How Social Desirability Bias Could Derail the Election for Kamala Harris

The traumatic memory of November 8, 2016, makes me cautious when I imagine the possibility of Kamala Harris becoming the first woman President of the United States of America. Her racial identity as a mixed-race Black woman further fuels my anxiety, preying on the centuries-old fear that my fellow Americans are not ready to elect a woman—and especially a woman of color—to our highest political office. If history is a teacher, my fears are grounded in a phenomenon social scientists call the Bradley Effect or “social desirability bias.”

This phenomenon describes the discrepancy between what voters report as their opinions and attitudes on surveys or to pollsters—and their subsequent inaction in the voting booth. The Bradley Effect is named after a Black politician, Tom Bradley. He was Los Angeles’s widely popular mayor who ran for governor of California in 1982.  For weeks leading up to the election, opinion polls anointed him a prohibitive favorite to win the election, much like Hillary Clinton in 2016. But on Election Day, Bradley lost to his white opponent, George Deukmejian.

Social desirability bias goes to the core of what makes the jobs of political analysts and professional pollsters difficult. It captures the unhelpful human tendency to say one thing, but do another, often in direct opposition to what we say, because we want to be perceived as “socially desirable”—likable to others or feel good about ourselves.

Fear of the Bradley Effect’s impact was likely why Democrats and Republicans who oppose Donald Trump kept pushing for Joe Biden despite concerns about the latter’s fitness for the role. Now with Harris on the ticket—and her race and gender at play together—political analysts across party lines are not making any bets about results and even “imploring everyone to keep their expectations tempered.”

To manage such extreme uncertainty, we can benefit from understanding how social desirability bias may impact Harris. Having spent the last two decades studying, researching, and teaching about overcoming bias in public and private sectors globally, I am very familiar with the discomfort, shame, and guilt this topic triggers. Regardless of profession, role, or background, we would rather not talk about bias, and my discussions with thousands of people have clued me into why.

Contrary to popular beliefs, we are not born with bias. We weren’t born believing that men are stronger than women or that rich people are more hardworking than poor people. Rather, these stereotypes like all biases are learned mental habits. Neuropsychologist Donald Hebb described this phenomenon as “neurons that fire together, wire together.”

When we consciously or unconsciously succumb to stereotypes, they distort how we perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions. On election day, this means that a majority of voters—especially in swing states—won’t just report favoring Harris as they are doing now, but they will make the decision to vote for her. To bridge the gap between what voters say and do, they will need to perceive Harris—a mixed-race Black woman—as “Presidential,” something that’s never been done before.  

Many political hopefuls claim that just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it can’t happen. While that may be true, there’s too much at stake for us to leave the outcome solely to hope. The neurological process that activates bias explains how social desirability bias may impact Harris.

The process has three nodes: contact, trigger, and reaction or response. First, our minds make contact with the awareness of a person and their identities like race, gender, age, wealth, and profession. Second, that contact triggers in our minds a host of stored associations with that person and their identities. These associations arise from the unique inputs our minds have been exposed to from our trusted sources of information: family, friends, mentors, influencers, media, and education, and our personal experiences. Last, and here’s the important catch, we each have a choice: to react based on habits, or to respond differently. The Trump campaign is betting on the former, and Harris on the latter.

The bad news for Harris is that she is indeed the underdog. She is fighting an uphill battle because all Americans have been exposed to numerous stereotypes and lies associated with her race and gender. This is why the Trump campaign has attacked her as a DEI hire, not being smart, a radical, her laugh, and even her Blackness. These attacks will likely increase to elicit voters to react from fear, hate, and distrust, as his campaign successfully accomplished in 2016.

Now, the good news is that despite these attacks, Harris can win thanks to a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. In other words, just as biases are learned habits, they can be unlearned and replaced with new habits. There are five science-backed tools that I collectively call PRISM that can transform bias. Science shows that it takes as little as three weeks to build new habits as long as we practice regularly through our own volition or we are made to practice them by external inputs.

Read More: How The Brain Rewires Itself

PRISM is an acronym for Perspective-Taking, Prosocial Behavior, Individuation, Stereotype Replacement, and Mindfulness. We begin practicing PRISM with mindfulness and work our way backward to perspective-taking. Practicing PRISM is what helped me overcome social desirability bias and the many biases I had internalized about myself. And there is sufficient evidence to believe that if the Harris campaign and all of those who support her effectively apply these tools, they can overcome the risks associated with the Bradley Effect.

Mindfulness

This is the bedrock of the PRISM Toolkit. It is the practice of noticing and labeling stereotypes as stereotypes when they arise in our minds. Such a process of internally acknowledging stereotypes helps us notice their occurrence around us, whether in advertising, the news, or even in our conversation. Through this process we are clearing out the stored stereotypes in our minds as false ideas and reducing their power over the way we perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions.

Likely using this tool, the Harris campaign has deliberately avoided references to “glass ceilings” and being the first of any kind. Instead, they have emphasized aspects of her personal and professional life that are relatable to all. As much as her supporters are excited about the many firsts a Harris Presidency would mean, until election day, they must follow the Harris campaign’s lead because many of the voters she is trying to woo have never voted for a Black woman before. They need to perceive her as one of them, so they actuallyvote for her on election day. At the human perception level, emphasizing how she’s different subliminally creates a “me” versus “her” distinction.

Stereotype replacement

We must also become mindful of stereotypes and replacing them with real counter examples. This means visualizing real people who share Harris’s identities and who do defy stereotypes, people like Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Simone Biles, your neighbor, or best friend. We can practice this tool when we notice stereotypes in the media, in conversations, and in our minds. This practice helps us interrupt stereotypes and create new neural associations. The Harris campaign can incorporate strategies like counter-stereotypic imaging in their outreach and advertising to help voters weaken the stereotypes associated with her identities.

Individuation

This is the practice of decoupling stereotypes from individuals. So instead of being in ideas of others based on their racial, gender, or other identities, we are open to discovering the unique person they are. This tool helps strengthen curiosity, interest, and mental capacity to overcome fear and separation that undergirds most stereotypes. Projecting unique stories about Harris as someone who was raised by a single mother, is a prosecutor, and worked at McDonald’s are some ways her campaign can strengthen trust between her as an individual and the voters they are reaching out to.

Prosocial behavior

Practices that cultivate positive mental and emotional states—like kindness, compassion, and joy— oftentimes benefit ourselves and others. Prosocial behaviors are experiences that help us reach emotional states that reduce the negative affect, uncertainty, and fear associated with stereotyped groups of people. Some reasons why social desirability bias continues to influence voting decisions is because people are afraid and thereby they act from that emotion. Practicing prosocial behavior tools helps reduce that fear, allowing us to try something new. The Harris campaign has successfully mobilized their supporters to feel prosocial behaviors like joy and kindness. Until election day, they need to continue to build on this momentum and help undecided voters feel such states.

Perspective-taking

Humans are visual creatures. So a visualization practice of imagining possibilities of being beyond our lived experiences is key to combatting the Bradley Effect. Most effective politicians employ this tool when they ask voters to imagine and feel who they’d be after they vote for them. By emphasizing a future orientation with the slogan “we are not going back,” the Harris campaign is using this tool by inviting voters to expand our aperture of possibility. Their task ahead is to invite voters to not only imagine their vision for our nation but have them believe them.

Once we develop the habit of practicing PRISM, it becomes a part of our modus operandi. We practice mindfulness, stereotype replacement, individuation, prosocial behavior, or perspective-taking in our daily interactions with ourselves and with the external world. And through PRISM, we are able to find a deeper connection with ourselves and others, as well as expand our capacity to deal with difficult emotions, situations, and conversations.

While I can’t predict the outcome in November, the science assures me that practicing PRISM tools can significantly reduce the risks associated with social desirability bias. With less than two months to election day, it would behoove us to put these tools to practice.