8 ms·

Science magazine touts the existence of strong and ubiquitous “implicit bias”

50 points by mckern 4y ago

seneca 4y ago
Modern day Lysenkoism. Compromising science for ideology, any ideology, is one of the more destructive things a society can do to itself. Not only does it halt progress, it destroys the credibility of the scientific community.
fabian2k 4y ago
The mentioned article appeared in the "News" section of Science, not the "Research" section. There are very different standards for those, this is not a peer-reviewed paper. The snarky remark in the first sentence is a bit misplaced here as this is actually the section of Science that is more like a magazine than a scientific journal.
- amluto 4y ago
  Is there a link to the article in question?
  - fabian2k 4y ago
    The image is a link, I missed that at first as well. https://www.science.org/content/article/do-no-unconscious-harm-can-hidden-prejudices-medicine-stamped https://www.science.org/content/article/do-no-unconscious-ha...
space_fountain 4y ago
I’m really not impressed by hacker new’s scholarship on this. Here’s a paragraph from one of the papers cited here. Basically one of the key arguments in this paper is that basis might be justified. Ignoring for a second that biase in real humans is much strong than differences between races, it also is beside the point. Race isn’t something people can control. If people at large are classifying people based on it that will legitimately act to keep the situation locked in place. If I think everyone with red hair is a criminal and act like it people with red hair will have pretty bad lives and a lot more of them will end up turning to crime > Cultural knowledge and accuracy as sources of implicit associations.This analysis has akinship to that of one of the earliest critiques of the IAT (Arkes & Tetlock, 2004). They argued that,rather than reflecting prejudice, the race IAT might reflect knowledge of cultural stereotypes. Our argument, however, goes further. The associations tapped by the IAT may reflect not just cultural stereotypes, but implicit cognitive registration of regularities and realities of the social environment.Consistent with this analysis, IAT response times were faster when stimuli corresponded to ecologically valid base rates (Bluemke & Fiedler, 2009). Even evaluations of groups may come from knowledge of those groups’ social conditions (Payne et al., 2017). For example, groups disproportionately living in unpleasant conditions (such as poverty, crime, rundown housing) may be associated with “unpleasant” more than other groups
- space_fountain 4y ago
  This article also says something about IAT test being strongly correlated with other things, so their individual contribution to racist outcomes is small as evidence against IAT tests which the original article turned around and tried to say means implicit basis isn’t real or that IAT tests are bad, but it literally doesn’t, just that you could measure implicit bias in other ways
Connor_Creegan 4y ago
A few questions that are never really addressed in these discussions about "bias", "discrimination", "race", etc.: What is discrimination at a fundamental level? The term originally means to perceive something as validly distinct - e.g. to discriminate between truthhood and falsity, between up and down, between black and white. The term is most often now used with the implicit qualification of "unjust", "unwarranted", "unreal" or "quasi". So-called "racial discrimination" is a charge made when there appears to be some kind of injustice in the evaluation. So does this mean the mark of racial/ethnic/(even religious)/whatever stock is to be totally unrecognized as a heuristic in all judgments? Or just some? If just some, which ones? Why? Where is the line drawn? How many cycles of flawed attempts at psychological programming (the unintended consequences of which are perhaps not even entirely observed or taken into consideration) do we need to go through before ditching this endeavour? As it pertains to law enforcement, is it easier to simply admit that our current system can't be reformed through psy-ops, and that maybe we need to revert to a more subsidiarian/local principle of security in general?
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  Thomas Sowell breaks down discrimination into far more useful categories. > At a minimum, we need to know what we ourselves mean when we use a word like "discrimination," especially since it has conflicting meanings. The broader meaning--an ability to discern differences in the qualities of people and things, and choosing accordingly--can be called Discrimination I. The narrower, but more commonly used, meaning--treating people negatively, based on arbitrary aversions or animosities to individuals of a particular race or sex, for example--can be called Discrimination II, the kind of discrimination that has led to anti-discrimination laws and policies. He goes on to break Discrimination I down into two subcategories, A and B. Type Ia: "The ideal, and more costly, variation is seeking and paying the cost for information that would permit judging each individual as an individual, regardless of the group from which that individual comes." Type Ib: "In other cases, where such information is too costly to be worth it, individuals may be judged by empirical evidence on the group they are part of." An example of type Ib is judging a person's ability to pay back a mortgage loan based on their income.
  - 4y ago
whiddershins 4y ago
Was under the impression implicit bias stuff had largely been debunked. It’s hard to keep up.
- pjscott 4y ago
  Yes, the whole field has pretty much fallen to the replication crisis. The thing this article is complaining about is that "Science" magazine apparently has a section in which it uncritically repeats politically-fashionable junk science.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  Unfortunately we are now in a situation where there will a trailing legacy for the next 30 years of people who went through the university system and have been indoctrinated to believe there is only the one correct opinion on any given topic.
akomtu 4y ago
Is it like dark matter in cosmology? Except that here, "scientists" observe a social galaxy and note that it's round. According to their beliefs, the galaxy must be rectangular, so they had to postulate an invisible ubiquitous force that makes the galaxy round. They called this dark force many names: inequity, implicit bias, structural racism.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  I understand the analogy you're trying to make, but that particular one doesn't track. Dark matter is required by quantum mechanics. Sean Carroll had a great explanation of this in his Biggest Ideas in the Universe video series. The models of particle creation in the early universe require there to be something with the characteristics of a class of particles holding the label "dark matter." "Structural racism," "inequity," and "implicit bias" all mean very different things. Structural racism is where a society is deliberately constructed to be racist, as under Apartheid in South Africa. (It is otherwise nonsensically applied to current Western governments that employ capitalism as an economic system.) Inequity is the state of receiving disparate treatment. It can be caused by structural racism, by personal racism, or by empirical discrimination (person A is denied a mortgage because their income indicates they likely cannot afford to pay the loan back, whereas person B is granted the mortgage because their income indicates they likely can). Implicit bias is an actual psychological phenomenon where quirks in the way humans think affect their judgement. The classical example is to take two parallel line segments of equal length where the ends are lined up. On one segment draw arrowheads pointing outward, on the other, arrowheads pointing inward. When asked, humans will visually judge the line segment with arrowheads pointing inward as being longer than the one with arrowheads pointing outward [1]. Convincing yourself the line segments are of equal length requires measurement. That this occurs is true. That it is the great bugaboo of our times and the cause of inequity has a far more tenuous connection to reality. That these phrases are used as proxies for "bad" is the real problem. We can agree that structural racism is evil. Inequity occurs for the full spectrum of reasons, some immoral, some moral, some merely neutral and reasonable. Implicit bias simply is. The hard part is separating out acculturated bias (like racism) from implicit bias. One evaporates in the face differing environments. For example, children that grow up in integrated schools and integrated neighborhoods are far less likely to suffer from racist attitudes. The other is a cognitive feature that must be countered with measurement (empiricism) or rules (equally applied). Those attempting to use the terms as umbrella labels diminish our ability to talk about and address issues arising from them. It isn't a single dark force, and there isn't a giant conspiracy out to perpetuate all perceived societal ills. [1] https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/image-article_inline_full_caption/public/field_blog_entry_images/2019-10/effetto_ottico_3_.png?itok=ZduUW6JG https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/i...
Khaine 4y ago
I don't understand why people continue to do IAT tests. One of the core authors of the original IAT paper released a paper last year showing how the test doesn't actually measure bias, and how it is not clear what this kind of test actually measures. Brian Nosek who is one of the co-authors of the IAT test just released a paper [1] that show that changes in implicit bias don’t lead to changes in behaviour. You can find a summary of the article and its findings here [2]. The paper examining 499 studies over 20 years involving 80,859 participants that used the IAT and other, similar measures. They discovered two things: * One is that the correlation between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior appears weaker than previously thought. * They also conclude that there is very little evidence that changes in implicit bias have anything to do with changes in a person’s behavior. These findings, they write, "produce a challenge for this area of research." The finding that changes in implicit bias don’t lead to changes in behavior, Forscher says, "should be stunning." "I see implicit bias as a potential means to an end, something that tells us what to do and some possible remedies for what we see in the world," Forscher says. "So if there’s little evidence to show that changing implicit bias is a useful way of changing those behaviors, my next question is ‘What should we do?’" [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308926636_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Change_in_Implicit_Bias https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308926636_A_Meta-An... [2] https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Implicit/238807 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Impl...
8bitsrule 4y ago
> those who study implicit bias already assume it exists, and thus will continue indefinitely to find it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel

50 points by mckern 4y ago

Modern day Lysenkoism. Compromising science for ideology, any ideology, is one of the more destructive things a society can do to itself. Not only does it halt progress, it destroys the credibility of the scientific community.

fabian2k 4y ago

The mentioned article appeared in the "News" section of Science, not the "Research" section. There are very different standards for those, this is not a peer-reviewed paper. The snarky remark in the first sentence is a bit misplaced here as this is actually the section of Science that is more like a magazine than a scientific journal.

amluto 4y ago
Is there a link to the article in question?
- fabian2k 4y ago
  The image is a link, I missed that at first as well. https://www.science.org/content/article/do-no-unconscious-harm-can-hidden-prejudices-medicine-stamped https://www.science.org/content/article/do-no-unconscious-ha...

space_fountain 4y ago

I’m really not impressed by hacker new’s scholarship on this. Here’s a paragraph from one of the papers cited here. Basically one of the key arguments in this paper is that basis might be justified. Ignoring for a second that biase in real humans is much strong than differences between races, it also is beside the point. Race isn’t something people can control. If people at large are classifying people based on it that will legitimately act to keep the situation locked in place. If I think everyone with red hair is a criminal and act like it people with red hair will have pretty bad lives and a lot more of them will end up turning to crime > Cultural knowledge and accuracy as sources of implicit associations.This analysis has akinship to that of one of the earliest critiques of the IAT (Arkes & Tetlock, 2004). They argued that,rather than reflecting prejudice, the race IAT might reflect knowledge of cultural stereotypes. Our argument, however, goes further. The associations tapped by the IAT may reflect not just cultural stereotypes, but implicit cognitive registration of regularities and realities of the social environment.Consistent with this analysis, IAT response times were faster when stimuli corresponded to ecologically valid base rates (Bluemke & Fiedler, 2009). Even evaluations of groups may come from knowledge of those groups’ social conditions (Payne et al., 2017). For example, groups disproportionately living in unpleasant conditions (such as poverty, crime, rundown housing) may be associated with “unpleasant” more than other groups

space_fountain 4y ago
This article also says something about IAT test being strongly correlated with other things, so their individual contribution to racist outcomes is small as evidence against IAT tests which the original article turned around and tried to say means implicit basis isn’t real or that IAT tests are bad, but it literally doesn’t, just that you could measure implicit bias in other ways

Connor_Creegan 4y ago

A few questions that are never really addressed in these discussions about "bias", "discrimination", "race", etc.: What is discrimination at a fundamental level? The term originally means to perceive something as validly distinct - e.g. to discriminate between truthhood and falsity, between up and down, between black and white. The term is most often now used with the implicit qualification of "unjust", "unwarranted", "unreal" or "quasi". So-called "racial discrimination" is a charge made when there appears to be some kind of injustice in the evaluation. So does this mean the mark of racial/ethnic/(even religious)/whatever stock is to be totally unrecognized as a heuristic in all judgments? Or just some? If just some, which ones? Why? Where is the line drawn? How many cycles of flawed attempts at psychological programming (the unintended consequences of which are perhaps not even entirely observed or taken into consideration) do we need to go through before ditching this endeavour? As it pertains to law enforcement, is it easier to simply admit that our current system can't be reformed through psy-ops, and that maybe we need to revert to a more subsidiarian/local principle of security in general?

slowmovintarget 4y ago
Thomas Sowell breaks down discrimination into far more useful categories. > At a minimum, we need to know what we ourselves mean when we use a word like "discrimination," especially since it has conflicting meanings. The broader meaning--an ability to discern differences in the qualities of people and things, and choosing accordingly--can be called Discrimination I. The narrower, but more commonly used, meaning--treating people negatively, based on arbitrary aversions or animosities to individuals of a particular race or sex, for example--can be called Discrimination II, the kind of discrimination that has led to anti-discrimination laws and policies. He goes on to break Discrimination I down into two subcategories, A and B. Type Ia: "The ideal, and more costly, variation is seeking and paying the cost for information that would permit judging each individual as an individual, regardless of the group from which that individual comes." Type Ib: "In other cases, where such information is too costly to be worth it, individuals may be judged by empirical evidence on the group they are part of." An example of type Ib is judging a person's ability to pay back a mortgage loan based on their income.
- 4y ago

whiddershins 4y ago

Was under the impression implicit bias stuff had largely been debunked. It’s hard to keep up.

pjscott 4y ago
Yes, the whole field has pretty much fallen to the replication crisis. The thing this article is complaining about is that "Science" magazine apparently has a section in which it uncritically repeats politically-fashionable junk science.
lazyeye 4y ago
Unfortunately we are now in a situation where there will a trailing legacy for the next 30 years of people who went through the university system and have been indoctrinated to believe there is only the one correct opinion on any given topic.

akomtu 4y ago

Is it like dark matter in cosmology? Except that here, "scientists" observe a social galaxy and note that it's round. According to their beliefs, the galaxy must be rectangular, so they had to postulate an invisible ubiquitous force that makes the galaxy round. They called this dark force many names: inequity, implicit bias, structural racism.

slowmovintarget 4y ago
I understand the analogy you're trying to make, but that particular one doesn't track. Dark matter is required by quantum mechanics. Sean Carroll had a great explanation of this in his Biggest Ideas in the Universe video series. The models of particle creation in the early universe require there to be something with the characteristics of a class of particles holding the label "dark matter." "Structural racism," "inequity," and "implicit bias" all mean very different things. Structural racism is where a society is deliberately constructed to be racist, as under Apartheid in South Africa. (It is otherwise nonsensically applied to current Western governments that employ capitalism as an economic system.) Inequity is the state of receiving disparate treatment. It can be caused by structural racism, by personal racism, or by empirical discrimination (person A is denied a mortgage because their income indicates they likely cannot afford to pay the loan back, whereas person B is granted the mortgage because their income indicates they likely can). Implicit bias is an actual psychological phenomenon where quirks in the way humans think affect their judgement. The classical example is to take two parallel line segments of equal length where the ends are lined up. On one segment draw arrowheads pointing outward, on the other, arrowheads pointing inward. When asked, humans will visually judge the line segment with arrowheads pointing inward as being longer than the one with arrowheads pointing outward [1]. Convincing yourself the line segments are of equal length requires measurement. That this occurs is true. That it is the great bugaboo of our times and the cause of inequity has a far more tenuous connection to reality. That these phrases are used as proxies for "bad" is the real problem. We can agree that structural racism is evil. Inequity occurs for the full spectrum of reasons, some immoral, some moral, some merely neutral and reasonable. Implicit bias simply is. The hard part is separating out acculturated bias (like racism) from implicit bias. One evaporates in the face differing environments. For example, children that grow up in integrated schools and integrated neighborhoods are far less likely to suffer from racist attitudes. The other is a cognitive feature that must be countered with measurement (empiricism) or rules (equally applied). Those attempting to use the terms as umbrella labels diminish our ability to talk about and address issues arising from them. It isn't a single dark force, and there isn't a giant conspiracy out to perpetuate all perceived societal ills. [1] https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/image-article_inline_full_caption/public/field_blog_entry_images/2019-10/effetto_ottico_3_.png?itok=ZduUW6JG https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/i...

Khaine 4y ago

I don't understand why people continue to do IAT tests. One of the core authors of the original IAT paper released a paper last year showing how the test doesn't actually measure bias, and how it is not clear what this kind of test actually measures. Brian Nosek who is one of the co-authors of the IAT test just released a paper [1] that show that changes in implicit bias don’t lead to changes in behaviour. You can find a summary of the article and its findings here [2]. The paper examining 499 studies over 20 years involving 80,859 participants that used the IAT and other, similar measures. They discovered two things: * One is that the correlation between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior appears weaker than previously thought. * They also conclude that there is very little evidence that changes in implicit bias have anything to do with changes in a person’s behavior. These findings, they write, "produce a challenge for this area of research." The finding that changes in implicit bias don’t lead to changes in behavior, Forscher says, "should be stunning." "I see implicit bias as a potential means to an end, something that tells us what to do and some possible remedies for what we see in the world," Forscher says. "So if there’s little evidence to show that changing implicit bias is a useful way of changing those behaviors, my next question is ‘What should we do?’" [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308926636_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Change_in_Implicit_Bias https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308926636_A_Meta-An... [2] https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Implicit/238807 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Impl...

8bitsrule 4y ago

> those who study implicit bias already assume it exists, and thus will continue indefinitely to find it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel