Reducing Social Judgment Biases May Require Identifying the Potential Source of Bias

Abstract

Word Count (including text, abstract, notes and references): 12,943Note: Studies 1a and 1b were originally from the first author's dissertation. Declaration of Conflicting Interests:This research was partly supported by Project Implicit. B. A. Nosek is an officer and J.R. Axt is Director of Data and Methodology for Project Implicit, Inc., a nonprofit organization with the mission to "develop and deliver methods for investigating and applying phenomena of implicit social cognition, including especially phenomena of implicit bias based on age, race, gender, or other factors." The authors declare no other potential conflicts of interest with respect to authorship or publication of this article. BIAS WARNINGS AND REDUCING MULTIPLE BIASESAbstract Social judgment is shaped by multiple biases operating simultaneously, but most bias-reduction interventions target only a single social category. In seven pre-registered studies (Total N > 7,000), we investigated whether asking participants to avoid one social bias impacted that and other social biases. Participants selected honor society applicants based on academic credentials.Applicants also differed on social categories irrelevant for selection: attractiveness and ingroup status. Participants asked to avoid potential bias in one social category showed small but reliable reductions in bias for that category (r = .095), but showed near zero bias reduction on the unmentioned social category (r = .006). Asking participants to avoid many possible social biases or alerting them to bias without specifically identifying a category did not consistently reduce bias. The effectiveness of interventions for reducing social biases may be highly specific, perhaps even contingent on explicitly and narrowly identifying the potential source of bias.Word count: 150

Reducing Discrimination: A Bias Versus Noise Perspective

“…Participants in the Control condition showed bias, with lower criterion for more versus less physically attractive applicants (d = .24), whereas participants in the Bias Warning and Bias Warning + Delay condition showed no evidence of bias, meaning no reliable differences between criterion for more versus less physically attractive applicants (all t's < .62, all p's < .533; see Table 4). A one-way ANOVA on criterion bias difference scores found reliable differences The effectiveness of this bias warning manipulation replicates past work Axt, Casola & Nosek, 2018), but more specifically illustrates how alerting participants beforehand to a tendency to favor more physically attractive people reduces discrimination. The bias warning intervention reduced discrimination not by changing how many errors were made but instead by changing the distribution of errors such that more and less physically attractive people were equally likely to receive beneficial versus detrimental treatment.…”

“…We present these analyses in the aggregate across all studies here, but results for individual studies are available in the online supplement. Replicating prior work (Axt, Nguyen & Nosek, 2018;Axt, Casola & Nosek, 2018;Axt, Ebersole & Nosek, 2016), criterion biases were modestly but reliably associated with desired performance (r = .10, 95% CI[.02, .19]), perceived performance (r = .22, 95% CI[.14,…”

Reducing discrimination: A bias versus noise perspective.

“…We present these analyses in the aggregate across all studies here, but results for individual studies are available in the online supplement. Replicating prior work (Axt, Nguyen & Nosek, 2018;Axt, Casola & Nosek, 2018;Axt, Ebersole & Nosek, 2016)…”

Can we reduce facial biases? Persistent effects of facial trustworthiness on sentencing decisions

“…A prominent strategy for reducing biases caused by misconceptions is to challenge beliefs through education (Chan et al, 2017;Soll et al, 2014). For example, educating people about compound interest can increase saving behavior (McKenzie & Liersch, 2011), educating people about cognitive biases can lead to more rational clinical decision-making (Hershberger et al, 1997), and raising awareness of prejudice based on social group affiliation can reduce discrimination (Axt et al, 2018). Directly confronting participants with their stereotypes-rather than just raising awareness about the existence of stereotypes in general-has also been shown to reduce biased behavior (Czopp et al, 2006;Parker et al, 2018).…”

“…The text mentioned the automatic accessibility of facial stereotypes, that facial stereotypes are usually not accurate, and that relying on them can result in worse decision-making outcomes. The intervention specifically focused on facial stereotypes, as previous work suggests that raising awareness of stereotypes in general may not be effective (Axt et al, 2018). Our manipulation was modelled after previous research in the domain of lay beliefs.…”