Heuristics of Identity
It is taboo to make assumptions about people, especially with regards to immutable characteristics. This is because such assumptions oftentimes are prejudiced—that is, they are unfair and not based on actual experience or facts. Regardless of risk for being contentious, out of respect for the critical habit of thought, it should be understood: assumptions can be harmful and helpful.
Where does one draw the line between an assumption’s harm and help? Personally, I consider a few things: (1) the time spent or available for decision-making, (2) the behavior derived from a decision, and (3) the consequences derived from a behavior. As an example of some assumptions, there is a scene in Men in Black in which Will Smith’s character undergoes training; when asked why he shot a cardboard cutout of a girl, he gives his reasoning of how several of the cardboard monsters he was expected to shoot were non-threatening while an “8-year-old, white girl, middle of the ghetto, bunch of monsters, this time of night with quantum physics books” was the most suspect of targets. While comedic, the scene exemplifies assumptive thinking: Will Smith’s character took more time than the other trainees to assess the “crisis” situation, he then made his shot, and the result was the cardboard girl being shot. Since the “crisis” situation was merely training, his behavior and its consequences are rather nebulous since he could either be right or wrong that the “girl” was a threat, however I’d argue (and what the movie implies in Will Smith’s character) is that the time he spent to make a decision (and his objective analysis) was the correct (i.e., most helpful) approach.
In a real-life example, there was a recent shootout in Montreal involving police, a gunman, and civilian. Videos of the event shared online provided people with opinions. The videos show the instant the civilian is shot, and it’s uncertain whether it was the police or gunman that hit him. For the sake of a thought experiment (an investigation of the incident later found the police did not in fact shoot and kill the civilian and it was rather the gunman who did), let’s pretend the police shot the civilian and put ourselves in the officer’s position right up to the tragic moment: shots have been fired, I have limited cover, my partner has been shot and is bleeding out on the pavement, and more shots are being fired; I turn around and a man is standing over me, inches away. Something many have denied and argued emphatically against about this situation is that there is no available time to consider multiple options. In such a life-or-death situation, there is really only one option immediate in the mind: the man standing over you can kill you in less than a second. The behavior and outcome is the tragedy: you shoot him and he dies. The assumption precipitating both would be harmful… but, it would be completely understandable (reminder: this is a thought experiment—the police did not actually shoot the civilian).
These examples showcase heuristics: mental shortcuts, our strategies of thinking quickly about things. Whether a heuristic is utilized in a time-sensitive situation or not is another matter; the above scenarios (crisis situations) should demonstrate why quick thinking is practical and useful (despite being wrong in cases); but what about the former situations? Are heuristics good when there is sufficient time to think? I can’t speak to the morality of it, but heuristics inherently lessen one’s mental load. In a dangerous situation, they spur us into action and avoid delayed action or inaction that may have us succumb to whatever danger. For example, if you’re standing on tracks outside a train station and you hear and see a train approaching, do you trust the likely heuristics of human survival that when a large and loud thing is coming fast at you, you should move, or do you opt for more calculated thinking and remain still to ponder the changing speed of the train, whether the train is scheduled to stop at the station, the possibility of it slowing enough to stop before hitting you, and the possibility of the driver adjusting the speed of the train to not hit you? In a non-dangerous situation, heuristics may still prove useful in avoiding being overwhelmed or becoming otherwise distressed. For example, if you’re at a diner at the end of the day and you’re thinking about unfinished projects at work and how to get them done, relationship conflicts with your boss and coworkers pressing you about when they’ll be done, going home and facing questions and complaints from family about not spending enough time with them, chores, and money, and, what the heck, also the recent death of your mother, do you trust your personal heuristic that your favorite meal at the diner will be tasty, or do you add to your multitude of concerns and deliberate about which item to order from the menu?
Notably, both hypothetical examples I’ve given are fairly isolated: the main person facing a consequence for your decision-making is yourself. The prior crisis examples aren’t isolated: putting yourself in Will Smith and the police’s shoes, you and others face consequences for your decision-making. Now, I’ll finally get into identity. Returning to that Men in Black scene, a likely heuristic we might share with Will Smith is that a white girl in the ghetto doesn’t add up. Of course, we can think logically that white people can be impoverished like anyone else, but, using statistics and averages to base some assumptions on and draw conclusions from, it’s less than a 10% chance the white girl belongs there. Doing the same thing regarding her being an 8-year-old, the likelihood she’s studying quantum physics is less than 0.001%.
As mentioned earlier in my diner hypothetical, heuristics aren’t necessarily built off statistics or other forms of rigorous research; they can be created from the personal experience of eating and falling in love with a particular menu item. Let’s take the perspective of a woman who has faced sexual assault at the hands of a man; I, being this woman, would likely view men warily and heuristically choose to avoid them despite the majority of men not sexually assaulting anyone and a majority of men not having a proclivity to choose to sexually assault someone even in conditions where they would not face negative consequences. Yet, those numbers of actual sexual assault and proclivity for sexual assault are disconcertingly high alongside the fact that the vast majority of sexual assault are carried out by men—and with my own hypothetical experience of being assaulted, I’d still likely opt for the heuristic of avoiding men when I could as an adaptive response to pattern recognition. But, patterns don’t necessarily mean everything is the same; adaptive responses to false positives could be futile if not unhelpful or harmful. This raises the question: where is the line between prejudice and practicality?
I’d argue there is overlap. Some forms of prejudice, like the above example of a female victim’s perspective, may not be practical generally (e.g., avoiding men altogether) but would certainly be practical specifically (e.g., avoiding late-day or nighttime outings, remaining in well-lit and public areas). Avoiding such risk-laden situations would more reliably be helpful as opposed to harmful—and, even if generally avoiding interactions with men now and then, even if it’s simply moving to the opposite sidewalk to avoid them, the only potential harm would be hurt feelings; if the avoidance truly becomes disorganized, then there would be more harm, particularly for the female victim who may have her daily functioning impacted since men are virtually everywhere. Thus, the limits of the practicality of the heuristics of identity aren’t so nebulous: overgeneralized use of a rule tends to be less helpful while specific use tends to be more helpful. This may itself be considered its own heuristic; a heuristic of heuristic usage, if you will.
Before I end this blog and get carried away, I’ll list some other specific (i.e., practical, helpful) uses of the heuristics of identity. An emergency news blast notifies everyone via their phones of a stolen blue Honda along with a kidnapped 7-year-old kid in your area; you become wary and on the lookout for blue cars and minors. You hear of and repeatedly experience aversive, aggressive, and criminal behavior of particular individuals of a certain race, gender, and/or culture; you adjust the frequency of your interactions and your approach with individuals of said race, gender, and/or culture. Your doctor mistakenly prescribes a medication in the same drug family as an allergen you have; you insist on second opinions for prescriptions and other significant medical decisions.
