According to a big crop of recent studies, you’re sexist and you hate the poor. Well, not you personally. Except – quite possibly you personally, actually, even if you believe otherwise. In one study, men liked the idea of dating a hypothetical smart woman, but were less keen on actually meeting a real one. Another found that both sexes judge women, and only women, to be less credible when they’re angry. A third found widespread subconscious bias in favour of rich people, even among those who denied it; a fourth concluded that food tastes better in sexist packaging – “big and filling” for men, “light and healthy” for women. And as we know from research into “implicit bias”, being on the receiving end of such prejudice (being female, poor or black, say) doesn’t mean you don’t also harbour it yourself.

Findings like these typically trigger outrage that such antediluvian attitudes persist. But here’s a troubling thought: what if our getting righteously cross about them makes matters worse? The psychological pitfall here is known as “moral satiation”: the act of calling out others for their prejudice makes you feel you’ve done your job, and need do nothing more, whereas in fact you’ve probably just solidified your own unwarranted assumption that you’d never fall prey to such biases. Something similar happens now that every online hothead is fluent in the previously specialist language of cognitive biases and logical fallacies. There’s no easier way to avoid introspection than to accuse someone else of a bias or fallacy – even though seeing yourself as less vulnerable to them is another cognitive bias. The caller-out glides smugly off into the sunset, confident their morality’s in splendid working order.

The deeper problem here is that we think of prejudice and bias as anomalies – occasional brain glitches that need stamping out, and from which good people can reasonably aspire to be free. Yet all the evidence suggests they’re basic tools of human reasoning: we must make snap judgments, on the basis of various shortcuts, or we’d be unable to function. Seen this way, hiring a talented teacher over a useless one is still a form of discrimination; the difference is that it’s fair and sensible, while discriminating on the basis of skin colour isn’t. (We even discriminate among kinds of discrimination!) To be pedantic about it, then, “stamping out discrimination” is an undesirable and unattainable goal. What matters is discriminating well.

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This all sounds like word games, but it really isn’t, as the social scientist Adam Sandel shows in his book The Place Of Prejudice, which argues that prejudices – defined broadly – are how we make sense of the world. If you think of prejudice per se as something it’s possible to eliminate, it’s tempting to take a further step and imagine you’re immune from it yourself. Which, ironically, makes you far more susceptible to bigotry: nobody’s more likely to be sexist or racist than the person who thinks they can’t be. It’s a warning we should all heed. Well, not me, obviously – I’m fine. I mean the rest of you.

oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com