Implicit Bias

Implicit bias describes the automatic association people make between groups of people and stereotypes about those groups.

Implicit bias describes the automatic association people make between groups of people and stereotypes about those groups. Under certain conditions, those automatic associations can influence behavior—making people respond in biased ways even when they are not explicitly prejudiced. More than thirty years of research in neurology and social and cognitive psychology has shown that people hold implicit biases even in the absence of heartfelt bigotry, simply by paying attention to the social world around them. Implicit racial bias has given rise to a phenomenon known as “racism without racists,” which can cause institutions or individuals to act on racial prejudices, even in spite of good intentions and nondiscriminatory policies or standards.

In the context of criminal justice and community safety, implicit bias has been shown to have significant influence in the outcomes of interactions between police and citizens. While conscious, “traditional” racism has declined significantly in recent decades, research suggests that “implicit attitudes may be better at predicting and/or influencing behavior than self-reported explicit attitudes.”

Discussions of implicit bias in policing tend to focus on implicit racial biases; however, implicit bias can be expressed in relation to non-racial factors, including gender, age, religion, or sexual orientation. As with all types of bias, implicit bias can distort one’s perception and subsequent treatment either in favor of or against a given person or group. In policing, this has resulted in widespread practices that focus undeserved suspicion on some groups and presume other groups innocent.

Reducing the influence of implicit bias is vitally important to strengthening relationships between police and minority communities. For example, studies suggest that implicit bias contributes to “shooter bias,”—the tendency for police to shoot unarmed black suspects more often than white ones—as well as the frequency of police stops for members of minority groups. Other expressions of implicit bias, such as public defenders’ prioritization of cases involving white defendants, can have major impact on communities. This latter point is particularly significant in light of recent findings about the importance of procedural justice in fostering cooperation between citizens and the criminal justice system and cultivating law-abiding communities.

Despite these challenges, the work of Phillip Atiba Goff, President of the Center for Policing Equity, has shown that it is possible to address and reduce implicit bias through training and policy interventions with law enforcement agencies. Research suggests that biased associations can be gradually unlearned and replaced with nonbiased ones. Perhaps even more encouragingly, one can reduce the influence of implicit bias simply by changing the context in which an interaction takes place. Consequently, through policy and training, it is possible to mend the harm that racial stereotypes do to our minds and our public safety.

Research

La Vigne, N., Fontaine, J., & Dwivedi, A. 2017. How Do People in High-Crime, Low-Income Communities View the Police?. Urban Institute. https://nnscommunities.org/uploads/how_do_people_in_high-crime_view_the_police.pdf

The Sentencing Project. Disproportionate minority contact.

La Vigne, N. G., Lachman, P., Rao, S., Matthews, A. (2014). Stop and Frisk: Balancing Crime Control with Community Relations. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. 

Beattie, G., Cohen, D., & McGuire, L. (2013). An exploration of possible unconscious ethnic biases in higher education: The role of implicit attitudes on selection for university posts. Semiotica 2013, 197, 171-201.

Richardson, L. S., & Goff, P. A. (2013). Implicit Racial Bias in Public Defender Triage. Yale Law Journal, 122, 13-24

Sadler, M. S., Correll, J., Park, B., & Judd, C. M. (2012). The world is not Black and White: Racial bias in the decision to shoot in a multiethnic contextJournal of Social Issues, 68(2), 286-313.

Alexander, M. (2011). The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press.

Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M., & Jackson, M. C. (2008). Not yet human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequencesJournal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2), 292-306.

Correll, et al., (2007). The influence of stereotypes on decisions to shootEuropean Journal of Social Psychology, 37: 1102–1117.

Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdie-Vaughns, V.J., & Johnson, S. L. (2006). Looking deathworthy: Perceived stereotypicality of Black defendants predicts capital-sentencing outcomes. Psychological Science, 17(5), 383-386.

Ziegert, J. C., & Hanges, P. J. (2005). Employment Discrimination: The Role of Implicit Attitudes, Motivation, and a Climate for Racial Bias. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(3), 553-562.

Eberhardt, J. L., Goff, P. A., Purdie, & Davies, P. G. (2004). Seeing Black: Race crime, and visual processing.  Journal  of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(6), 876-893.

Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2002). The police officer's dilemma: using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individualsJournal of personality and social psychology, 83(6), 1314-1329.

Dovidio, J. F. (2001). On the nature of contemporary prejudice: The third waveJournal of Social Issues, 57(4), 829-849.

Blair, I. V., Ma, J. E., & Lenton, A. P. (2001). Imagining stereotypes away: the moderation of implicit stereotypes through mental imageryJournal of personality and social psychology, 81(5), 828-841.

Dovidio, J. F., Kawakami, K., & Gaertner, S. L. (2000). Reducing contemporary prejudice: Combating explicit and implicit bias at the individual and intergroup level in S. Oskamp (Ed.), Reducing prejudice and discrimination (pp. 137-163). Hilldale, NJ:  Erlbaum.

Oskamp, S. (2000). Reducing prejudice and discrimination. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Chartrand, T. L.; Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception–behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(6), 893-910.
 



Leadership


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