Library Guides: Implicit Bias in Employment Law: Ameliorating Implicit Bias

Implicit Bias Training

Even absent an effective legal regimen that takes into account implicit bias, implicit bias training is an ever more popular feature in the modern workplace. Below are resources that will you understand and gauge the effectiveness of these programs.

The upshot of the literature is that implicit bias training in the workplace can help reduce implicit bias among workers in the workplace. However, in order to have an effect, the training must be conducted over a certain period of time, be reasonably intensive and focus don habit-breaking, and be taken seriously by the participants.

’Unlearning’ Automatic Biases: The Malleability of Implicit Prejudice and Stereotypes
This study is hopeful about techniques to address implicit bias. It finds that the level and type of biases we feel are highly malleable given the right circumstances and, theoretically, the right training.
Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A Prejudice Habit-breaking Intervention
This study finds that implicit bias training most effective when it take place over a longer course of time and focuses on habit-breaking interventions.
Does Sexual Harassment Training Change Attitudes? A View from the Federal Level.
This article finds that, broadly speaking, sexual harassment training (a cousin of implicit bias training in the sense that both seek to prevent invidious discrimination by altering attitudes and norms) can be effective if the leadership at the firm is seen as buying in to the program.
Promoting Institutional Change Through Bias Literacy
This article is also fairly bullish on the efficacy of bias training. It found that increasing literacy about bias, conscious and unconscious, materially reduced bias incidents among its sample group.
Best Practices in Cultural Competence and Implicit Bias Training
This report gives a list of best practices in implicit bias training for workplaces.
Proven Strategies for Addressing Unconscious Bias in the Workplace
This report gives an alternative list of best practices for reducing implicit bias in the workplace, including a fuller discussion of non-training practices.

The Bias-Free Job Search

Implicit bias shows up often in the hiring process. Below are some resources to consult when attempting to conduct a bias-free job search.

How to Do a Better Job of Searching for Diversity.
This article lays out the various and specific issues that confront employers engaged in a high-level job search and identifies strategic to avoid implicit bias.
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How to Do a Better Job of Searching for Diversity.
Identifying and Avoiding Interview Biases
This guide from the University of Florida lists the ways that implicit bias reads its head during a job interview.
Best Practices Faculty and Leadership Searches
This guide from Yale University lays out best practices for hiring, including a lengthy discussion of implicit bias.
Best Practices in Faculty Hiring - Implicit Bias
This page from the University of Oregon provides a list of resources to consult when combatting implicit bias during the hiring process.
Recruiting and Interviewing: Minimizing Legal Risk
This WestLaw Practical Law Labor & Employment Guide gives steps to minimize legal risk during the recruiting process, and makes mention of implicit bias as a factor to be considered.

Can Implicit Bias Be Cured?

Implicit bias cannot be "cured." However, it can be minimized by the conscious application of effort. Below are some resources that will help you identify strategies for reducing implicit bias as a motivator of your own actions.

Condoning stereotyping? How awareness of stereotyping prevalence impacts expression of stereotypes.
This paper provides an interesting perspective on how awareness of stereotypes impacts the use of stereotypes. It found that being more aware of stereotypes does not necessarily reduce their prevalence.
How to Fight Your Own Implicit Biases
This page provides some useful tips for avoiding implicit bias on the individual level.
http://kathleennaltyconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Strategies-for-Confronting-Unconscious-Bias-The-Colorado-Lawyer-May-2016.pdf
This guide, published by the Colorado Bar Association, provides lawyer-specific advice for reducing implicit bias in the practice law.
A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory
Don't let the title scare you -- the upshot of this article is that one way of minimizing unconscious prejudice is to expose yourself to "positive" examples of the group you are biasing against, in order to counteract your socialized expectations of members of that group.
Perceptual Other-Race Training Reduces Implicit Racial Bias
Building off the last paper, this article notes that increasing "invitation" -- that is, your ability to see people as individuals instead of as members of groups -- is an effective way of decreasing implicit bias.
Racial bias in neural response to others' pain is reduced with other-race contact
How's this for unconscious: This neurological study indicates that exposing yourself people of groups you harbor implicit bias against increases your ability to emphasize with their pain.
Seeing is believing: Exposure to counterstereotypic women leaders and its effect on the malleability of automatic gender stereotyping
Most implicit bias-reducing research is focused on race. This study shows that similar techniques reduce implicit bias in the gender context.

Book Corner

Below are some books to consult for a more nuanced understanding of how to fight implicit bias in a non-legal context.

Implicit Bias in Employment Law: Ameliorating Implicit Bias

What To Do About Implicit Bias

Implicit Bias Training

The Bias-Free Job Search

Can Implicit Bias Be Cured?

Book Corner