Is “Implicit Bias” Really Bias

The message of these headlines and the stories they preceded are that a “>Adolescent Prejudice. As I recall, the conclusions of the research were that adolescents, similar to adults, have stereotypes and assumptions about diverse groups and those stereotypes persisted across segregated and integrated settings. The study found that the counter to the negative pre-conceptions was to empower kids with the cognitive tools to resist the temptation to pigeon-hole people into groups. It was not to deny that we have mental shortcuts and assumptions, but rather to teach a solution, how to act fairly and equitably despite whatever our pre-conceptions might be.

Decades later, when “Implicit Association Tests” and fmri experiments confirm that our brain makes associations about groups and their characteristics, our inherent biases should not be a headline making revelation. As The New York Times “>written succinctly about “implicit bias” and the associated “Implicit Association Test”),

Another confounding factor is that the brain is designed to detect patterns of co-occurrence and responds to learned associations based on a lifetime of hearing word pairings. If I hear the word “bread,” the first word that comes to mind might be “butter,” even if I never eat butter, never buy it and for that matter don't even eat bread. But associations aren't the same as biases. My quickness in conjuring one word when hearing another says nothing about an “implicit bias.” It says even less about how I would treat another individual. Common sense would tell you this. [Emphasis added]

A reasonable criterion for the IAT would be the ways in which people act in real-world situations. As it turns out, a team of respected social scientists (including Hart Blanton, James Jaccard, Greg Mitchell and Phil Tetlock) have analyzed data on how individuals who had previously taken the IAT acted and reacted toward white and black people during a real conversation. Did they laugh? How much eye contact did they make? How much did they fidget? All told, a cluster of 16 behaviors were tracked. Those who received the highest scores for “anti-black bias” on the IAT showed no bias toward blacks at all. Other researchers have shown that high “anti-black” scores on the IAT actually predict that a person is more likely to respond compassionately toward blacks.  

It appears, then, that the IAT is claiming to find racism, ageism, sexism and all sorts of interpersonal biases in people who probably don't possess them. When author Malcolm Gladwell took the IAT, it showed that he, the son of a black woman, is racist against blacks. Mr. Gladwell was suitably shocked and distressed. But if a test gives results that are so far-fetched, it's time to start questioning the validity of the test.

The Yale study found, much like the study that Levitin reports on—and it is virtually unreported in the news accounts— “that contrary to hypotheses” there was no relationship to the race or sex of the students and the staff recommendations to expel or suspend them.

So a study that began with the portentous warning about “Preschool expulsions and suspensions cause young children to lose their early educational placement or time in care, directly undermining their  access to educational opportunities” ends up acknowledging—near the end of the study— that neither race nor sex bore any relationship to decisions to expel or suspend. In fact, the one area where race did play a role was in Black staff recommending more days of disciplinary exclusions across all races.

The conclusion should have been the headline of each of the articles cited above—-“Despite unconscious associations and stereotypes, pre-school teachers don’t suspend kids based on race or gender bias.” A study that is being held out as a warning of what “implicit bias” can lead to, proves just the opposite; “implicit bias” may not be real bias at all.