Implicit Bias Training: Don't Rely on This Fad to Carry Your DE&I Strategy
Health care workers in Michigan must undergo implicit bias training to obtain their state licensing, under Executive Directive 2020-7 that Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed on July 9th of 2020. In the directive, Whitmer notes that racial disparities in healthcare outcomes are exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis, and that she and her own team have completed implicit bias training. But can implicit bias training really move the needle on racial inequity?
Implicit bias, also referred to unconscious bias, is the corporate HR topics du jour. In these trainings, participants take psychological tests to identify and explore their deeply held stereotypes. The most popular of such tests is the Harvard’s Implicit Association Test. Known as IAT, the test asks respondents to sort words into binary categories, such a “good/bad” or “young/old.” The test then measures the speed at which the responded sorts these words, which signifies the strength of the individual’s cognitive associations for each word. According to the theory behind the test, these cognitive associations shed light on attitudes that people may be unwilling to report, or attitudes of which that they aren’t even aware.
The premise is alluring: just as meditation raises awareness to one’s breathing, implicit bias training purports to raise awareness to one’s unconscious stereotypes against various groups of people. However, if a company is truly attempting to move the needle on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, unconscious bias training alone is likely to fail to make substantive change.
“Unconscious bias training only teaches you about you. What are you going to do with it? Companies tend to use unconscious bias as transformative, and it’s not,” says Dr. Lars Johnson, Assistant Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Wayne State University in a recent panel discussion on making a more just workplace.
Harvard itself notes that there are issues with the test’s construction. One such problem is low reliability, meaning that if a person takes the test multiple times, they may not get similar results. Dr. Johnson notes that a lot of the implicit association tests are “gameable” or easily manipulated once people take them multiple times. Another problem is that there isn’t clear evidence that the test results translate to real world behavior.
The truth is, if an organization really wants to improve equity, it’s probably going to upset the people who are in charge. Equity is about sharing power, and organizational leaders nearly always loathe to give up their own authority and influence. Implicit bias training, on its own, does nothing to change the status quo, and can serve as a “check the box” activity that doesn’t bring real organizational change. Business leaders and HR managers should focus more on evidence-based interventions to break down structural barriers for marginalized groups, and pass on this HR trend.