6. We have two basically independent learning systems says Shankar Vedantam. The conventional conscious system, and a less understood “hidden brain” system, which automatically becomes fluent in “unspoken rules” (using association patterns in its environment). 7. Hidden brain associations can be unsettling — in a study, 70 percent of toddlers assigned nearly all positive adjectives to white faces, and negative ones to black faces. And black toddlers did the same. Whatever toddlers were explicitly taught, their hidden brain systems implicitly associate different races with different statuses (reflecting status patterns in their environment). Our society typically doesn’t understand such hidden brain effects. 8. Adults also have hidden/involuntary biases, e.g., widespread workplace gender biases, or liberal “racism.” 9. Both TV shows and ads (and any other way of attaching beauty or glamor or glory or status, or their opposites) feed data into our unconscious implicit-association system. The contagious juxta-logic of “sex sells” applies to “status sells.” We’re all partly status seekers. And much status-seeking (and mimicking) is "hidden brain" driven. - http://bigthink.com/errors-we-live-by/beauty-and-duty-now-often-clash-how-art-works-on-hidden-brain-system