Kamala Harris must brace for a rogue wave of unconscious bias

For Vice President Kamala Harris, it’s not going to stay this easy — not because Trump will rediscover his strategic edge, and not because polls will tighten, as they always do, but because Harris is up against an omnipresent opponent that we cannot see, and which she likely will not name.

As a social psychologist and professor of African American studies, I have spent decades studying how biases affect perceptions of Black people and Black women in particular. The research often reveals patterns that are not pretty. An abbreviated, intense general election is about to test those patterns on a national scale, which means the tenor of the campaign is about to change. 

"Brat Summer" is over. Cue Tantrum Autumn. 

Polling indicates that Harris has gotten her sea legs early in this race. There is an energizing effect of her younger, more diverse profile, particularly among women and young voters. 

Post Labor Day, however, coverage of the vice president will shift from the drama of President Biden’s withdrawal and the newness of her campaign to Harris herself. As that happens, the scientific literature suggests that her candidacy will run up against layers of bias that have primed the electorate to see her as less likable and less competent over time, and that are quite sticky once they set in. 

How the Harris campaign navigates these often unconscious and unspoken biases may go further than any other factor in determining the result.

Across cultures, psychologists have identified two fundamental dimensions of social perception: warmth — sometimes defined as likeability — and competence. Politicians who receive our votes tend to score highly on both. 

Unfortunately for Harris, women are often assessed as warm but not competent. This creates a higher barrier to convincing skeptical voters in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that she is up to the job.

Harris faces an additional degree of difficulty because Black women tend to rank lower on perceptions of warmth and competence. My own research explains why: Black women are perceived as less feminine than white women. The more stereotypically Black a woman appears, the less feminine she is perceived to be. Being a woman suppresses perceptions of competence while being Black negates the “warmth” boost she might otherwise receive from benevolent sexism.

These effects will surface in increasingly unsubtle ways. Cable news hosts will continue to describe a (warm) laugh as a (not warm) “cackle.” They may degrade her competence and femininity in tandem by suggesting that, as commander-in-chief, the generals she commands would overwhelm and “have their way with her.” 

Stereotyped portrayals will only grow more grotesque between now and November. Because she claimed the nomination so late in the electoral calendar, Harris will have limited time to correct course should these stereotypes stick.

Finally, the Harris campaign will contend with a phenomenon that social psychologists call “shifting standards.” When women outperform expectations — say, by becoming only the second woman nominated by a major party — the public reacts positively. As soon as those women fail to meet our now-heightened standard, however, we judge them more harshly than a man who turns in the same performance.

One experiment asked college students to manage a hypothetical, co-ed softball team. Managers were less likely to select women for the team, even when they had the same batting average and subjectively assessed athleticism as their male counterparts. 

When a woman hit a single, the managers were more likely to laud her performance than men who did the same — but also more likely to bench the women when forced to cut down the roster. The kicker: These effects held true regardless of the manager’s own gender.

In other words, Harris’s reward for overperforming sexist expectations on the campaign trail will be a heightened set of standards that both men and women will judge her more harshly should she fail to meet them. Should a press event or the scheduled September debate produce meme-worthy gaffes from both Harris and Trump, none of us will be surprised when Harris’s receives far more derision in the press — and perhaps among voters.

Hillary Clinton, easily the most-polled female politician in history and the closest real-life analogy to Harris, has experienced the effect of shifting standards firsthand. Over the course of her career, Clinton has enjoyed widespread popularity as a supporting figure, whether as first lady or secretary of state. Yet whenever she ran for president her popularity plummeted.

While the candidates and the country are not the same, these biases accumulate in the unconscious — which is why I remain skeptical that polls asking voters to consciously consider Harris’s identity capture their full effect. 

Biases can function like rogue waves, a phenomenon in which the frequency of smaller waves increases until the waves join into a larger, devastating wave capable of sinking even the sturdiest ships. The waves of bias could combine into a larger psychological wave that overwhelms the U.S.S. Harris-Walz on Nov. 5.

Psychology suggests several ways to strengthen the defenses. The campaign’s strategy so far suggests that — like the Obama campaign in 2012 — they are paying attention to the social science. 

Explicitly focusing on her identity risks surfacing stereotypes, which explains why Harris herself has been calculatedly demure when it comes to the historic nature of her candidacy. Exposure to images of “counter-stereotypes” — in Harris’s case, competence and strength as a prosecutor — can reduce bias. That may be one reason for her campaign’s heavy focus on her prosecutorial record at the expense of her supporting White House role. 

Aggressive use of surrogates to carry her message can also keep biases buried. When voters look solely at the vice president, unconscious biases begin to stir. When her policies, values and message come from mouths and faces that sound and look like their audience, the effect may be less pronounced. 

In that regard, an abbreviated general election campaign may work in Harris’s favor. The campaign’s strategy of flooding the zone with surrogates while scheduling fewer, higher-profile appearances for the candidate can prevent bias from setting in.

Ultimately, we won’t know what strategies work or don’t to combat bias in this election until after the votes are counted — and perhaps not even then. What we do know is that race and gender still loom large in our politics. And that awareness of the storms ahead is often how we avoid the worst of them.

Phillip Atiba Solomon is the chair and Carl I. Hovland Professor of African American Studies and professor of psychology at Yale University. He is also the co-founder and C.E.O. of the Center for Policing Equity, a nonprofit that focuses on making policing less racist, less deadly, and less pervasive.