Norms and Implicit Bias, Towards People and Triangles

The Lupyan and Rickford readings seemed to have very different themes, but in fact they speak volumes about the psychology of norms. In the Lupyan reading, we saw how people tend to have an idea of a prototypical triangle; isosceles, with one point on top and two on the bottom, and with the base horizontal. Whether you ask people to draw or identify triangles, they see these triangles are more "triangle-y" than others, even though there are many, many different kinds, shapes, and sizes of triangle. There's even more than one way to say "triangle"-- and when the participants were asked to draw a "three-sided figure," they drew slightly less prototypical triangles, without even being consciously aware of the word difference. The difference was implicit.

In the Rickford reading, I was struck by the fact that the term Ebonics was only used after 1973, and that before then AAVE had been called "broken" or "nonstandard" English. One might see scalene triangles as "broken" or "nonstandard." And if you try to fit a scalene triangle into a isosceles-sized hole, it won't fit; children tested in "standard" English who are familiar with AAVE score lower.
(This is not to imply that "standard" English is an isosceles triangle--the metaphor breaks down a bit here; what I would say is that there can be a tendency to see a familiar type of communication as "proper" and thus all others as "broken.") It's almost like defining your own triangle as the "norm." The difference becomes implicit and not even recognized; if someone makes a three-sided shape in another configuration, it's not a "proper" triangle; if someone understands language differently, it seems like they're doing it wrong. The first step in becoming accepting of the differences between triangles, and people, is recognizing that implicit bias.