scholarly journals To Blame? The Effects of Moralized Feedback on Implicit Racial Bias

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Scaife ◽  
Tom Stafford ◽  
Andreas Bunge ◽  
Jules Holroyd
Keyword(s):  
Racial Bias ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Feedback Condition ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Behavioural Intentions ◽  
Implicit Racial Bias ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
Neutral Tone ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Intentions To Change

Implicit bias training (IBT) is now frequently provided by employers, in order to raise awareness of the problems related to implicit biases, and of how to safeguard against discrimination that may result. However, as Atewologun et al. (2018) have noted, there is very little systematicity in IBT, and there are many unknowns about what constitutes good IBT. One important issue concerns the tone of information provided regarding implicit bias. This paper engages this question, focusing in particular on the observation that much bias training is delivered in exculpatory tone, emphasising that individuals are not to blame for possessing implicit biases. Normative guidance around IBT exhorts practitioners to adopt this strategy (Moss-Racusin et al. 2014). However, existing evidence about the effects of moralized feedback about implicit bias is equivocal (Legault et al. 2011; Czopp et al. 2006). Through a series of studies, culminating in an experiment with a pre-registered analysis plan, we develop a paradigm for evaluating the impact of moralized feedback on participants’ implicit racial bias scores. We also conducted exploratory analyses of the impact on their moods, and behavioural intentions. Our results indicated that an exculpatory tone, rather than a blaming or neutral tone, did not make participants less resistant to changing their attitudes and behaviours. In fact, participants in the blame condition had significantly stronger explicit intentions to change future behaviour than those in the ‘no feedback’ condition (see experiment 3). These results indicate that considerations of efficacy do not support the need for implicit bias feedback to be exculpatory. We tease out the implications of these findings, and directions for future research.

The Mixed Outcomes of Taking Ownership for Implicit Racial Biases

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (10) ◽  
pp. 1424-1434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Cooley ◽  
Ryan F. Lei ◽  
Taylor Ellerkamp
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Prejudice Reduction ◽  
Implicit Measure ◽  
Implicit Racial Bias ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
Explicit Prejudice ◽  
Mixed Outcomes ◽  
Potential Strategy

One potential strategy for prejudice reduction is encouraging people to acknowledge, and take ownership for, their implicit biases. Across two studies, we explore how taking ownership for implicit racial bias affects the subsequent expression of overt bias. Participants first completed an implicit measure of their attitudes toward Black people. Then we either led participants to think of their implicit bias as their own or as stemming from external factors. Results revealed that taking ownership for high implicit racial bias had diverging effects on subsequent warmth toward Black people (Study 1) and donations to a Black nonprofit (Study 2) based on people’s internal motivations to respond without prejudice (Internal Motivation Scale [IMS]). Critically, among those low in IMS, owning high implicit bias backfired, leading to greater overt prejudice and smaller donations. We conclude that taking ownership of implicit bias has mixed outcomes—at times amplifying the expression of explicit prejudice.

The Effect of Implicit Racial Bias on Recognition of Other-Race Faces

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobiasz Trawinski ◽  
Araz Aslanian ◽  
Olivia S. Cheung
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
The Other ◽  
Extensive Experience ◽  
Ability Test ◽  
Implicit Racial Bias ◽  
Recognition Ability

Previous research has established a possible link between recognition performance, individuation experience, and implicit racial bias of other-race faces. However, it remains unclear how implicit racial bias might influence other-race face processing in observers with relatively extensive experience with the other race. Here we examined how recognition of other-race faces might be modulated by observers’ implicit racial bias, in addition to the effects of experience and face recognition ability. Caucasian participants in a culturally diverse city completed a memory task for Asian and Caucasian faces, an implicit association test, an experience questionnaire towards Asians and Caucasians, and a face recognition ability test. Overall, participants showed significantly better recognition performance for other- than own-race faces. More importantly, recognition performance for other-race faces was positively predicted by increased face recognition ability, experience with Asians, and negatively predicted by increased positive bias towards Asians, which was modulated by an interaction between face recognition ability and implicit bias, with the effect of implicit bias observed predominantly in observers with high face recognition ability. Moreover, significant differences were observed among the positions of the first two fixations when participants learned the other-race faces, with the first fixation modulated by the effect of experience and the second fixation modulated by the interaction between implicit bias and face recognition ability. Taken together, these findings suggest the complexity in understanding the perceptual and socio-cognitive influences on the other-race effect, and that observers with high face recognition ability may more likely evaluate racial features involuntarily when recognizing other-race faces.

Implicit Bias and Multilingual Assessment in School-Based Speech-Language Pathologists

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Marisa Nelson ◽  
Laura Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Demographic Factors ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigrants ◽  
School Based ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
The Impact

Purpose: The purpose of this research was (a) to examine school-based speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') implicit attitudes toward immigrants and how these relate to prioritization and use of best practices when assessing multilingual children and (b) to determine if key demographic factors relate to the use and prioritization of these best practices. Method: Eighty-six certified SLPs ranked how they prioritize and use best practices in multilingual assessments and completed an online immigrant Implicit Association Test. Results: The majority of participants exhibited a strong implicit bias against immigrants (median D-score of 0.84, interquartile range: 0.49), but no significant relationship was found between increasing bias and lower prioritization or use of best practices. Increased years working as an SLP and increasingly distant personal relationships to immigration were related to lower prioritization and use of some best practices. An unexpected association included increased reported use of interpreters with increasing implicit bias against immigrants. Conclusions: This research found a strong implicit bias against immigrants among participating school-based SLPs, consistent with previous work detailing health professionals' preferences for ingroups over outgroups. It adds to the call for further research into the impact of implicit biases on clinical practice, and the methods and merits of addressing implicit biases in targeted populations such as SLPs. This study also identified demographic factors associated with decreased prioritization and use of certain best practices when assessing multilingual children. More work is needed to learn how to mitigate these factors to ensure culturally sensitive clinical practice. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16799638

scholarly journals Historical roots of implicit bias in slavery

2019 ◽  
pp. 201818816 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Keith Payne ◽  
Heidi A. Vuletich ◽  
Jazmin L. Brown-Iannuzzi
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Implicit Racial Bias ◽  
Explicit Bias ◽  
Black Residents ◽  
Structural Inequalities

Implicit racial bias remains widespread, even among individuals who explicitly reject prejudice. One reason for the persistence of implicit bias may be that it is maintained through structural and historical inequalities that change slowly. We investigated the historical persistence of implicit bias by comparing modern implicit bias with the proportion of the population enslaved in those counties in 1860. Counties and states more dependent on slavery before the Civil War displayed higher levels of pro-White implicit bias today among White residents and less pro-White bias among Black residents. These associations remained significant after controlling for explicit bias. The association between slave populations and implicit bias was partially explained by measures of structural inequalities. Our results support an interpretation of implicit bias as the cognitive residue of past and present structural inequalities.

Empathy Intervention to Reduce Implicit Bias in Pre-Service Teachers

2018 ◽  
Vol 122 (2) ◽  
pp. 670-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise K. Whitford ◽  
Andrea M. Emerson
Keyword(s):  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
White Female ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Control Group Design ◽  
Group Design ◽  
Linguistically Diverse Students ◽  
The Impact

There have been long-term concerns regarding discriminatory discipline practices used with culturally and linguistically diverse students, with little research on the impact teacher-centered empathy interventions may have on this population. This randomized pretest–posttest control group design investigates the ability of a brief empathy-inducing intervention to improve the implicit bias of pre-service teachers, as measured by the Implicit Association Test. We found the empathy intervention statistically significant at decreasing the implicit bias of White female pre-service teachers toward Black individuals ( F = 7.55, η2 = 0.22, p = 0.01). Implications and future research are discussed, including extended intervention periods.

Aversive Racism: Foundations, Impact, and Future Directions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Murrell
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Intergroup Bias ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Aversive Racism ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Bias And Discrimination

The concept of aversive racism has had a significant impact on theory, research, and practice devoted to better understanding bias, discrimination, and persistent disparities based on social identity group such as race, gender, social class, and so on. Originally developed to better explain subtle forms of bias toward racial and minoritized groups, this concept has been extended to understand the impact of disparities in a range of diverse settings, such as intergroup relations, health outcomes, fairness in employment setting, intergroup conflict, educational outcomes, racial bias in policing, experiences of stress and mental health issues, and persistent economic disparities. A core facet of the aversive framework paradigm is that because of human biases that are deeply rooted within a historical context and reinforced by ongoing societal ideologies, unintentional and subtle forms of discrimination emerge and persist. Given that these subtle forms of bias and discrimination exist within otherwise well-intentioned individuals, strategies to eliminate them require understanding the complexity of the aversive racism phenomenon in order to develop effective social interventions. This article reviews the foundation, research, and impact of this important body of work. In addition, the concept of aversive racism is discussed in connection to emerging research on microaggressions and unconscious (implicit) bias in order to create a more integrated framework that can shape future research and applications. Lastly, practical implications for organizations and future directions are explored, such as using social identity as a theoretical lens, including global perspectives on intergroup bias and leveraging emerging work on intersectionality, as useful perspectives to extend the aversive racism framework. Setting a future agenda for research and practice related to aversive racism is key to greater understanding of how to reduce intergroup bias and discrimination through interventions that cut across traditional academic and discipline boundaries as one approach to create meaningful and long-lasting social impact.

scholarly journals Stability and Change in Implicit Bias

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 854-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi A. Vuletich ◽  
B. Keith Payne
Keyword(s):  
Racial Bias ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Structural Inequality ◽  
Stability And Change ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Original Interpretation ◽  
Individual Scores

Can implicit bias be changed? In a recent longitudinal study, Lai and colleagues (2016, Study 2) compared nine interventions intended to reduce racial bias across 18 university campuses. Although all interventions changed participants’ bias on an immediate test, none were effective after a delay. This study has been interpreted as strong evidence that implicit biases are difficult to change. We revisited Lai et al.’s study to test whether the stability observed reflected persistent individual attitudes or stable environments. Our reanalysis ( N = 4,842) indicates that individual biases did not return to preexisting levels. Instead, campus means returned to preexisting campus means, whereas individual scores fluctuated mostly randomly. Campus means were predicted by markers of structural inequality. Our results are consistent with the theory that implicit bias reflects biases in the environment rather than individual dispositions. This conclusion is nearly the opposite of the original interpretation: Although social environments are stable, individual implicit biases are ephemeral.

scholarly journals Why someone did not stop them? Aversive racism and the responsibility of bystanders

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey J. Murrell
Keyword(s):  
Bystander Effect ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Aversive Racism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Effective Strategies ◽  
Competency Based ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine whether the impact of persistent racial bias, discrimination and racial violence is facilitated by otherwise well-intentioned individuals who fail to act or intercede. Utilizing the aversive racism framework, the need to move beyond awareness raising to facilitate behavioral changes is discussed. Examining the unique lens provided by the aversive racism framework and existing research, the bystander effect provides important insights on recent acts of racial violence such as the murder of Mr. George Floyd. Some promise is shown by the work on effective bystander behavior training and highlights the need for shared responsibility in preventing the outcomes of racial violence and discrimination to create meaningful and long-lasting social change.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses literature based on the aversive racism framework together with the literature on the bystander effect to understand the factors, conditions and consequences for lack of intervention when the victim is African American. This paper also provides evidence and theory-based recommendations for strategies to change passive bystanders into active allies.FindingsThe use of the aversive racism framework provides a powerful lens to help explain the inconsistencies in the bystander effect based on the race of the victim. The implications for intervention models point to the need for behavioral and competency-based approaches that have been shown to provide meaningful change.Practical implicationsSeveral different approaches to address incidents of racial aggression and violence have been developed in the past. However, given the principles of aversive racism, a unique approach that considers the inconsistencies between self-perceptions and actions is needed. This sets a new agenda for future research and meaningful behavioral intervention programs that seek to equip bystanders to intercede in the future.Social implicationsThe need to address and provide effective strategies to reduce the incidence of racial aggression and violence have wide-ranging benefits for individuals, communities and society.Originality/valueBy connecting the aversive racism framework to the bystander effect, the need for different models for developing responsive and active bystanders can be more effectively outlined.

scholarly journals Project Inclusive Genetics: Exploring the impact of patient-centered counseling training on physical disability bias in the prenatal setting

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0255722
Author(s):  
Emma Vaimberg ◽  
Lindsay Demers ◽  
Eric Ford ◽  
Maya Sabatello ◽  
Blair Stevens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Physical Disability ◽  
Clinical Decision Making ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
Patient Centered ◽  
Educational Module ◽  
Clinical Recommendations ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
The Impact

Purpose There is robust research examining the negative impact of racial and socioeconomic implicit bias on healthcare provider clinical decision-making. However, other under-studied important biases are likely to impact clinical care as well. The goal of this study was to explore the presence of bias against people with physical disability among a heterogeneous group of healthcare workers and trainees and to evaluate the effect of implicit association testing and an educational module on this bias. Method The study was composed of a one-hour web-based survey and educational module. The survey included an explicit disability bias assessment, disability Implicit Association Tests (IATs), demographic collection, and pre- and post- module clinical vignettes of prenatal patient scenarios. In addition to providing counseling to hypothetical patients, participants also indicated their personal preferences on genetic testing and termination. The educational module focused on the principles of patient-centered counseling. Results The collected data reflects responses from 335 participants. Within this sample, there were both explicit and implicit biases towards individuals with physical disabilities. Prior to the IAT and educational module, when respondents were tasked with providing genetic testing recommendations, implicit biases and personal preferences for genetic testing and termination influenced respondents’ clinical recommendations. Importantly, having previous professional experience with individuals with disabilities diminished biased clinical recommendations prior to the intervention. In response to the IAT and educational intervention, the effect of implicit bias and personal preferences on clinical recommendations decreased. Conclusions This study demonstrates how bias against a marginalized group exists within the medical community and that personal opinions can impact clinical counseling. Importantly, our findings suggest that there are strategies that can be easily implemented into curricula to address disability bias, including formal educational interventions and the addition of professional experiences into healthcare professional training programs.

scholarly journals Understanding Healthcare Students’ Experiences of Racial Bias: A Narrative Review of the Role of Implicit Bias and Potential Interventions in Educational Settings

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (23) ◽  
pp. 12771
Author(s):  
Olivia Rochelle Joseph ◽  
Stuart W. Flint ◽  
Rianna Raymond-Williams ◽  
Rossby Awadzi ◽  
Judith Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Racial Bias ◽  
Narrative Review ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Healthcare Education ◽  
Attrition Rates ◽  
Implicit Racial Bias ◽  
Healthcare Students ◽  
Healthcare Settings

Implicit racial bias is a persistent and pervasive challenge within healthcare education and training settings. A recent systematic review reported that 84% of included studies (31 out of 37) showed evidence of slight to strong pro-white or light skin tone bias amongst healthcare students and professionals. However, there remains a need to improve understanding about its impact on healthcare students and how they can be better supported. This narrative review provides an overview of current evidence regarding the role of implicit racial bias within healthcare education, considering trends, factors that contribute to bias, and possible interventions. Current evidence suggests that biases held by students remain consistent and may increase during healthcare education. Sources that contribute to the formation and maintenance of implicit racial bias include peers, educators, the curriculum, and placements within healthcare settings. Experiences of implicit racial bias can lead to psychosomatic symptoms, high attrition rates, and reduced diversity within the healthcare workforce. Interventions to address implicit racial bias include an organizational commitment to reducing bias in hiring, retention, and promotion processes, and by addressing misrepresentation of race in the curriculum. We conclude that future research should identify, discuss, and critically reflect on how implicit racial biases are enacted and sustained through the hidden curriculum and can have detrimental consequences for racial and ethnic minority healthcare students.

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