and transmitted phenomenon, and how any program aiming to reduce implicit prejudice in individuals should locate its intervention in the relationship between an individual and their social environment.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..2

I. Implicit Prejudice……………………………………………………………………………….5

History and Terminology…………………………………………………………………....7

Current Research…………………………………………………………………………......10

II. Agency……………………………………………………………………………………….....14

The Free Will Debate……………………………………………………………………......15

Dewey and the Self………………………………………………………………………......20

Flexible Habits………………………………………………………………………….........26

III. Automaticity………………………………………………………………………………..…32

Old Ideas………………………………………………………………………………........…33

New Environments………………………………………………………………………......38

IV. Improving Flexibility……………………………………………………………………......41

A Pathology of Goodness……………………………………………………………....…..42

Adaptive Agents………………………………………………………………………….......44

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………..….46

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………....51

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Philosophy
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Social Philosophy
Keyword	Agency Implicit Prejudice John Dewey
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Jessica Wahman, Emory University
Committee Members	Jessica Barber, Emory University John Stuhr, Emory University

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