SBP: Consequences of Attributing Discrimination to Implicit Bias

公司、警察部门和教育机构正在使用隐性偏见培训来减少基于种族、性别和其他社会类别的歧视，从而潜在地帮助增加员工的多样性。据估计，多样性培训每年花费近80亿美元，但几乎没有证据表明多样性培训在减少歧视方面有效。重要的是要研究人们如何理解和应对许多被归因于隐性偏见的歧视行为。隐性偏见通常被认为是有意识之外的，最近的研究发现，如果人们认为那些歧视的人的歧视行为源于他们的隐性偏见而不是显性的偏见，那么他们往往会对他们承担较少的责任。通过14项研究，该项目将发现，对于谁，何时以及如何减少对归因于隐性偏见的歧视的责任，最有可能发生。该项目考察了将歧视归因于隐性偏见是否会影响人们认为可以克服这些形式的偏见的程度。这项研究还衡量了这些过程产生的情绪和行为后果。这项研究将阐明，人们对隐性偏见的认识增加，实际上可能会减少对某些歧视行为的问责。该项目的长期目标是帮助制定更有效的干预措施，以减少社会歧视。许多研究人员和外行人认为，教育公众了解隐性偏见将激发人们的支持，以对抗其歧视性后果。然而，有理由预计，对隐性偏见的更多认识，实际上可能会降低人们要求他人为被归因于这种偏见的歧视行为负责的程度。该项目整合了道德认知和社会心理学的研究，以考察人们如何对内隐态度导致的歧视行为的报告进行推理和回应。具体地说，这项研究调查了一种假设，即因为内隐过程被假设为超越了意识，当人们将那些歧视的人归因于内隐的态度和信念时，他们往往对那些即使是明显故意的行为也不那么负责。这项研究将为当前的道德责任模型提供信息，并提供对谁应该或谁应该为隐性偏见负责的问题的重新思考。这项研究还将考虑内隐偏见归因的其他结果，包括它们对情绪、歧视感知以及与歧视和不平等作斗争的意愿的影响。由于大量歧视植根于隐性偏见形式，因此，对隐性偏见效应的小而可靠的责任削减可能具有非常重要的后果。将歧视行为归因于隐性偏见的倾向可能会矛盾地降低对歧视者的制裁意愿，结果是增加而不是减少社会对歧视及其影响的容忍度。 该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Implicit bias training is being used by companies, police departments, and educational institutions to decrease discrimination based on race, gender, and other social categories and thereby to potentially help increase the diversity of their employees. By some estimates, diversity training costs nearly $8 billion a year, but there is little evidence that diversity training is effective at reducing discrimination. It is important to examine how people make sense of and respond to the many acts of discrimination that are attributed to implicit bias. Implicit biases are often thought to be beyond conscious awareness and recent research has found that people tend to hold those who discriminate less accountable if their discriminatory acts are assumed to stem from their implicit biases rather than explicit biases. Across fourteen studies, this project will discover for whom, when, and how this reduced accountability for discrimination attributed to implicit bias is most likely to occur. The project examines whether attributing discrimination to implicit bias affects the extent to which people think it is possible to overcome these forms of prejudice. The research also measures the emotions and behavioral consequences arising from these processes. The research will shed light on how increased awareness of implicit biases may actually produce reduced accountability for some acts of discrimination. The long-term aim of the project is to help produce more effective interventions to reduce societal discrimination. Many researchers and laypeople presume that educating the public about implicit bias will galvanize support to combat its discriminatory consequences. Yet there is reason to expect that greater awareness of implicit bias may actually reduce the extent to which people hold others accountable for acts of discrimination that are attributed to it. This project integrates research from moral cognition and social psychology to examine how people reason about and respond to reports of discriminatory behavior attributed to implicit attitudes. Specifically, this research investigates the hypothesis that because implicit processes are assumed to be beyond conscious awareness, people often hold those who discriminate less accountable for even clearly intentional behaviors when they are attributed to implicit attitudes and beliefs. The research will inform current models of moral responsibility and offer a reconsideration of the question of who is or should be responsible for implicit bias. This research will also consider additional outcomes of implicit bias attributions, including their effects on emotions, perceptions of discrimination, and willingness to work to combat discrimination and inequity. Because a great deal of discrimination is rooted in implicit forms of bias, a small but reliable reduced accountability for implicit bias effect could be highly consequential. The tendency to attribute discriminatory acts to implicit bias may paradoxically reduce the willingness to sanction those who discriminate, with the result of increasing rather than decreasing societal tolerance for discrimination and its effects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.