Breaking the Prejudice Habit: An Evidence-Based Campus-Wide Intervention Effort

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Breaking the prejudice habit: An evidence-based, campus-wide intervention effort, Automatically activated stereotypes can lead to biased thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, even among people whose values strongly oppose bias. Like unwanted bad habits, these unintentional biases can be extremely diffi- cult to control. My early pioneering work forms the foundation of our contemporary understanding of how people who consciously renounce prejudice have unintentional or implicit biases that leads them to be unwittingly com- plicit in the perpetuation of ongoing intergroup disparities. The specter of unintentional discrimination has inspired widespread calls from researchers, scholars, and public policy officials to develop and implement effective inter- ventions to reduce and eliminate the negative effects of unintentional bias. Reducing bias and increasing representation of racial minorities and women in science, technology, engineer- ing, and math (STEM) fields has been a top priority for NIH and nearly every other scientific organization. In the 2016-2020 Strategic Plan, NIH identifies the lack of scientific workforce diversity as a critical barrier to progress. Stereotypes and unintentional biases are key obstacles to scientific workforce diversity, making it harder for members of under-represented groups to pursue careers in science on multiple fronts. Unintentional biases can similarly influence those who are already in the scientific workforce, making decisions about who to fund, mentor, admit, or hire. They also influence potential scientists-to-be, who need to determine whether a career in science is right for them and whether they “fit” in the scientific workforce. Many of the responses to the clarion call for strategies to reduce the impact of unintentional bias have taken the form of interventions that are not evidence-based. And, though well-intentioned, these efforts at best do not work and very often make bias problems worse. Effectively solving social problems, like that of unintentional bias, requires evidence-based interventions that produce changes that endure and affect real-world outcomes. The sole intervention that has been empirically demonstrated to produce lasting, meaningful bias reductions is my prejudice habit-breaking intervention. This intervention's initial success is rooted in decades of my research de- veloping the prejudice habit model, which proposes that “breaking the prejudice habit” can be achieved through a combination of awareness, concern, and effort. In several randomized-controlled studies, my colleagues and I have demonstrated this intervention's long-term effectiveness. As a MIRA investigator, I would be able to 1) continue the basic bias research that forms the basis of this intervention, 2) expand the field-testing and refinement of the intervention, 3) assess a range of behavioral out- comes affected by the intervention, and 4) create automated, easily-exportable versions of the intervention that can be widely disseminated.