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The world is relying on a flawed psychological test to fight racism (2017)

Many are prejudiced but hope to escape the label of “racist” or “sexist.” And the theory of implicit bias has handed them an excuse.

Implicit bias workshops certainly didn’t influence the behavior of then-Google employee James Damore, who complained about the training days and wrote a scientifically ill-informed rant arguing that his female colleagues were biologically less capable of working at the company. When I’ve experienced (subtler) forms of prejudice, such as a boyfriend who asked me to iron his shirts, a very senior editor who made sexual comments to me, and remarks apropos of nothing from male friends and acquaintances about my breasts, the perpetrators were quick to suggest that their behavior was utterly unintentional, that they were totally consciously unaware of their sexism. Calvin Lai, director of research at Harvard’s Project Implicit and professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University-Saint Louis, notes that it’s extremely difficult to prove a test predicts behavior, and future larger studies could well find stronger evidence to bolster the IAT.

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