I don't get this "implicit bias" concept. According to media and social media, if I deny that I'm a racist, then I'm just not aware of my implicit bias. Honest question, how is it this different from:
1, If you believe in Jesus, then you can walk on water. If you can't walk on water, then you don't truly believe in Jesus.
2, Chinese saying, "杀人诛心“，meaning that accusing one's motive is worse than killing that person, as the accused couldn't even defend against the accusation. Attacking the Motive is a logical fallacy, no?
3, Back in the 1960s in China, if you were born in a not-so-red family and denied that you were counter revolutionary, then you were just deeply counter revolutionary, and therefore deserved more severe punishment.
Since when people are not judged by their behavior but their thoughts that someone else assert?
Honest answer, generally people aren’t talking about judging people for their implicit biases, but asking them to be aware of them to prevent those biases from influencing their actions in ways they don’t intend. Those actions then may be judged, naturally.
Hopefully an example that’s not too prickly: I’m from the south of the US. I don’t have a southern accent (except when drunk or sleepy!). A lot of people, myself included, have an unconscious bias that people with southern accents are less intelligent than people without. However, I’ve known lots of smart people with southern accents, and lots of unintelligent people without them. I don’t know why I have this bias: it was instilled in me by the culture I grew up in, I guess. But, because I am aware of it, I can watch out for those reflexive feelings that make it more likely for me to dismiss something someone is saying just because of their accent. I can adjust my actions to align with the kind of unbiased person I’d like to be, even though I can’t control the lingering feelings the bias creates.
This is the general idea of wanting people to be aware of their implicit biases: not to judge them due to those biases, but to help them see that, due to societal or cultural or familial influence, they may not be living up to the kind of person they’d like to be. There’s a huge difference between someone who’s consciously racist and someone who has racist priors due to the culture they grew up in. Many in the latter group accidentally propagate racist systems, even though they would never want to do so if they had a conscious choice. But it’s hard for anyone to see how their subconscious affects their day-to-day opinions. The hope of teaching about implicit bias is that people can see its effect in their lives and make adjustments, hopefully reducing the systemic problems that people face in the process.
Yes, and as the grandparent comment pointed out, denying or questioning the existence of the bias is by itself treated as evidence of it. That's the vicious circle you can't win against - a non-falsifiable dogma.
Please see my sibling comment to yours. I don’t generally see this treated as a “dogma,” nor do I think it should be. It’s an important part of self-reflection.
Saying “I’m not a racist” may be treated as having failed to do that self-reflection in some camps, because usually, for most people, things are more nuanced. So a sign of having done that reflection is often an unwillingness to make such categorical statements about something as complex as our own internal motivations and feelings. I’m not sure whether or not that’s fair, but I would imagine that’s where some of that comes from.
I think this is accidental motte and bailey arguing. People are being fired/cancelled for "being racist". This is not the same "being racist" as you're now saying everyone is to some extent.
Calling two different things the same thing is always a problem, and weaponisable. Which is why people do it.
To my knowledge people generally are not saying that literally everyone has every implicit bias common in their societal groups. It’s saying that certain biases are particularly common among certain societal groups, and that it’s important to introspect your own life and consciousness to see which ones you have or don’t have. Each person has some subset of implicit biases determined by their experiences, their upbringing, and so on. The important thing about knowing and acknowledging that implicit biases are a thing is that it’s the first step towards understanding your own.
It is also important to realize that most humans are biased against admitting they’re wrong, and that it’s hard to see things you haven’t perceived before. So, it can be hard to recognize our own implicit biases without conscious and honest work. All anyone is saying is that doing that work can help to make everyone’s collective lives easier.
What's also easily weaponized is the tendency to assume that they don't have them. Observing one's own implicit bias takes work, while denying they exist is easy. Being asked to look makes you feel put-upon, and that feeling is easily turned into grievance.
So if you're on the lookout for weaponization, be sure to look around widely. None of us is immune to having our "common sense" flattered.
It's true. The constant accusations of "virtue signaling" are novel. "You don't really mean what you say; you just want people to think you believe it". It's quite annoying, but I soldier on.
So it seems like you're arguing against a point that I'm not making and a perception I don't hold, so it's hard for me to engage here.
Almost (probably everyone) has biases. That is nothing new, and I would think is uncontroversial. Allowing your biases to dictate your behavior in an uncritical way can be damaging, either for yourself or others. That I also think should be uncontroversial.
People who grew up in a given culture tend to have shared biases. Some of those will be useful, some will be harmful. This is not to say they that every member of that culture shares those biases. My guess is that what you're talking about is the tendency to assume that a particular member of some culture has a bias that is common in their culture as a whole (for example, to use a US-specific example, if I assume that any Southerner I meet is biased against socialistic ideas). This is clearly not always going to be accurate, but may be an assumption made for safety's sake when you're in a vulnerable population and you know that those biases can be damaging to you (if I'm secretly a communist living in the South, it may be better to hold that in on average to avoid problems).
I think the reason these conversations may seem "targeted" at well-off white people in the current cultural context isn't because other groups don't have biases (they do!), or that every white person holds a given bias (they don't!), but because well-off white people on average hold more power, and therefore their biases are as a consequence more likely to cause harm.
And also, sure, I'm sure there are people who go overboard with all of this, but that is true of literally any position. Letting the extremists define the discourse isn't going to help anything.
As a WASP, also from the south (the deep south, below the Gnat Line), I'm constantly reminded that I have an implicit bias however I've never seen nor heard of how to identify or measure such. It's really just that 'if you think this way then you have it', which is overwhelmingly unsatisfactory if it's indeed a problem I should solve. I should have awareness of what the conditions are measurements are so that I can address them appropriately. For instance if/when my doctor tells me to lose weight I need to know how much.
But this escapes me and no one seems to have a good answer. Until then I have to categorize it as an emotional response and handle it in the same way, which is basically just empathizing, consoling, and not necessarily fixing the root of the problem. I need to know what to measure and how to fix it: I've been through the corporate unconscious bias training a couple of times and it did none of that. Until then I'm a skeptic.
I was shocked with my own results from the gender/career bias test.
At the end of the day, the test doesn't tell you how to fix it, it shows you that these patterns of thought are deeply ingrained in how we think and the way to "fix" it is to actively go against the biases we have been trained on. There is are some good resources here as well. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/faqs.html#faq14
This output of this kind of test is determined by the order in which the categories are presented. Put male on the left and humanities on the right first, then put male and science simultaneously on the left side and it will produce the opposite result: men associated with liberal arts and women with science.
Because of exactly that, the creators of the original implicit bias test have said it should not be used the way it has been. I think they've pretty much said the test is worthless.
I hadn't heard the term "gnat line." Thanks for introducing me! I also grew up south of gnat line, along the gulf coast of Mississippi.
To get to your comment, unfortunately I think that measuring our own thought processes is far from a solved problem. And I'm not sure that implicit biases are necessarily a problem that can be "solved." A huge part of being in society is subduing certain of our more damaging natural inclinations, essentially being civil: not yelling and hitting people when we're angry, being willing to be bored for long periods of time in order to get something we need, etc.
I really do think you hit the nail on the head with this:
> Until then I have to categorize it as an emotional response and handle it in the same way, which is basically just empathizing, consoling, and not necessarily fixing the root of the problem
Largely, these things are emotional responses, and just like emotional responses, they're not necessarily rational or useful. Often the only thing we can do is recognize that they're there, let them exist, and refuse to act on them.
To be clear, I'm not making any claims here about any kind of corporate training. I'm not sure that I'm personally convinced that mandatory corporate training does any good in any situation, although I'm inclined to say that I guess it's better than nothing, in that it at least (hopefully) makes clear what the official company line is on things, and makes it clear that e.g. blatant sexism is not okay in the workplace, even if it doesn't actually change the opinions of any workplace harassers or misogynists. That being said, I am also deeply skeptical of its ability to effect any real change in people.
This comment I think is implying that all biases are evolutionarily encoded, which I am certain is false. Many biases are formed by your absorption of the actions and words of the people you grow up around.
The point isn't "biases shouldn't exist." The point is, "not all biases are accurate or useful," and "some biases can be actively harmful to either yourself or others."
I used to work with chemicals frequently. Humans have a bias towards treating clear, odorless fluids as being safe. That is a deeply dangerous bias in a biochemistry lab. You've got to be aware of it and act to counteract it. In my experience, that's all anyone is asking for: that we recognize where our biases might be harmful and try to limit that harm.
Of course most biases is something we learn. Some of them can certainly be harmful if we are out of our ordinary environment, like in your example. Or if bias is based on a false assumption. Evolution simply roots out those individuals who are unable to build proper biases :)
These tests have been administered to large numbers of people and on average, almost every single person that has taken the test has scored some level of implicit bias. As a result, it's very likely (but not certain) that you ARE unaware of your implicit bias.
Of course, if you take the tests and score perfectly, you'll now be able to demonstrate empirically that you have no measurable implicit bias and will have an answer to those people who insist you do.
The reason why this is different to the walking on water statement, is that there are hundreds of thousands of data points all showing implicit bias is almost universal, whereas there are zero data points showing people can walk on water after believing in Jesus.
> There's been some evidence that the IAT is pretty robust. Most trivial matters like position of items don't much much of a difference. People who were asked to convincingly fake an IAT effect couldn't do it.
The bad news:
> A common critique of the test is that the same individual often gets two completely different scores taking the same test twice. As far as re-test reliability goes, .6 correlation is pretty good from a theoretical point of view, but more than enough to be frequently embarrassing. It must be admitted: this test, while giving consistent results for populations, is of less use for individuals wondering how much bias they personally have.
The OP seemed to be talking about implicit bias in the framework of critical race theory, hence the quote "According to media and social media, if I deny that I'm a racist, then I'm just not aware of my implicit bias". That is, denying that you're racist is the proof that you're a racist. It's not about self-awareness, but about assertion.
Otherwise, I don't think the implicit bias is what OP said. Our HR would remind us recency bias, for instance, during a perf review. That kind of implicit bias does exist and is worth reminding.
I've always wondered, have there been variations on these tests that control for camera exposure levels and lighting conditions, or try to separate color from luminosity from morphology? In reaction-delay-based tests, is the delay because of bias or because of something else about what's being presented (e.g. strange wording or visual layout) requiring additional mental processing?
Teasing out those differences could help e.g. layout information and design cameras and image pipelines to reduce the effects of bias.
The viewpoint stems from the idea that implicit biases mean racism is the default state. To do something is to be anti-racist, which requires energy. To do nothing means racism persists, which could be considered pro-racism. A big part of this definition is trying to realign it with a temporary modifier, one to be avoided, but not a permanent tag.
The difference from your examples is that an act or attitude can be racist, but that doesn’t make YOU racist. You are not defined by a single event any more than a single belief defines your broader theology.
Since we are operating in a sectarian environment based on purity tests. Your actions can become irrelevant at any time once someone prominent puts a label on you, be it “communist” or “racist”.
I am not familiar with Chinese philosophy and find your perspective very interesting.
1, If you believe in Jesus, then you can walk on water. If you can't walk on water, then you don't truly believe in Jesus.
2, Chinese saying, "杀人诛心“，meaning that accusing one's motive is worse than killing that person, as the accused couldn't even defend against the accusation. Attacking the Motive is a logical fallacy, no?
3, Back in the 1960s in China, if you were born in a not-so-red family and denied that you were counter revolutionary, then you were just deeply counter revolutionary, and therefore deserved more severe punishment.
Since when people are not judged by their behavior but their thoughts that someone else assert?