#implicit bias training

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Te-Ping Chen and  Lauren Weber

Published: Jul 21, 2023

Two years ago chief diversity officers were some of the hottest hires into executive ranks. Now, they increasingly feel left out in the cold.

Companies including Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have recently said that high-profile diversity, equity and inclusion executives will be leaving their jobs. Thousands of diversity-focused workers have been laid off since last year, and some companies are scaling back racial justice commitments.

Diversity, equity and inclusion—or DEI—jobs were put in the crosshairs after many companies started re-examining their executive ranks during the tech sector’s shake out last fall. Some chief diversity officers say their work is facing additional scrutiny since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions and companies brace for potential legal challenges. DEI work has also become a political target.

“There’s a combination of grief, being very tired, and being, in some cases, overwhelmed,” says Miriam Warren, chief diversity officer for Yelp, of the challenges facing executives in the field.

In interviews, current and former chief diversity officers said company executives at times didn’t want to change hiring or promotion processes, despite initially telling CDOs they were hired to improve the talent pipeline. The quick about-face shows company enthusiasm for diversity initiatives hasn’t always proved durable, leaving some diversity officers now questioning their career path. 

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in police custody in May 2020, companies scrambled to hire chief diversity officers, changing the face of the C-suite. In 2018, less than half the companies in the S&P 500 employed someone in the role, and by 2022 three out four companies had created a position, according to a study from Russell Reynolds, an executive search firm. 

Once mostly tasked with HR matters, today’s diversity leaders are expected to weigh in on new product development, marketing efforts and current events that have an impact on how workers and consumers are feeling. Warren and other CDOs said the expanded remit is playing out in a politically divided environment where corporate diversity efforts are the subject of frequent social-media firestorms. 

Falling demand

New analysis from employment data provider Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers have been more vulnerable to layoffs than their human resources counterparts, experiencing 40% higher turnover. Their job searches are also taking longer. 

“I got to 300 applications and then I stopped tracking,” says Stephanie Lubin, who was laid off from her role as diversity head at Drizly, an online alcohol marketplace, in May following the company’s acquisition by Uber. In one case, Lubin says she went through 16 rounds of interviews for a role she didn’t get, and says she is now planning to pivot out of DEI work.

The number of CDO searches is down 75% in the past year, says Jason Hanold, chief executive of Hanold Associates Executive Search, which works with Fortune 100 companies to recruit HR and DEI executives, among other roles. Demand is the lowest he has seen in his 30 years of recruiting.

At the same time, he says, more executives are feeling skittish about taking on diversity roles.

“They’re telling us, the only way I want to go into another role with DEI is if it includes something else,” he says of the requests for broader titles that offer more responsibilities and resources. He estimates that 60% of diversity roles he is currently filling combine the title with another position, such as chief human resources officer, up from about 10% five years ago.

During the pandemic, some companies moved people into diversity leadership if they were an ethnic minority, says Dani Monroe, even when they weren’t qualified. Monroe served as CDO for Mass General Brigham, a Boston-based hospital system and one of the largest employers in the state, until 2021 and convenes a yearly gathering of more than 100 CDOs.

“These were knee-jerk reactions,” she says of the hurried CDO hires, adding that some of those elevations didn’t create much impact, leaving both sides feeling disillusioned.

On-the-job obstruction 

American workers are split on the importance of a diverse workforce, surveys find. 

Diversity chiefs also encounter obstruction from top executives, says Melinda Starbird, a human resources and diversity executive who has worked at AT&T, Starbucks and OfferUp, an online marketplace. Leaders sometimes associate diversity efforts with mandates, such as the equal-employment rules that apply to federal contractors. Those requirements for compliance can create executive resistance that bleeds over into other cultural or policy shifts, such as adding Juneteenth as a company holiday, she says. 

“Even if you report to the CEO, it’s still a battle and it’s a smaller budget,” says Starbird, who was laid off from OfferUp in November during a broader restructuring. 

Many diversity executives feel a lack of buy-in from their colleagues. In a survey of 138 diversity executives conducted this spring by World 50 Group, a networking organization for corporate leaders, 82% said they had sufficient influence to do their job, down 6 percentage points from 2022. Asked if they felt supported by middle managers, 41% said yes, an 8-percentage-point drop.

Since the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in June, companies are anticipating spillover legal action could have an impact on them. Those that are still hiring CDOs want people who can help the board navigate the political and legal landscape of diversity work and figure out how to take defensive moves to shield them from litigation, says Tina Shah Paikeday, global leader of Russell Reynolds’s diversity, equity and inclusion practice. 

“They recognize it would be smart to get ahead of that.”

People are more resistant to company-backed efforts to advance diversity when they are worried about their own jobs, whether because of impending layoffs or disruptions from AI, says David Kenny, chief executive of Nielsen, the media-ratings company. 

Kenny was both CEO and CDO for a time, taking on the diversity role to emphasize how important it was to the future of the business. Even as CEO, it could be a tough sell. Efforts to restructure compensation to make it more equitable created a backlash.

“A lot of it is, ‘I’m losing my slice of the pie,’ ” he says.

[ Via: https://archive.vn/jHRFo ]

==

The grift is over.

There seems to be a built-in implication that much of the movements around DIE in the last few years have been performative: organizations making the approved signals to keep the puritans at bay. Perhaps they've now figured out that these measures are, at best, unable to demonstrate their efficacy, or at worst, anti-productive. The number of DIE programs that can or even will quantify or demonstrate their effectiveness with metrics and data can be counted on one hand; the truly fanatical ones will scold you for even suggesting that you should. Or more likely, perhaps they've figured out that as an insurance policy, the impact to the bottom line is no longer worth the investment; throwing buckets of money to purchase indulgences during a moral-religious panic might have made sense in 2020, but not so much in 2023.

Study after study reveals that none of this social snakeoil - from the phrenology of "implicit bias training" to the Maoist struggle sessions of "white fragility training" - actually help, and reliably make things worse by making everyone fixate on identity politics rather than doing anything productive. Meaning DIE is nothing but expensive and destructive virtue signaling. If you want to destroy an organization from the inside, there's no better way than embracing DIE.

You're far better off sticking to your core telos, supported by liberal ethics like equal opportunity, colorblindness and the ideal of meritocracy. Or more formally, Merit, Fairness and Equality (MFE). Whatever results you get from a fair process are inherently fair.

"Diversity" in particular is always about superficiality and thinly-veiled racism, while "equity" requires someone in authority to artificially create preferred outcomes (establishing the perfect conditions for an authoritarian), rather than a system of fairly and consistently applied rules (equality).

I can name five people, men and women, where I work who have different ethic ancestry, who grew up within 40 miles of each other and have the same local accent.

And I can name five white men who grew up on four different continents with three different first languages, who have worked for over a dozen different organizations, from multi-national companies to military to non-profits to education institutions before immigrating.

"Diversity" apparatchiks don't acknowledge the diversity in the latter. Only, like any good racist, the bogus "diversity" in the former.

[chicago-geniza]

Management making a point to hire ~diverse~ hourly-wage employees to bolster their image as a welcoming, inclusive workplace then proceeding to be almost comically racist and transphobic without seeming to realize what they're doing. Little nonprofit things

[boreal-sea]

Who is Kamala Harris?

These are all from her Wikipedia page. I have picked the top 5 for each of these sections. Maybe you think other things are more important, these are just the things that stood out to me:

Highlights as District Attorney of San Francisco:

was tough on gun crime: created a gun crime unit, set 90-day minimum sentences, raised bail for gun-related crimes, and prosecuted all assault weapon possession cases as felonies.

created a hate crimes unit specifically focused on LGBTQ hate crimes against children and teens in school.

was (and is) against the death penalty; during her time as DA did not cave to pressure in several cases to seek the death penalty.

helped create the San Francisco Reentry Division, aimed at helping prisoners reintegrate after their sentences are through; the program became a national model.

refused to enforce prop 8, which was at the time California's ban on gay marriage.

Highlights as Attorney General of California

introduced the Homeowner Bill of Rights and fought against banks, mortgage companies, and credit card companies.

fought for financial reimbursement for public employee and teacher pensions.

fought for environmental protections and secured settlements and indictments against several oil companies for oil spills.

conducted a review of implicit bias in policing and the use of deadly force and introduced implicit bias training.

declared a law that California law enforcement had to collect and report police violence.

Highlights as a California Senator:

condemned Trump's Muslim ban.

opposed Trump's appointments of Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions, his nomination of Neil Gorsuch, and voted against confirming Kavanaugh.

tried to make lynching a federal hate crime.

urged the Trump administration to investigate the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China.

voted to convict Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Highlights as Vice president:

as President of the Senate, cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate that ensured the passing of the American Rescue Act.

has cast more tie-breaking votes than any other Vice president in US history - she is responsible for many of the achievements of the Biden administration actually passing the Senate.

created task forces on corruption and human trafficking.

created a women's empowerment program.

has criticized Israel's actions during the current conflict in Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire.

[theangryfeministwriter]

"kamala is a cop"

but you don’t understand! When she was a prosecutor, she pissed off California police unions when she didn’t push for the death penalty for a man convicted of killing a police officer. She chose to push non violent, first-time offenders into education programs instead of prison because she wanted “to create a system to decrease the likelihood that the revolving door will continue”. As Attorney General, she prosecuted for profit colleges, and banks following the 2008 crisis. In the face of Black Lives Matter, her office launched implicit bias training and she was proud of her work in reforming the criminal justice system of California. As senator, she shined when she questioned Brett Kavanaugh in his senate hearing. When you say “she was a cop” you simplify her impressive record as a prosecutor, attorney general, and senator into just “cop”. While there is valid criticism to her record as Attorney General in her response to Black Lives Matter, as well as her stance on Palestine, there is more nuance to Election 2024 than just “kamala is a cop” and “another time picking the lesser of two evils.” Kamala Harris is the obvious choice for 2024.

[corinescorner]

Biases That Doctors Can Have

Doctors, like all people, carry biases. They influence how they perceieve and treat patients. These biases may be unconscious or consious, either way they impact the quality of care that patients recieve from them.

Appearance-Related:

Weight: Patients with obesity might be stigmatized, leading doctors to attribute all health concerns to weight.

Age: Older people might face ageism, with symptoms dismissed as "just aging," while younger people might be seen as less credible.

Disability: Patients with disabilities may have their health issues minimized or overlooked entirely.

Hygiene: Disheveled appearance or poor hygiene can lead to assumptions about the patient's responsibilities or mental health issues.

Identity and Demographic:

Racial and Ethnic: Patients of color, especially Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic individuals, often report being dismissed or disbelieved. Research shows that they might recieve little to no pain medication or aggressive treatments for serious conditions.

Gender: Women may have their pain minimized or attributed to emotional cases. Men, on the otherhand, might have emotional concerned dismissed as physical.

Queer: Queer individuals may face ignorance, prejudice, or assumtions about their health based on their identities. For example; trans people often have barriers when seeking gender-affirming care.

Socioeconomic:

Income: Patients with a low-income may face assumptions about their ability to follow treatment plans, access medications, or prioritize health.

Insurance: Those without insurance may experience rushed care or not have their concerns taken seriously

Behavioral and Communication:

Mental Health: Patients with psychiatric conditions might have their physical symptoms dismissed as psychological.

Substance Use: Individuals with a history of substance use may struggle to have their pain or concerns validated.

Communication: Patients who are overly assertive, passive, or emotional may be judged negatively.

Bias Based on Health Status:

Chronic Illness: Patients with chronic conditions may be viewed as "complainers."

Rare Diseases: Symptoms of rare conditions may be dismissed as "all in their head."

How Can We Combat This?

To limit the biases in healthcare, it is crucial to promote sensitivity and cultural competency training for medical professionals. It would help them recognize and address their own implicit biases. We should also increase the diverisity among healthcare providers. Patients should be encouraged to advocate for themselves, ask questions, and seek second opinions when they feel like their needs aren't being met or addressed.

Remember, not every doctor is trustworthy and free of bias. We shouldn't be ignorant against the healthcare that people can receive. This is why research self-diagnosis is very important.

[nerdygaymormon]

Trump aims to limit research that doesn't support his vision of America

I work at a university where I help manage sponsored projects, which means a project that some entity outside the university is paying for. Typically these are research and training projects with the U.S. government being the largest funder.

I'm proud that my efforts help with the acquisition, application and spreading of knowledge, it's a noble endeavor to support. The United States is the world leader in research with most of it done at universities and dedicated research facilities.

The amount of changes being made in this field in just the past two weeks is truly head spinning. This includes all grants being temporarily frozen, delays in receiving the funds we are due, reviews of new proposals being put on hold, federal websites for proposals & reporting going down for hours at a time with no warning or explanation, and most recently a massive reduction in what some federal agencies are willing to give as indirects (this is a rate negotiated with the federal government and meant to pay for many expenses which are not allowed to be charged directly to the projects but which supports the projects).

The big change I want to highlight is the president's executive order forbidding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and how it applies to government-funded research.

Federal agencies are scrubbing their websites of forbidden words. Some notices are already being received at universities that a certain project is being terminated or to disregard the requirements in the contracts meant to build diversity in their field.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is one of the largest funders of research grants and now has a list of words which will trigger further review. I think the list of words is incredibly eye-opening. "Men" and "male" are not on this list, but "women" and "female" are. The list clearly shows that the administration is targeting underprivileged, minority, and marginalized communities. No longer is this a government that seeks to represent and benefit all Americans.

activism

activists

advocacy

advocate

advocates

barrier

barriers

biased

biased toward

biases

biases towards

bipoc

black and latinx

community diversity

community equity

cultural differences

cultural heritage

culturally responsive

disabilities

disability

discriminated

discrimination

discriminatory

diverse backgrounds

diverse communities

diverse community

diverse group

diverse groups

diversified

diversify

diversifying

diversity and inclusion

diversity equity

enhance the diversity

enhancing diversity

equal opportunity

equality

equitable

equity

ethnicity

excluded

female

females

fostering inclusivity

gender

gender diversity

genders

hate speech

excluded

female

females

fostering inclusivity

gender

gender diversity

genders

hate speech

hispanic minority

historically

implicit bias

implicit biases

inclusion

inclusive

inclusiveness

inclusivity

increase diversity

increase the diversity

indigenous community

inequalities

inequality

inequitable

inequities

institutional

Igbt

marginalize

marginalized

minorities

minority

multicultural

polarization

political

prejudice

privileges

promoting diversity

race and ethnicity

racial

racial diversity

racial inequality

racial justice

racially

racism

sense of belonging

sexual preferences

social justice

sociocultural

socioeconomic

status

stereotypes

systemic

trauma

under appreciated

under represented

under served

underrepresented

underserved

undervalued

victim

women

women and underrepresented

For queer people, I think the reason we're being targeted is the science and facts are on our side and contradict the ideology of the president and his most rabid supporters.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

The main takeaway here is that DEI has been proven to be unscientific nonsense.

And the unconscious bias training that was supposed to produce antiracist allies? Turns out people hate being told they have hidden prejudices.

...two-thirds of human resources specialists report that diversity training does not have positive effects, and several field studies have found no effect of diversity training on women’s or minorities’ careers or on managerial diversity. These findings are not surprising. There is ample evidence that training alone does not change attitudes or behavior, or not by much and not for long. In their review of 985 studies of antibias interventions, Paluck and Green found little evidence that training reduces bias. In their review of 31 organizational studies using pretest/posttest assessments or a control group, Kulik and Roberson identified 27 that documented improved knowledge of, or attitudes toward, diversity, but most found small, short-term improvements on one or two of the items measured. In their review of 39 similar studies, Bezrukova, Joshi and Jehn identified only f ive that examined long-term effects on bias, two showing positive effects, two negative, and one no effect.

...

The problems with DEI trainings are not in their tone, however, but in their substance. The implicit-bias theory (also called unconscious-bias theory) on which these trainings are based has no scientific basis, as years of examinations have consistently demonstrated. Lee Jussim puts it politely in his “12 Reasons to Be Skeptical of Common Claims About Implicit Bias,” but the Open Science Foundation’s archive of Articles Critical of the IAT and Implicit Bias renders a harsher verdict. In 2011, Etienne LeBel and Sampo Paunonen reviewed evidence that measures of implicit bias possess low reliability. In other words, when you test for implicit bias multiple times, you rarely get the same result. Their conclusion was that some part of “implicit bias” is really “random measurement error.” In 2017, Heather Mac Donald’s intensive examination of the theory and its empirical basis (or lack thereof) concluded that the “implicit-bias crusade is agenda-driven social science.” And Bertram Gawronski’s 2019 review of the scholarly literature on implicit-bias research also concludes that there’s no proof that people aren’t self-aware enough to know what’s causing their supposedly “implicit” or “unconscious” biases; and that you can’t prove that there’s any relationship between how people do on the test and how they behave in the real world... Professional critiques of implicit bias have shown, politely but repeatedly, that there is nothing there. Activists and scientists who think that science should serve political objectives want to believe in the existence of massive systemic bias to justify their goals of imposing “equity” by law and by litigation. Implicit bias is a pseudoscientific theory made to order for this purpose. It’s a house of cards, and governments and the private sector should terminate every program based on it.

[kakairu-bigbang-2024]

🗝️TEAM LOCKSMITH NO JUTSU 🗝️

Artist: @lildraws, Writer: @tucuxi

Title: Meet Me At The Intersection Word count: 25,688 Rating: Teen Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Tags: Disability, Physical Disability, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pre-CanonChronic Pain, chronic disability after traumatic injury, Stubborn Umino Iruka, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, civilian shinobi relations, Shinobi Politics (Naruto), Shinobi Culture (Naruto), Anbu Root (Naruto), Anbu Hatake Kakashi, Trauma, medical bias, systemic bias, Denial of care, Ableism, Medical Gatekeeping, Canon-Typical Violence, Medical Jutsu, Original Jutsu (Naruto), Mobility Aids, Past Child Neglect, Minor Character Death, Canonical Character Death

Summary: Umino Iruka regarded the man standing before his shop counter with what was probably poorly-veiled irritation. "Yes, thank you," he said. "I know how a triple-layered chakra lock works." Long years of experience kept Iruka's tone even: losing his temper meant losing customers, even if there weren't very many people in Konoha who did what he did. * * * The canon-divergent au in which Iruka graduates the academy, does 3 D-rank missions, and then retires, because his leg was badly crushed in the kyuubi attack—so he re-trains as a locksmith and makes chakra-manipulated locks. A story about systemic structural power imbalances between shinobi and civilians and the various ways in which expectations of physical strength and implicit ableism are detrimental to community trust. In which Iruka finds himself stuck between worlds, all because Sharingan Kakashi demanded the impossible, and Iruka made him a quadruple-layered chakra lock.

🗝️Read this Kakairu Big Bang Collaboration on Ao3! 🗝️

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 3, 2025

Synaptic weight dynamics underlying memory consolidation: Implications for learning rules, circuit organization, and circuit function. Bhasin, B. J., Raymond, J. L., & Goldman, M. S. (2024). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(41), e2406010121.

Characterization of the temporal stability of ToM and pain functional brain networks carry distinct developmental signatures during naturalistic viewing. Bhavna, K., Ghosh, N., Banerjee, R., & Roy, D. (2024). Scientific Reports, 14, 22479.

Connectomic reconstruction predicts visual features used for navigation. Garner, D., Kind, E., Lai, J. Y. H., Nern, A., Zhao, A., Houghton, L., … Kim, S. S. (2024). Nature, 634(8032), 181–190.

Socialization causes long-lasting behavioral changes. Gil-Martí, B., Isidro-Mézcua, J., Poza-Rodriguez, A., Asti Tello, G. S., Treves, G., Turiégano, E., … Martin, F. A. (2024). Scientific Reports, 14, 22302.

Neural pathways and computations that achieve stable contrast processing tuned to natural scenes. Gür, B., Ramirez, L., Cornean, J., Thurn, F., Molina-Obando, S., Ramos-Traslosheros, G., & Silies, M. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 8580.

Lack of optimistic bias during social evaluation learning reflects reduced positive self-beliefs in depression and social anxiety, but via distinct mechanisms. Hoffmann, J. A., Hobbs, C., Moutoussis, M., & Button, K. S. (2024). Scientific Reports, 14, 22471.

Causal involvement of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in learning the predictability of observable actions. Kang, P., Moisa, M., Lindström, B., Soutschek, A., Ruff, C. C., & Tobler, P. N. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 8305.

A transient high-dimensional geometry affords stable conjunctive subspaces for efficient action selection. Kikumoto, A., Bhandari, A., Shibata, K., & Badre, D. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 8513.

Presaccadic Attention Enhances and Reshapes the Contrast Sensitivity Function Differentially around the Visual Field. Kwak, Y., Zhao, Y., Lu, Z.-L., Hanning, N. M., & Carrasco, M. (2024). eNeuro, 11(9), ENEURO.0243-24.2024.

Transformation of neural coding for vibrotactile stimuli along the ascending somatosensory pathway. Lee, K.-S., Loutit, A. J., de Thomas Wagner, D., Sanders, M., Prsa, M., & Huber, D. (2024). Neuron, 112(19), 3343-3353.e7.

Inhibitory plasticity supports replay generalization in the hippocampus. Liao, Z., Terada, S., Raikov, I. G., Hadjiabadi, D., Szoboszlay, M., Soltesz, I., & Losonczy, A. (2024). Nature Neuroscience, 27(10), 1987–1998.

Third-party punishment-like behavior in a rat model. Mikami, K., Kigami, Y., Doi, T., Choudhury, M. E., Nishikawa, Y., Takahashi, R., … Tanaka, J. (2024). Scientific Reports, 14, 22310.

The morphospace of the brain-cognition organisation. Pacella, V., Nozais, V., Talozzi, L., Abdallah, M., Wassermann, D., Forkel, S. J., & Thiebaut de Schotten, M. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 8452.

A Drosophila computational brain model reveals sensorimotor processing. Shiu, P. K., Sterne, G. R., Spiller, N., Franconville, R., Sandoval, A., Zhou, J., … Scott, K. (2024). Nature, 634(8032), 210–219.

Decision-making shapes dynamic inter-areal communication within macaque ventral frontal cortex. Stoll, F. M., & Rudebeck, P. H. (2024). Current Biology, 34(19), 4526-4538.e5.

Intrinsic Motivation in Dynamical Control Systems. Tiomkin, S., Nemenman, I., Polani, D., & Tishby, N. (2024). PRX Life, 2(3), 033009.

Coding of self and environment by Pacinian neurons in freely moving animals. Turecek, J., & Ginty, D. D. (2024). Neuron, 112(19), 3267-3277.e6.

The role of training variability for model-based and model-free learning of an arbitrary visuomotor mapping. Velázquez-Vargas, C. A., Daw, N. D., & Taylor, J. A. (2024). PLOS Computational Biology, 20(9), e1012471.

Rejecting unfairness enhances the implicit sense of agency in the human brain. Wang, Y., & Zhou, J. (2024). Scientific Reports, 14, 22822.

Impaired motor-to-sensory transformation mediates auditory hallucinations. Yang, F., Zhu, H., Cao, X., Li, H., Fang, X., Yu, L., … Tian, X. (2024). PLOS Biology, 22(10), e3002836.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Mahzarin Banaji and Frank Dobbin

Published: Sep 17, 2023

At least 30 states are considering legislation to defund DEI initiatives in public universities and state agencies. At the same time, conservative activists, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action in college admissions, are suing companies to stop DEI initiatives. These challenges come on the heels of the growth of corporate DEI programs after the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020.  

Meanwhile, advocates for DEI—which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion—have bemoaned the fact that after decades of diversity training, many university faculties, state agencies and corporations have made little progress on diversifying the workforce.

Are the right and the left on the same page here—is diversity training a hopeless cause?

We are a psychologist and a sociologist who have been studying bias and organizational diversity programs, respectively, for decades. The research makes it clear that Americans desperately need education about bias, because even people who value fairness and equality hold biases—without being aware of it. They need to understand that bias operates systemically and must be addressed at the individual, institutional and societal levels.

Education offered on these matters is very much in the national spirit. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted in “Democracy in America” in 1835: “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”

What research shows

The social and behavioral sciences have developed strong evidence about conscious prejudice and implicit bias. Three lines of research, together, are pertinent. One provides good news. As our colleague Larry Bobo has documented, conscious unabashed racial prejudice has fallen consistently since the 1960s. White Americans today largely believe in racial equality.

This isn’t to say that explicit expressions of prejudice have evaporated; in fact they pop up with surprising regularity. The pandemic witnessed precipitous increases in anti-Asian hatred, and according to the Anti-Defamation League, instances of antisemitism are at a record high. 

A second line of research shows that less conscious, or implicit, bias has declined more slowly. Bias against some groups has barely budged. If only explicit values and biases drove discrimination, unfair treatment of, say, Black workers would be low. But implicit bias taints employer behavior and decisions. Our colleague Mandy Palais and collaborators find, for instance, that implicit racial bias in grocery-store managers still influences worker performance.

A third line of research uses audit studies, in which matched Black and white people, for instance, apply to the same job. Who gets called in for an interview, or hired? Scores of studies show discrimination by race, ethnicity, gender and disability. These studies show, among other things, that white applicants are about 50% more likely than identical Black applicants to be called back for an interview or offered a job. Other audit studies show discrimination in real-world access to financial resources, healthcare and treatment by the law and law enforcement.    

Research by Lincoln Quillian and colleagues compares the results of audit studies over time, finding that discrimination against Black job applicants is virtually unchanged from a generation ago. And the economist Raj Chetty and colleagues not only show a shocking drop in American upward mobility over time, but also show that in regions with high levels of implicit bias, Black Americans are less likely than white Americans to move up the economic ladder.

Research by Lincoln Quillian and colleagues compares the results of audit studies over time, finding that discrimination against Black job applicants is virtually unchanged from a generation ago. And the economist Raj Chetty and colleagues not only show a shocking drop in American upward mobility over time, but also show that in regions with high levels of implicit bias, Black Americans are less likely than white Americans to move up the economic ladder. 

Research from one of us, Frank Dobbin (with Alexandra Kalev), meanwhile, shows how likely a worker in a U.S. firm is to have a management job, by group. Women and people of color see increases until the mid-1980s. But progress stalls for Black and Hispanic workers after that. Men from those groups make no progress between then and 2021, and women make almost no progress. We clearly have more work to do to equalize opportunity.

Falling short

It’s not hard to conclude from all these studies that we are not the land of opportunity for everyone we claim to be. An enlightened society should see that education about the prevalence of discrimination is imperative. In fact, it would be downright dumb not to educate people. 

But, as Dobbin and Kalev have shown, the typical DEI training doesn’t educate people about bias and may even do harm.

Most training programs fall short on two fronts. First, they use implicit-bias education to shame trainees for holding stereotypes. Trainers play gotcha, sending trainees to take an online test co-developed by one of us, Mahzarin Banaji, for education and research. Instead of training people about research that finds that bias is pervasive, trainers use the test to prove to trainees that they are morally flawed. People leave feeling guilty for holding biases that conflict with American values.

“Gotcha” isn’t going to win people over. The approach is disrespectful, and misses the main takeaway from implicit bias research: Everyone holds biases they don’t control as a consequence of a lifetime of exposure to societal inequality, the media and the arts. Trainers should introduce these ideas with humility, for trainers themselves can’t help but hold these very biases. They could easily educate themselves about the implicit bias research with resources at outsmartingimplicitbias.org.

The second problem with most trainings is that they seek to solve the problem of bias by invoking the law to scare people about the risk of letting bias go unchecked. Trainers recount stories of big companies brought to their heels by discrimination suits. They detail rigid do’s and don’ts for hiring, disciplining and firing people. They require trainees to pass tests on what the law forbids. All of this makes it clear that the CEO approved the training solely to avoid litigation. Trainees leave scared that they will be punished for a simple mistake that may land their company in court.  

Trainings with this one-two punch—you are biased and the law will get you—backfire. The research shows that this kind of training leads to reductions in women and people of color in management.

Why would diversity training actually make things worse? Making people feel ashamed can lead them to reject the message. Thus people often leave diversity training feeling angry and with greater animosity toward other groups (“There’s no way I’m biased!”). And threats of punishment, by the law in this case, typically lead to psychological “reactance” whereby people reject the desired behavior (“Nobody’s telling me what I can’t say!”). This kind of training can turn off even supporters of equal-opportunity programs. 

A better way

It doesn’t have to be this way, and Dobbin and Kalev’s research on training points to a better alternative. Instead of using legal scare tactics, training programs should give managers a way to counter biases—namely, training in strategies for cultural inclusion. This kind of training teaches skills in listening, observation and intervention. It thus helps managers to hear employee concerns, notice when workers are feeling shunned or dissed, and intervene. It also offers skills for starting tough conversations about how to treat colleagues at work.

Those are skills from Management 101, but managers often don’t want to hear bad news, so they don’t ask employees about troubles, watch teams for signs of bullying, or speak up when they sense a problem. Reminding managers that they can use these tools to suss out problems and nip them in the bud helps them to feel capable of managing biases and microaggressions. When managers use these skills, they retain women and people of color for long enough to come up for promotion. That’s how good diversity training can boost diversity. Unfortunately, only about a quarter of diversity trainings emphasize cultural inclusion. 

Moreover, if training succeeds in conveying the findings from bias research—that bias is unseen but pervasive—it can build support for wider systemic changes designed to tear down obstacles to equal opportunity. In that sense, training isn’t designed to blame people for their moral failings. Instead, it’s galvanizing them to support organizational change by arming them with knowledge.

In the end, DEI training can’t squelch implicit bias; nothing short of changing people’s life experiences can do that. But when done right, implicit-bias education can alert students to the fact that people committed to equality nonetheless hold biases. And that knowledge can, in turn, motivate them to reshape their workplaces to counter discrimination by democratizing key parts of the career system.

That means extending recruitment visits from Harvard to Howard; offering mentors to each and every worker; and inviting all employees to nominate themselves for skill and management training programs. It means offering work-life supports to people up and down the ladder. Each of these changes has been shown to produce significant increases in managerial diversity.

The lesson here, the one that should be at the core of DEI training, is that implicit bias resides in individuals, but it resides in organizational career systems as well. And fixing those systems is as simple as democratizing them.

Mahzarin Banaji is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and co-author of “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.” Frank Dobbin is a professor of sociology at Harvard University and co-author of “Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t.” They can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

[ Via: https://archive.is/0D4kV ]

==

[altis-of-olympia]

how do you like “make amends” (idk the term) when you do something and actually the days after are okay and your life is fine and everything, like you don’t actually feel like you did something wrong, but then you discover that the thing you did might have offended the gods and so you’re feeling like very sorry of course and you tell them that you’re sorry (while trying to battle your intrusive thoughts that LOVE to show up at the worst times and make you even more paranoid bc you have to interrupt everything you say to add “i’m sorry for this intrusive thought i truly don’t believe it and don’t know why my brain is trying so hard to mess things up for me and sabotage me”)? i think i should make my uhm “spiritual insight/perception” (other term that idk bc english isn’t my firsts language and it’s late where i live) a bit better. somehow. like more trained, bc my biases probably influence everything

Hello, Anon.

I would like to start this by saying, very simply: It takes a lot to anger the Gods. It takes a lot to anger them to the point of actively ruining things in your life. Can they feel disrespected? Yes, absolutely. But that is typically dealt with rather quickly and concisely so the action does not happen again. The Helpol community has an issue with fearmongering and making people feel as though they have to walk on eggshells when it comes to the Theoi. Making people feel as though one wrong step is going to lead to serious repercussions. But let me assure you, it takes a lot to push them to the point of being incredibly, seriously angry at you.

They are also understanding of mental health. intrusive thoughts are just that - intrusive. They are not something that can be controlled and they do not reflect who we are as people. The Theoi understand this. They will not penalize you or punish you for these kinds of thoughts. If you feel as though you need to apologize, and if apologizing makes you feel better, you are free and within your right to do so. But you do not have to. They are understanding.

If you want to work on biased thinking, I would start with confronting the bias head-on. Lots of biases are implicit, and not things we outright notice or pick up on. So confronting that subconscious thinking is an amazing way to start.

I wish you luck with this - and remember, if you think that the Theoi are mad at you and it took you a few days to realize without any divine interference, chances are they are probably not mad at you.

Xaire, Altis.

[nerves-nebula]

sister gave me consent to post her rant about the IAT, which is some kind of bias training thing? idk. anyways I'll post it plain text too:

also, holy shit i hate the IAT so much. its basically a weird computer game you do to show your implicit bias, by matching words with positive or negative connotations to stuff like races/genders/sexualities/etc. you train matching 'good' with white and 'bad' with black, or vice versa, and then you have to switch your associations on the second run through. so any lag or mis-attributing (aka picking black when the word has a 'bad' connotation) means ur subconsciously racist bc u sorted it so fast you couldn't consciouly think. BUT FIEST OF ALL: so fucking what? the test only serves to make white liberals self-flagellate. none of the fucking problems in our current society are attributable to subconscious biases, but fucking CONSCIOUS ACTION. its basically a test to determine if you do thought crimes and it has no way of showing a correlation between subconscious bias and conscious action. SECONDLY, the mental load you have to do on the switching round is SUBSTANTIALLY HIGHER. like, the test FORCES you to make an association, and then says you're racist when you accidentally follow the muscle memory/association that the TEST ITSELF created in you. THIRDLY, the test is LAUGHABLY BAD at replicability. theres a scale of 0 to 1 that ppl use for the consistency/replicability of certain tests as metrics, and the general BASELINE of something being replicable is like.. 0.8ish. The IAT has a replicability of FUCKING 0.6. You could take the test at different FUCKING DAYS, and suddenly be more or less implicitely racist. FOURTH, the fucking creators of this bs test are such fucking sanctimonious LIBERALS that they construe ANY attempts to question the usefulness or the replicability of their test as an unwillingess on their detractors part to face their own internal bigotry, but theyre not fucking complaining abt that, theyre complaining because your TEST DOES NOTHING AND IT DOESNT GIVE CONSISTENT RESULTS

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

New workplace training on implicit bias - why do my pretend coworkers have such dramatic lighting ??

[obstinaterixatrix]

I have to take an implicit bias training for career stuff but like. not to be dismissive or have hubris but this is 101 when I have both lived experience and also I've had way more in-depth trainings. but anyway in order to get through it I got the cheapest option possible and streamed it to a friend while calling it $15 racism. it was a lot of "I have to pass $15 racism otherwise that'd be really embarrassing for me."

[autisticadvocacy]

The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights is offering trainings aimed at preventing and addressing discrimination on issues like workplace discrimination, housing discrimination, implicit bias, and more. They are free and open to the public. For more info: https://www.njoag.gov/about/divisions-and-offices/division-on-civil-rights-home/education-and-training-unit/etu-trainings/