>The Implicit Association Test has been used in online studies to assess implicit racial attitudes in over seven million participants. Although typically used as an assessment measure, results from four pre-registered experiments (N = 940) demonstrated that completing a Race IAT exacerbates the negative implicit attitudes that it seeks to assess. Increases in White participants’ negative automatic racial evaluations of Black people were observed across two different implicit measures (SC-IAT and AMP) but did not generalize to another measure of automatic racial bias (Shooter Bias task). Results highlight an important caveat for the Race IAT, but also for many other forms of psychological assessment: that by measuring, we often perturb the system that we wish to understand.
I think it may be more due to the fact that people have a natural disinclination towards people pretending to be moral authorities, especially when their premise is revealed to be based on lies and pseudoscience
I'd love to see a way of creating healthy, non-discriminatory workplaces, especially in industries that are usually pretty terrible.
One thing that bothers me is that discrimination is seen as a four letter word, when it is something we do all the time and celebrate. Only specific forms are considered bad and we need to be more explicit on what and why.
For example, racial discrimination is bad. Discrimination based on what degree one holds is not. Or, given that not everyone has the same level of access to earn a degree, should we be so open in accepting such discrimination?
What about discriminating based on punctuality? It seems an easy one to justify, but there is a significant cultural impact on punctuality.
What about discrimination on factors that people can't control and that have no relation to work, but which are currently legally allowed. For example look at the correlation between height and pay. Should that be allowed and what efforts are we doing to stop it. And does it become more of a concern when we account for average height differences between genders and the gendered outcome that can result as a secondary result (paying short people less, given that women are on average shorter than men, results in paying women less).
These sort of conversations never seem to happen when it comes to discrimination in the work place, making me think the name of the issue doesn't accurately reflect what the acted upon concern is.
Imagine you're in a job interview. You describe the position to a candidate, and the candidate says "Wow, that sounds cool."
You describe the position to a different candidate. That person says "Shxt, that's tight dog."
Does one sound more professional to you? Why? Are you going to make any inferences about that persons capability to be a good employee based on how they speak? Of course you are. Is that right? Probably not.
We seem to be in a period where norms are assumed to be malicious or harmful, where the majority has a moral obligation to minimize the advantages of following norms.
At bottom, though, that's just an attack on all norms.
The other exasperating thing is at presenting evidence almost never work. The step after someone has presented evidence of discrimination is for the person who doesn't "believe in discrimination" to challenge the result. Either the result doesn't actually prove discrimination or the study is flawed in some way so you can't draw any conclusions.
That would be unfortunate, because I'm very clearly not saying any such thing. Specifically, asking about the magnitude of discrimination is not asserting that it doesn't exist at all. For what it's worth (hopefully very little), I'm a True Believer in discrimination--it exists, I've experienced it. I'm skeptical about specific truth claims about discrimination (notably claims that it explains a significant part of any gap in the US). I'm also skeptical about social science's ability to accurately study discrimination due to its political homogeneity and track record (more on this below).
> It is very easy to find ample evidence of discrimination documented in published peer-reviewed studies.
Undoubtedly. It's easy to find peer-reviewed studies that support almost any popular conclusion; however, I'm not looking to confirm my own biases (nor anyone else's) but rather to understand what's really going on. Notably, neither the IAT study and Goldin's orchestra study should have passed peer review and yet they did and were held up as exemplary for decades. Between issues like these and the social science replication crisis, I don't put much stock in individual studies.
> The other exasperating thing is at presenting evidence almost never work. The step after someone has presented evidence of discrimination is for the person who doesn't "believe in discrimination" to challenge the result. Either the result doesn't actually prove discrimination or the study is flawed in some way so you can't draw any conclusions.
Discrimination is indeed difficult to prove; the reasonable response isn't to be frustrated that others remain skeptical after being shown problematic evidence, but rather to question why you are compelled by said problematic evidence. Skepticism is the reasonable position here. Note again that skepticism about various discrimination claims isn't the same thing as asserting the opposite of those claims. Note also that skepticism about various discrimination claims doesn't mean that we need to stop investigating discrimination; it merely means we don't have conclusive evidence (and consequently, we probably shouldn't be drafting policy that could hurt people or otherwise propagating myths about the conclusiveness of said evidence).
It's a hedge against accusations of racism.
So management can point at this and say: see? We did all we could!
A similar story plays out in academic settings for Title IX training.
I've worked at a lot of places, and I've yet to see an anti-bias training that was more than awareness-raising. I've never ever heard any suggest more radical ideas (such as restorative justice).
While we might argue that current D&I initiatives are not working at a pace we'd prefer, I do think the literature strongly suggest that the method of informed exposure and consideration for issues other than your own tends to work. What's more, these programs are extremely inexpensive compared to more radical restructuring of companies (or the often pie-in-the-sky suggestions of folks who will die on the hill of "it is a pipeline problem").
Some examples of not-too-old research on how simple conversations and exposure can change attitudes:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6215/1366
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2705986/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978008088...
P.S., it's worth noting that if you haven't scanned the scientific literature carefully, you're committing the same error as the folks who fell for this goofy color theory scam by putting your own biases and intuition above the scientific method.
Racism, sexism, etc. are hard problems. You're talking about deeply embedded, pervasive messages. Of course they won't be solved by throwing a class at it. But shrugging your shoulders and saying, "Yeah, but we're not gonna do anything" becomes yet another one of those pervasive messages.
So it can't, and won't, fix the immediate problem. But it at least acknowledges the problem, rather than leaving it buried.
That's not to say it can't also be surrounded by cynicism, scamming, and bad faith. Those things are yet more indicators of the real underlying issues: people are willing to accept or ignore the racism, sexism, etc. that happen to other people because it's not important to them. Making the costs of it more visible doesn't reduce those costs, but it does provide a reason for people to start wanting to lower them.
There is also evidence from Sweden that attitudes towards rape and sexual assault has changed due to government policies. E.g questions such as "Is it ok to have sex with a girl who is too drunk to speak?" are answered differently today than 20 years ago.
Edit: The research is here: https://wwwsnsse.cdn.triggerfish.cloud/uploads/2017/05/sns-a... More qualified means higher level of education and more years of experience. Same metrics as used in most workplaces.
Also, I wonder why it only took someone five minutes to ask me for a source, but no one has yet to ask tenpies for a source... Some facts are easier to believe than others?
If it leads to more qualified employees, which I assume would correlates with their suitability, it would save money and reduce mistakes in key areas like healthcare which then would result in saved lives. A national policy would be a win-win for everyone.
A while back I looked if any municipality had a general hireing policy in order to combat gender segregation. So far I have yet to find one that even mention gender segregation as something to consider when hiring new people. There does not even seem to be one that something as vague as a goal to reduce gender segregation.
This is not the same as the list of who eventually gets elected of course, as the probability of getting elected decreases the further down the list you go. Also the policy appears to apply per ballot, and since there are something like 30 regions with (possibly) independent ballots, there is still some room to stack one way or the other. In the event, last election they got a pretty even split: 48 vs 52.
First, can you link a source? Second, what does "more qualified" mean in the context of politicians? They are selected by popularity in the majority; capabilities are downstream from likeability. This, one could argue that "more qualified" could be construed as "excellent hair" or "large breasts." This is not to say that the job of political official does not have constraints or optimums, but the method of job placement is the issue in terms of my question.
Report is here: https://www.sns.se/aktuellt/sns-analys-nr-41-konskvotering-k...
EDIT: Downvoters, what's wrong with this comment? Are downvotes disagreement? If so, do you have anything to substantiate your position? If it's not disagreement, what could I do to improve the quality of my post to make it acceptable?
Then, the folks who teach these courses see these papers (presumably in their undergraduate psych classes?) and end up believing them, becacuse they don't have the necessary scientific analytic/critical skills to evaluate them.
At my employer, the IAT was originally presented as scientific fact (with citations). Over time, the citations changed from "This is great!" to "This work appears to not be scientifically accurate, but we like the idea" to "we will not be using this, unless you want to try it voluntarily".
I think in general most people in society don't really have the ability to differentiate bullshit science from real science. I've actually left my scientific field permanently because I've seen far too enough examples of fraud and incompetence leading to tenure track positions.
I would say in many ways they can't, at least not without significant time investment every time they need to make that assessment, which is often.
A domain expert is likely able to identify the smell of bullshit in their field extremely quickly. An expert in an adjacent domain will be able to apply some of their expertise, but not all, and sniff out some problems, but other might elude them. That is, a physicist might be able to note some likely problematic parts of statements to do with biology based somewhat on the science, somewhat on the shared methodology, and somewhat on the shared politics they might experience.
A layperson may have very little experience to draw upon for some scientific statement, and even when they have experience with the underlying principles (a general interest in the area, experience in college), that may not be enough to identify problem areas. That's not a problem we can expect the layperson to be responsible for correcting (at least not beyond a healthy skepticism), unless we expect them all to increase their knowledge in every domain that they might make an assessment about (this happens, but it happens at a societal level, and over the span of many years).
Psychology seems to share relatively little with most hard sciences, so it's particularly hard for both laypeople and scientists in other fields to assess without effort (as evidenced here though the multiple stories of people that put in that actual effort).
I'm not sure we'll see improvement on this issue until we have better norms about communicating results. There's a natural inflation that happens when different parties take a finding and explain it, and possibly over-emphasize portions of it. That this happens twice now, once with the PR department associated with the group doing the study and once by the media that goes by what the PR department say, means that the average person gets a very distorted view of what's actually going on.
Nobody really wants equality. They want supremacy. If they did have equality, they would be treated like everyone else and lose all of their power/special treatment.
They are also tools of our politicians to be a permanent victim class, so the politicians can dole out justice and get votes.
I'm serious when I say this is one of the best things about being a contractor or consultant. I can just sign a paper saying that I'm responsible for my behavior.
The point of the training is for companies to absolve themselves of culpability. If you act like a jerk after unconscious bias training you are on your own and the company hopes that it can't be blamed for it.
Your comment would be just fine with just the second paragraph.
I can't see the parent making this claim at all; are you sure that your interpretation is in good faith?
I had training called 'cultural awareness' or similar at another company which was basically very similar material, but without the bogus claims that it was rooted in science. It's the latter that I object to - if they are going to enforce behavioural standards just be honest about it, rather than gaslighting people with this arrant nonsense that we're all unknowing bigots through some kind of original sin.
My point is that even if unconscious bias training is 100% bullshit, it is among the most benign forms of business bullshit I've experienced. Thus, I cannot understand why it is so upsetting to so many.
I'd argue the opposite actually - it's insidious, because any objection is liable to get you labelled a racist etc., and it's dangerous, because it's effectively telling you that no matter how hard you try you cannot escape being a racist (etc.). The latter is pretty much a textbook definition of gaslighting. I don't want my employer gaslighting me.
Bullshit is distinguished by the speaker not even caring if it's true. Usually it is meant to distract you from what you are not supposed to notice.
Maybe it’s one among many or maybe it’s the only one. We don’t know.
That said, most training is about absolving the company of responsibility and putting it on you (security training for example).
On the surface it would seem a good idea to train against harassment at work, but I’d be keen to know if it has an effect on behavior or is it the HR consequences that affect behavior more than the training, for example.
I wonder how many companies can survive long term if employees don't trust their employer and the employer don't trust its employees.
1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6524213/
2 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/095001701771984...
There is so much to unpack about you here
"here comes Karen, let me discriminate by noticing how I might discriminate so to make her more comfortable because I can't perceive my privilege but now I can alter my behavior just around her"
Isn't there some utility in keeping the workplace productive just by being sensitive, as opposed to quantifying if it "reduces discrimination"