Chapter 3: From LEGOs to Metal Bands

Okay, so we've pulled back the curtain a bit on what biases are and why our brains are basically hardwired for these nifty (and sometimes not-so-nifty) shortcuts. But honestly, the burning question is: where do these things actually come from? It's not like we're born with a user manual that says "Warning: This human comes pre-loaded with the following biases. Side effects may include jumping to conclusions and occasionally ordering the same pizza for six years straight." (Which I've absolutely done. No regrets.)

If biases were ingredients in a recipe, they'd be this weird concoction of society, culture, and our own personal face-plants through life. It's like making a mental soup where everyone throws something different into the pot, and somehow, we all end up with a unique flavor of bias.

The Society Soup: The Pre-installed Defaults

First things first: society. This is the ultimate environmental factor, like the soil a plant grows in. From the moment we arrive, tiny and squishy, we're just bombarded with messages about how the world supposedly works.

Growing up in India, I was completely marinated in a family-first mindset that felt as natural as breathing. Kids depend on their parents way beyond childhood, living at home until marriage (sometimes even after!), and parents have a say in everything from career choices to who you'll spend your life with. It's like having a permanent safety net that catches you when you fall, but also sometimes tangles you up when you're trying to fly.

I remember watching American movies as a teenager and feeling genuinely confused (and a little horrified) at scenes where 18-year-olds were expected to move out and fend for themselves. "What kind of cold-hearted society kicks their children out?" I'd think, munching on home-cooked snacks my mom had just lovingly prepared. It was like watching aliens with their weird alien customs.

Then life threw me out into the world anyway, and I had my "oh, NOW I get it" moment. Suddenly faced with overwhelming decisions, inevitable failures, and no parental bubble-wrap to cushion my falls, I finally understood the method behind what I'd seen as madness. Those "cruel" Western parents weren't abandoning their kids – they were preparing them for reality in ways my cozy upbringing hadn't.

As the saying goes, "We don't see the world as it is; we see it as we are." My judgment about Western parenting wasn't based on facts – it was based on societal norms I'd absorbed without even realizing it. I'd been running society's default settings without ever checking the preferences menu.

This is exactly how societal norms work – they're those unwritten rules, the "everyone knows this" kind of stuff that gets downloaded into our brains before we even know what's happening.

Think about gender roles, for example. For ages, it felt like boys got the LEGOs and toy trucks because they were supposedly builders and adventurers, while girls got the dolls and play kitchens because, you know, nurturing. These expectations were baked into stories, reinforced in classrooms, and generally just hung in the air. As kids grow up, they internalize this stuff, and bam – biases about what men and women are "naturally" good at start taking root. It's like our brains were programmed with Windows 95 and haven't quite gotten the memo about the update.

Society also loves to keep stereotypes on repeat. These are those super-simplified, often unfair ideas about entire groupsof people. They're the brain's lazy mode – a shortcut to categorize people instantly, even though reality is way more complex. It's like trying to sum up Game of Thrones with "some people fought over a chair" – technically accurate but missing ALL the good stuff.

My favorite personal example of stereotype bias happened during a trip to Nepal. I was on a bus when I met this man in his 40s – simple clothes, thick glasses, soft-spoken, professorial demeanor. My brain immediately filed him under "definitely a teacher or academic." I even started mentally preparing questions about local education systems.

Imagine my shock when he mentioned he was the lead vocalist in a heavy metal band! My brain literally couldn't compute this information at first. A soft-spoken, scholarly-looking guy headbanging and screaming into a microphone? It was like watching my gentle grandma do a kickflip on a skateboard – my brain just short-circuited.

This is what psychologists call "representativeness bias" – where our brains quickly categorize people based on how they match our pre-existing stereotypes. My brain had a "folder" labeled "what heavy metal vocalists look like," and this guy's file got sent to the completely wrong department! It was a humbling reminder of how quickly and automatically these biases operate, even when we're not aware of them.

Culture's Currents: Fish Don't Know They're Wet

Next up: culture - society's sneakier, more personal cousin. This is maybe the most immersive influence. It's like the water fish swim in – they don't even know they're wet until someone takes them out. Culture hands us our starter pack of values, beliefs, and traditions – the roadmap for how to navigate life and judge others. From what kind of breakfast cereal is "normal" to how close you stand to someone in line, culture is pulling the strings like a puppeteer with invisible threads.

I had a major "fish out of water" moment when I moved from India to the West. Back home, I was used to a world where help was just a shout away. Need to move apartments? Call five friends, and they'll show up with snacks and terrible moving advice. Need a ride to the airport at 4 AM? Your neighbor will probably volunteer before you even finish asking. It's not that people are necessarily nicer – it's just that the cultural fabric is woven differently, with interdependence stitched right into the pattern.

Then I moved West, and suddenly I was that confused fish, gasping at how differently things worked. I remember my first apartment move, waiting for friends to offer help, only to realize that here, you're supposed to... hire people? Or explicitly ask for help rather than wait for offers? It felt bizarrely formal and distant to me. But it wasn't about people being less helpful – it was a whole different cultural approach to independence and boundaries.

As the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Western culture knows what it's about too – individual self-reliance. Meanwhile, collectivist cultures like India's are more about group harmony and mutual dependence. Neither is inherently right or wrong, but when you're raised in one system, the other can feel as alien as finding pineapple on pizza.

Consider the difference between cultures that value individualism versus those that value collectivism. In individualistic cultures (think parts of North America or Western Europe), it's all about personal achievement and standing out. In collectivist cultures (many parts of Asia, Latin America), the group's harmony and well-being come first. Someone from an individualistic background might see a collectivist person as lacking ambition, while the collectivist person might see the individualist as selfish. Neither is inherently wrong, but our cultural lens can make us perceive it that way.

These deep cultural differences can lead to biases. We might unconsciously prefer people who operate on our cultural wavelength and feel uncomfortable with those who use a different one. It's like our brain's Wi-Fi connects automatically to familiar networks but needs a manual password for unfamiliar ones.

Your Personal Journey: Where Your Brain Writes Its Own Fan Fiction

While society and culture are the massive ocean currents shaping our biases, your own personal journey? That's the unique way you've learned to swim. It's a massive player in the bias game.Every person you've met, every awkward first date (mine are legendary, trust me), every triumph, every faceplant – it all leaves an imprint, contributing to the unique set of biases you carry around.

Why? Because experiences create emotional sticky notes in our brains. And those sticky notes can sway our future decisions. Had a rough encounter with someone from a particular group? Your brain might slap a negative label on the entire group. This is called generalization, and it's like your brain saying, "Okay, learned my lesson from that one interaction, applying it to everyone now. Saves time!" (Your brain is very efficient, if not always fair.)

I had a painful lesson in this when I was 12 years old. I was OBSESSED with cricket (it's like baseball but makes sense... sorry, American friends) and particularly idolized this one player who seemed to embody everything good about the sport. I knew he was a great human being – I mean, all the commercials he appeared in portrayed him that way, so it had to be true, right?

Then came the match-fixing scandal that rocked my world. My hero, my role model, was implicated in something that undermined the very integrity of the sport he represented. It was like finding out Santa Claus was running a pyramid scheme on the side. I was devastated.

That experience left a permanent sticky note in my brain that said "Even your heroes are flawed humans." And honestly? It was probably a healthy bias to develop. Since then, I've maintained a healthy skepticism about public figures. I never fully buy into the polished, perfect images presented to us. I take the good from them, learn from what they do well, but remember they're just humans in fancy packaging.

The incredible power of personal experiences highlights something important: getting out there and interacting with a diverse range of people can be a powerful bias-buster. The more we connect with people from different walks of life, the more chances we have to challenge those ingrained ideas and build a picture of the world that's more nuanced and accurate.

The Grand Finale: A Symphony of Influence

Here's where it all comes together. Society, culture, and your personal adventures aren't just three separate ingredients sitting in a bowl. They're constantly mixing and influencing each other in ways that can be tough to untangle. It's less of a solo performance and more like a symphony where every musician is trying to play a different song.

For example, the society and culture you grew up in can shape the kinds of personal experiences you're likely to have. If you live in a place where negative stereotypes about a certain group are everywhere, you might be more likely to perceive interactions negatively with people from that group, which then strengthens those biases you already picked up. It's a feedback loop from heck, like when your phone gets too close to a speaker and creates that ear-splitting audio feedback.

But your personal experiences can also be the rebels in the story! If you have a close friend who happens to belong to a group that's often stereotyped in the media, your personal experience with your friend can override those negative stereotypes. Your brain says, "Wait a minute, that stereotype doesn't match my real-life data point!"

It reminds me of that scene in "Ratatouille" where the harsh food critic takes a bite of the ratatouille and is instantly transported back to his childhood. Our personal experiences have that same power to break through layers of conditioning and reveal a more authentic truth.

Ultimately, our biases are this complex tapestry woven from the threads of societal messages, cultural norms, and the unique story of our own lives. Recognizing how all these factors play together is essential for understanding why we see the world the way we do, and for doing the work to create a world that's more fair and just for everyone.

Phew! That was a deep dive into the origins of bias. We've seen how our environment and experiences leave their mark - from my Indian family-first upbringing to my metal vocalist stereotype fail. But there's another massive piece of this cognitive puzzle we haven't explored yet – something that acts like a powerful current, often steering our biases without us even noticing. It's our emotions. Get ready, because next time, we're talking about how feelings are the secret sauce (or sometimes, the hidden poison) in the world of bias. And trust me, my emotional roller coaster stories make my pizza loyalty look positively rational in comparison.