before I introduce myself I’m
yato that you don’t need to answer right
away but that I want you to keep in mind
a father in the Sun are driving on the
highway and the two men get into a
horrible car accident the father dies
and his son survives but he severely
wounded he gets rushed into the hospital
but when it is time for surgery the
surgeon says I can’t operate on him he
is my son who is the surgeon please keep
the answer in your mind and don’t say it
out loud with that said hi my name is
Damon Wade it’s been 15 yahoo hide one
is call most or chelyn now think about
what you’ve just heard about me in
German as everyone does when meeting a
new person you probably have an image
about me in your head but was that image
shaped by my nationality rather than by
my personality maybe some of you put me
in a box or you might have been thinking
about the pretty common German
stereotypes and you know view me as a
leader who wasn’t wearing super punctual
guy with no sense of humor who’s been
drinking beer and eating sausages since
the age of three at the Oktoberfest and
although some of these stereotypes are
true don’t worry I don’t drink but I do
have later wasn’t oh and I don’t blame
you for having these beliefs as they
come from somewhere maybe they stem from
an experience that you had with a
country or group or something you’ve
heard about them throughout my life I’ve
always encountered different types of
prejudices as I grew up in a household
that was influenced by two very
different cultures from my mom came to
German influence and from my dad the
Polish part constantly living between
these two worlds was the only thing that
made me unique to my peers while I was
growing up my family also lived in both
countries for multiple years age knowing
the languages and being comfortable with
both cultures make me feel German and
polish at the same time such that when I
was seven years old I saw no difference
between me and my peers and felt at home
in both countries as you can imagine but
this time the world seemed like a fair
and say
place to the seven-year-old me second
grade had just recently begun and I had
switched schools now receiving my
education in Poland I was a very
outgoing kid and started to make new
friends quickly and soon people that
knew me would know about my background
as well but that was the first time that
I really encountered prejudices I
remember that in one normal day I went
out on the hallway to get some water and
when I came back two of my friends were
marching through the middle of the room
with their fingers over their lips
signalizing a short mustache what
shocked me most a moment though or their
right hands they held him up making a
Nazi salute while looking at me I stood
in the doorframe closely following what
was taking place right in front of me my
stomach became heavy tears came to my
eyes and I didn’t know what to say or to
do I was seven years old and I knew
about the horrible crimes the Nazis had
committed but I didn’t do it
neither did my parents nor grandparents
and I knew the Germany was so different
from what it had been in the 1930s or
40s that day I experienced the harsh
reality of being judged because of Eros
from the seven-year-old me didn’t
realize what big concept was behind it
but I knew it was something completely
wrong as I grew older I encountered more
and more stereotypes in my everyday life
fast forward from second to eighth grade
and six years have passed I found myself
in a completely new environment studying
in Germany one afternoon I was sitting
in a class and one of my peers made a
mistake in his work as he couldn’t find
his eraser he just decided to scream out
if someone had taken it instantly one
guy sitting right next to me stated that
the Polish guy right here has probably
taken the eraser quickly everyone turned
their heads towards me staring at me as
if the statement was true the guy next
to me even started to check my pencil
case looking for the eraser he believed
was there he didn’t find anything but
the humiliation was still there
and although it is pretty obvious where
the stereotype about Germans came from
the prejudice of poles being thieves is
not that obvious to non-germans the two
biases have a common point though and
that is their origin
they both stem from a event or
historical time period and are now all
beliefs that were true at some point but
not anymore
during the time of communist influence
Poland was way less wealthy than its
Western neighbor Germany and to quote a
Washington Post article from 1918 the
nation was nineteen point four billion
dollars in debt at the end of 1979
meanwhile the cost of imported oil and
grain have reached billions of dollars
and meat shortages are running at
500,000 tons a year so one could say the
Polish economy wasn’t great and this
inability of the Polish government to
establish a functioning economy led to
rising crime rates in Poland Germans
obviously read about this problem
establishing the stereotype afterwards
since then a lot has changed the economy
has become better the people wealthier
and the country overall safer an article
by the Deutsche Welle
the German public international
broadcaster suggests then in 2014 Crimea
and Germany have gone up by two percent
while crime rates in Poland that are
falling constantly dropped by another
14% both countries are now almost
equally safe but the stereotype still
persist as it has with the one of
Germans being Nazis at this point you
hopeful you don’t think of me as neither
a thief nor a Nazi just as I don’t think
of all Americans as unhealthy and
McDonald aiding wearing cowboy boots and
a hat watching the Kardashians or
screaming at the TV because the New York
Giants just fumbled the ball
but why is that it is because I’ve spent
time in America learning about the
people and learning about the culture
and even though this gave me an insight
on how the country is like sometimes
there is still a prejudice that I didn’t
even know I had but that existed on a
subconscious level when that happened I
wanted to know more about why I had this
particular prejudice like myself
psychologists have always been
interested and knowing more about how
much prejudices humans really have but
only in recent years a new scientific
study method has helped us evaluate that
the implicit association test or IAT in
this test individuals connect an
attribute to a concept so basically
explain the high school vocabulary if
you think that math is absolutely boring
and you fall asleep in every class you
would connect attributes like bad or
boring to the word math very quickly on
the contrary if you like English you
would associate words like good or fun
with them afterwards your results would
suggest a strong preference of English
over math this test can also be applied
to gender nationality or race to test
biases towards a certain group of people
measuring this the inventors of the IIT
Corp psychologists Mars are in our
banaji and Anthony G Greenwald wrote a
book about their experiences with the
tests and other studies that they
conducted over years their word blind
spot hidden biases of good people
describes really well what they found
out their studies concluded that
although we might not always be aware of
it we all have unconscious biases
sometimes even towards a group of people
we consciously support these results
were not only shocking to the
psychologists but also to people who
took the IAT or read the book as they
saw how deeply stereotypes are
implemented in our society and as I saw
that there even natural as it is in
human nature to categorize people and
even though it is so common for us to
put people in the box we need to realize
that relying on prejudices as a tool to
describe individuals leads to a worse
world where we disrespect
instead of accepting each other when we
meet a new person for example we might
assume something about this person but
we need to look past that and overcome
the later Horsa as I like to call it at
the beginning of this talk I told your
riddle now think back to what your
answer to it in your mind maybe you knew
it instantly or you might still have no
clue that the surgeon is in fact just a
mother of the child in the car accident
the prejudice of a surgeon being male is
that significant in our society it is in
fact a pretty common prejudice the more
important part is though that you learn
from it and that the next time that
someone asks you this riddle you won’t
be able to answer it’s the mother
instantly but sometimes it is not that
easy to learn from our prejudices so in
order to achieve that we need to be open
to people and we need to be open to
change
a study by Julia Zimmerman and Fran’s
Nair suggests that through travel we
strengthen our big five personality
dimensions one of which being openness
to experience with such an openness we
are more ready to critique our health
beliefs and adapt a new viewpoint
finishing this talk I want you to keep
in mind that prejudice is a learned
trait you are not born prejudiced you’re
taught it and if you want you can ignore
your prejudices overcome them and look
beyond what we as a society just assume thank you
yato that you don’t need to answer right
away but that I want you to keep in mind
a father in the Sun are driving on the
highway and the two men get into a
horrible car accident the father dies
and his son survives but he severely
wounded he gets rushed into the hospital
but when it is time for surgery the
surgeon says I can’t operate on him he
is my son who is the surgeon please keep
the answer in your mind and don’t say it
out loud with that said hi my name is
Damon Wade it’s been 15 yahoo hide one
is call most or chelyn now think about
what you’ve just heard about me in
German as everyone does when meeting a
new person you probably have an image
about me in your head but was that image
shaped by my nationality rather than by
my personality maybe some of you put me
in a box or you might have been thinking
about the pretty common German
stereotypes and you know view me as a
leader who wasn’t wearing super punctual
guy with no sense of humor who’s been
drinking beer and eating sausages since
the age of three at the Oktoberfest and
although some of these stereotypes are
true don’t worry I don’t drink but I do
have later wasn’t oh and I don’t blame
you for having these beliefs as they
come from somewhere maybe they stem from
an experience that you had with a
country or group or something you’ve
heard about them throughout my life I’ve
always encountered different types of
prejudices as I grew up in a household
that was influenced by two very
different cultures from my mom came to
German influence and from my dad the
Polish part constantly living between
these two worlds was the only thing that
made me unique to my peers while I was
growing up my family also lived in both
countries for multiple years age knowing
the languages and being comfortable with
both cultures make me feel German and
polish at the same time such that when I
was seven years old I saw no difference
between me and my peers and felt at home
in both countries as you can imagine but
this time the world seemed like a fair
and say
place to the seven-year-old me second
grade had just recently begun and I had
switched schools now receiving my
education in Poland I was a very
outgoing kid and started to make new
friends quickly and soon people that
knew me would know about my background
as well but that was the first time that
I really encountered prejudices I
remember that in one normal day I went
out on the hallway to get some water and
when I came back two of my friends were
marching through the middle of the room
with their fingers over their lips
signalizing a short mustache what
shocked me most a moment though or their
right hands they held him up making a
Nazi salute while looking at me I stood
in the doorframe closely following what
was taking place right in front of me my
stomach became heavy tears came to my
eyes and I didn’t know what to say or to
do I was seven years old and I knew
about the horrible crimes the Nazis had
committed but I didn’t do it
neither did my parents nor grandparents
and I knew the Germany was so different
from what it had been in the 1930s or
40s that day I experienced the harsh
reality of being judged because of Eros
from the seven-year-old me didn’t
realize what big concept was behind it
but I knew it was something completely
wrong as I grew older I encountered more
and more stereotypes in my everyday life
fast forward from second to eighth grade
and six years have passed I found myself
in a completely new environment studying
in Germany one afternoon I was sitting
in a class and one of my peers made a
mistake in his work as he couldn’t find
his eraser he just decided to scream out
if someone had taken it instantly one
guy sitting right next to me stated that
the Polish guy right here has probably
taken the eraser quickly everyone turned
their heads towards me staring at me as
if the statement was true the guy next
to me even started to check my pencil
case looking for the eraser he believed
was there he didn’t find anything but
the humiliation was still there
and although it is pretty obvious where
the stereotype about Germans came from
the prejudice of poles being thieves is
not that obvious to non-germans the two
biases have a common point though and
that is their origin
they both stem from a event or
historical time period and are now all
beliefs that were true at some point but
not anymore
during the time of communist influence
Poland was way less wealthy than its
Western neighbor Germany and to quote a
Washington Post article from 1918 the
nation was nineteen point four billion
dollars in debt at the end of 1979
meanwhile the cost of imported oil and
grain have reached billions of dollars
and meat shortages are running at
500,000 tons a year so one could say the
Polish economy wasn’t great and this
inability of the Polish government to
establish a functioning economy led to
rising crime rates in Poland Germans
obviously read about this problem
establishing the stereotype afterwards
since then a lot has changed the economy
has become better the people wealthier
and the country overall safer an article
by the Deutsche Welle
the German public international
broadcaster suggests then in 2014 Crimea
and Germany have gone up by two percent
while crime rates in Poland that are
falling constantly dropped by another
14% both countries are now almost
equally safe but the stereotype still
persist as it has with the one of
Germans being Nazis at this point you
hopeful you don’t think of me as neither
a thief nor a Nazi just as I don’t think
of all Americans as unhealthy and
McDonald aiding wearing cowboy boots and
a hat watching the Kardashians or
screaming at the TV because the New York
Giants just fumbled the ball
but why is that it is because I’ve spent
time in America learning about the
people and learning about the culture
and even though this gave me an insight
on how the country is like sometimes
there is still a prejudice that I didn’t
even know I had but that existed on a
subconscious level when that happened I
wanted to know more about why I had this
particular prejudice like myself
psychologists have always been
interested and knowing more about how
much prejudices humans really have but
only in recent years a new scientific
study method has helped us evaluate that
the implicit association test or IAT in
this test individuals connect an
attribute to a concept so basically
explain the high school vocabulary if
you think that math is absolutely boring
and you fall asleep in every class you
would connect attributes like bad or
boring to the word math very quickly on
the contrary if you like English you
would associate words like good or fun
with them afterwards your results would
suggest a strong preference of English
over math this test can also be applied
to gender nationality or race to test
biases towards a certain group of people
measuring this the inventors of the IIT
Corp psychologists Mars are in our
banaji and Anthony G Greenwald wrote a
book about their experiences with the
tests and other studies that they
conducted over years their word blind
spot hidden biases of good people
describes really well what they found
out their studies concluded that
although we might not always be aware of
it we all have unconscious biases
sometimes even towards a group of people
we consciously support these results
were not only shocking to the
psychologists but also to people who
took the IAT or read the book as they
saw how deeply stereotypes are
implemented in our society and as I saw
that there even natural as it is in
human nature to categorize people and
even though it is so common for us to
put people in the box we need to realize
that relying on prejudices as a tool to
describe individuals leads to a worse
world where we disrespect
instead of accepting each other when we
meet a new person for example we might
assume something about this person but
we need to look past that and overcome
the later Horsa as I like to call it at
the beginning of this talk I told your
riddle now think back to what your
answer to it in your mind maybe you knew
it instantly or you might still have no
clue that the surgeon is in fact just a
mother of the child in the car accident
the prejudice of a surgeon being male is
that significant in our society it is in
fact a pretty common prejudice the more
important part is though that you learn
from it and that the next time that
someone asks you this riddle you won’t
be able to answer it’s the mother
instantly but sometimes it is not that
easy to learn from our prejudices so in
order to achieve that we need to be open
to people and we need to be open to
change
a study by Julia Zimmerman and Fran’s
Nair suggests that through travel we
strengthen our big five personality
dimensions one of which being openness
to experience with such an openness we
are more ready to critique our health
beliefs and adapt a new viewpoint
finishing this talk I want you to keep
in mind that prejudice is a learned
trait you are not born prejudiced you’re
taught it and if you want you can ignore
your prejudices overcome them and look
beyond what we as a society just assume thank you
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