Nutshell: Does unconscious bias training work?

Unconscious bias training is often seen as a first line of attack when it comes to tackling bias and discrimination. But what is it, and does it work?

A few years ago, coffee giant Starbucks made the headlines when it closed 8,000 of its shops across the US to conduct unconscious bias training (UBT) after the unfortunate (and completely unjustified) arrest of two black men at one of its branches.

The company was praised by some for taking racism seriously. But the move was condemned by others as anything from an ill-conceived management box-ticking exercise to a straight publicity stunt.

One thing is clear: this was a very public airing of concerns around the effectiveness of UBT as a tool for tackling workplace inclusion.

The prejudice in the Starbucks case may have been an extreme example with extreme outcomes, but bias, whether explicit (conscious) or implicit (unconscious), can blight organisations of all types and sizes.

Unconscious bias can be particularly challenging.  The clue is in the name: it’s about the attitudes, stereotypes and assumptions we all have.

They influence our understanding, actions, and decisions, but we may not always be aware of them. In the workplace, where we have to make daily judgements about working relationships, it’s easy to see how such bias might get in the way of more diverse and inclusive cultures.

And that’s a problem. More than ever, we have the evidence that inclusion is not just a positive thing in its own right, but an important driver for organisational reputation and growth. The imperative to ‘do something’ in this space has become more compelling.

For many organisations, UBT has become a cost-effective and convenient response, a way of tackling the role unconscious bias can play in fuelling discrimination.

The question is: does it work?

What is unconscious bias training?

UBT is designed to do three things:

1. To make people aware of their biases, often using a diagnostic such as the Harvard Implicit Association Test (IAT).

2. To provide tools and techniques to adjust automatic ways of thinking.

3. To modify behaviour to reduce bias.

It sounds plausible – after all, it seems logical that increasing self-awareness around our biases can be an important step towards tackling them.

But placing the burden of fostering diversity and inclusion at work on the slim shoulders of UBT might, at best, be ambitious.

The limits of UBT

Psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is just one of a number of academics and thinkers who are sceptical about its effectiveness. 

He is clear that increasing awareness around bias is not without its challenges.

In the worst cases, mandated or badly delivered training can backfire, actively reinforcing stereotypes by making people feel that, because bias is universal, it’s somehow inevitable. It can also provoke a backlash from people who feel defensive about being seen as sexist or racist. 

For minority group members, raising awareness of difference can also increase feelings of alienation or otherness. This was tested in 2017 by two Columbia Business School academics.

Their studies found that gender blindness, which downplays gender differences, was a better strategy for increasing women’s confidence at work than gender awareness, which emphasises gender differences and celebrates perceived female qualities such as warmth and sensitivity.

This was especially true in male dominated environments and at management level.

The focus on awareness tended to reinforce stereotypes around women’s behaviour and job roles while gender blindness was more effective in boosting confidence without negatively impacting on men.

Even when it does have an impact, UBT is likely to be preaching to the converted. Research has shown that prejudice reduction programmes are much more effective when people are already open-minded, altruistic and concerned about their prejudices to begin with.

Perhaps the real issue is that UBT is simply not designed to tackle the bias that was the main culprit in the Starbucks event in Philadelphia in the first place. 

For Chamorro-Premuzic, that’s because the main problem with stereotypes is not that people are – in general – unaware of them, but that they agree with them, even if they might not like to admit it. In other words, most people have conscious biases.

Is the Harvard Implicit Association Test fit for purpose?

Even if we believe that unconscious bias does play a role in stereotyping and discrimination, questions have also been raised about the main tool used to measure it. The fact that the IAT has been around for years doesn’t mean that it’s without controversy.

The test measures people’s reaction time in response to different combinations of words or photographs (female or male, black or white, smart or stupid) to assess whether people are quicker to associate positives or negatives with a particular demographic category.

But, like other personality tests, it scores poorly on the issue of replicability: someone taking the test on a Monday might well receive a very different set of results if they were to retake the test on the following Wednesday.

An even bigger problem is that there’s a weak correlation between IAT scores that supposedly reflect our unconscious biases and our actual behaviours. In other words, just because an IAT result suggests that we might be sexist, it doesn’t mean that we will act in a sexist way – or vice versa. IAT data is not an effective predictor of future behaviour.

Chamorro-Premuzic also reminds us that, even at the best of times, we humans are often pretty poor at acting in accordance with our beliefs. So, if we want to improve the effectiveness of diversity and inclusion interventions, simply making our unconscious thoughts and beliefs more conscious is of limited value when it comes to what actually happens as a result.

No silver bullet

Defenders of UBT will point to the fact that that’s not really the point: it’s not intended as a silver bullet. Rather, its use is based on the not-unreasonable assumption that it’s important to recognise and address unconscious attitudes and stereotypes.

And, if carefully deployed, it can be useful for awareness raising. But even its staunchest supporters realise that, on its own, and in isolation, its ability to change behaviours – the real drivers of change – is limited.

Increasingly, too, UBT’s focus on individual bias feels at odds with the understanding that change needs long-term organisation-wide cultural change.

That requires buy-in at the highest levels, driven by everything from organisational structures, policies and procedures to tone, language and behaviours. And, for that to happen, organisations need to experiment with and deploy a whole range of strategies, techniques and tools, of which UBT might be just one.

The key thing is for organisations to be clear about the format and purpose of UBT and how it fits in with broader company strategy on inclusion. If it’s unreasonable to expect deep-seated attitudes to change overnight, then it’s equally unreasonable to expect UBT to shoulder the burden of inclusion on its own.

So, the question we should ask is not UBT or no UBT, but, rather how can well-deployed UBT contribute to inclusion in the round?  

UBT can only ever be one of the tools at our disposal to create a range of strategies for bias awareness, reduction and mitigation. Educating ourselves about our biases is not, on its own, enough. We also need practical, follow-up strategies to help us counter bias in our day-to-day working lives.

UBT is based on the not unreasonable assumption that it’s important to recognise and address the attitudes and stereotypes that make up unconscious bias. And there is evidence that, carefully deployed, it can be useful for awareness raising.

 But, on its own, and in isolation, its ability to change behaviours – the real drivers of change – is limited. Instead, inclusion requires us to experiment with and deploy a whole range of strategies, techniques and tools.  

We need to see bias training as the tool that it is and not the silver bullet it’s often considered to be.

Test your understanding

• Explain why UBT is seen as a way of tackling bias and discrimination.

• Outline three criticisms of UBT as an inclusion boosting tool.

What does it mean for you?

• If your organisation uses UBT as one of its inclusion strategies, find out more about how it works and whether there are any measurable results.

• If your organisation does not use UBT, consider whether it might be a useful addition to your inclusion strategy. What could you do to make it as effective as possible?