Thank you for sharing this dialogue. It's a wonderful illustration of how constructive disagreement remains possible and valuable, especially when individuals are open to understanding both sides of an argument. Regarding implicit bias, what particularly troubles me—beyond the academic debate about what insights certain tests offer or what implicit bias truly signifies—is the unwavering confidence with which corporations wield tools like the IAT. It seems as though they believe administering such tests is akin to undergoing multiple sessions on a psychiatrist's couch. They then use these results to recommend (or mandate) specific diversity trainings for employees, purportedly to recognize and address their guilt, racism, misogyny, and so forth.
I appreciate your sophisticated analysis; responding more simply doesn’t mean I don’t. So here are my reactions to the IAT. 1. It is potentially unethical, even immoral. At least one professor makes her students take it, as she seems to have blind faith in it. What right does she have to (allegedly) probe students’ minds without their express, freely-given permission? Given the power differential between prof and student, I find this practice offensive. 2. The IAT lacks face validity. It’s quite a stretch to claim response times indicate deep hidden attitudes. Times whose differences are so small they can only be detected by machine. Psych researcher magic: “I’ve invented a device to advance science by shaking the truth out of them! They’ll be powerless to resist it! Go me!”
I found this article very interesting but when it really comes down to it, I couldn’t help thinking that a vast amount of time and resources has gone into trying to prove that disparities between groups is due to racism.
When explicit racism had significantly declined over the decades, the reflex was to pivot to trying to prove that racism still exists somewhere in our subconscious which must be the cause of the disparities.
Maybe the time has come to give up on this theory and spend more time and resources looking elsewhere? Things have only gotten worse with regard to race relations and the disparity problem is no closer to being solved in the least.
If the scheduling hypothesis is false, and it really is hunger that is causing the difference, then this would say to me that there is no point in trying the measure Implicit Bias -- the signal is so noisy you can never be sure you have found anything.
I'm unclear why the issue doesn't boil down -- ultimately -- to a question of predictive validity. The theory of implicit bias is that an individual may claim not to be biased toward members of a particular group, but may behave differently toward (or at least in some way respond differently to) members of that group than members of a different group in ways that are predicted by scores on the IAT. For example, if people stand further from an African American male than a white male on an elevator, while still claiming, and believing, that they hold no negative attitudes about African Americans males, and if that behavior is predicted by IAT scores, that would seem to validate the concept. No? At the same time, in the absence of clear predictive power, why should anyone care about the how people score on the IAT at all?
Seems to me that one issue is whether reaction time is a valid measure of implicit bias ( and if so not a very reliable measure), or was it unconscious bias. But before that can be established, how valid is that, (or those?) concept?
Thank you for sharing this dialogue. It's a wonderful illustration of how constructive disagreement remains possible and valuable, especially when individuals are open to understanding both sides of an argument. Regarding implicit bias, what particularly troubles me—beyond the academic debate about what insights certain tests offer or what implicit bias truly signifies—is the unwavering confidence with which corporations wield tools like the IAT. It seems as though they believe administering such tests is akin to undergoing multiple sessions on a psychiatrist's couch. They then use these results to recommend (or mandate) specific diversity trainings for employees, purportedly to recognize and address their guilt, racism, misogyny, and so forth.
I appreciate your sophisticated analysis; responding more simply doesn’t mean I don’t. So here are my reactions to the IAT. 1. It is potentially unethical, even immoral. At least one professor makes her students take it, as she seems to have blind faith in it. What right does she have to (allegedly) probe students’ minds without their express, freely-given permission? Given the power differential between prof and student, I find this practice offensive. 2. The IAT lacks face validity. It’s quite a stretch to claim response times indicate deep hidden attitudes. Times whose differences are so small they can only be detected by machine. Psych researcher magic: “I’ve invented a device to advance science by shaking the truth out of them! They’ll be powerless to resist it! Go me!”
Progressives are very clever: they want to talk about implicit bias because then there is less time to discuss IQ.
I found this article very interesting but when it really comes down to it, I couldn’t help thinking that a vast amount of time and resources has gone into trying to prove that disparities between groups is due to racism.
When explicit racism had significantly declined over the decades, the reflex was to pivot to trying to prove that racism still exists somewhere in our subconscious which must be the cause of the disparities.
Maybe the time has come to give up on this theory and spend more time and resources looking elsewhere? Things have only gotten worse with regard to race relations and the disparity problem is no closer to being solved in the least.
Have you heard about the Hungry Judge Effect?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_judge_effect
If the scheduling hypothesis is false, and it really is hunger that is causing the difference, then this would say to me that there is no point in trying the measure Implicit Bias -- the signal is so noisy you can never be sure you have found anything.
What a refreshing example of how two professionals with differing viewpoints should interact with each other.
I would think of ham and cheese as a bias.
I'm unclear why the issue doesn't boil down -- ultimately -- to a question of predictive validity. The theory of implicit bias is that an individual may claim not to be biased toward members of a particular group, but may behave differently toward (or at least in some way respond differently to) members of that group than members of a different group in ways that are predicted by scores on the IAT. For example, if people stand further from an African American male than a white male on an elevator, while still claiming, and believing, that they hold no negative attitudes about African Americans males, and if that behavior is predicted by IAT scores, that would seem to validate the concept. No? At the same time, in the absence of clear predictive power, why should anyone care about the how people score on the IAT at all?
Seems to me that one issue is whether reaction time is a valid measure of implicit bias ( and if so not a very reliable measure), or was it unconscious bias. But before that can be established, how valid is that, (or those?) concept?