In 2015, when Kamala Harris was California’s Attorney General, she imposed implicit bias training on California law enforcement personnel. In 2020, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed into law a bill imposing implicit bias training on Minnesota police. In 2016, even Senator J. D. Vance wrote far too credulously of implicit bias theory: “The data consistently shows that about 90 percent of us possess some implicit prejudices — and, unsurprisingly, people typically favor their own group.”
Implicit bias theory is popular with politicians, and it shouldn’t be. As the National Association of Scholars (NAS) details in our new report, Zombie Psychology, Implicit Bias Theory, and the Implicit Association Test, proponents of implicit bias theory now must ignore massive amounts of evidence that disproves implicit bias theory. Bertram Gawronski at the University of Texas at Austin wrote in 2019 that,
(a) There is no evidence that people are unaware of the mental contents underlying their implicit biases; (b) conceptual correspondence is essential for interpretations of dissociations between implicit and explicit bias; (c) there is no basis to expect strong unconditional relations between implicit bias and behavior; (d) implicit bias is less (not more) stable over time than explicit bias; (e) context matters fundamentally for the outcomes obtained with implicit-bias measures; and (f) implicit measurement scores do not provide process-pure reflections of bias.
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Proponents of implicit bias theory also have to ignore evidence that the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is useless. Edouard Machery at the University of Pittsburgh concluded in 2022 that,
we do not know what indirect measures measure; indirect measures are unreliable at the individual level, and people’s scores vary from occasion to occasion; indirect measures predict behavior poorly, and we do not know in which contexts they could be more predictive; in any case, the hope of measuring broad traits is not fulfilled by the development of indirect measures; and there is still no reason to believe that they measure anything that makes a causal difference.
Devastating scholarly criticisms of both implicit bias theory and the IAT haven’t stopped politicians from passing laws imposing implicit bias training on different professions—as well as imposing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” trainings, which radical activists justify by referring to the supposedly pervasive implicit bias revealed by implicit bias theory and the IAT.
Radical activists are pushing for even worse. They want to change anti-discrimination laws by replacing the intent standard with an implicit bias standard. The implicit bias standard would allow lawyers to seize on the law, stating that a “hostile environment” is an actionable offense under anti-discrimination law. Implicit bias raises any inequity, not least those detected by a statistical study, to be evidence of implicit bias, and hence a hostile environment. To adopt an implicit bias standard would replace individual intent with statistical associations—disparate impact—in anti-discrimination law. Such changes have already begun to be recognized in American legal systems. Vermont anti-discrimination law recognizes “Unintentional discrimination[, which] includes microaggressions, unconscious biases, and unconsciously held stereotypes.”
These changes have begun to affect the legal system itself. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice (USDJ) announced that it would “train all of its law enforcement agents and prosecutors to recognize and address implicit bias as part of its regular training curricula.” At the state level, in 2020, the New Hampshire Office of the Attorney General required implicit bias training “for all attorneys, investigators, legal staff and victim/witness advocates in the Attorney General’s Office, all County Attorney Offices, all state agency attorneys, and all prosecutors, including police prosecutors.”
Meanwhile, California’s biannual training for judges and subordinate judicial officers now includes “A survey of the social science on implicit bias, unconscious bias, and systemic implicit bias, including the ways that bias affects institutional policies and practices,” “The administration of implicit association tests to increase awareness of one’s unconscious biases based on the characteristics listed in Section 11135,” and “Inquiry into how judges and subordinate judicial officers can counteract the effects of juror implicit bias on the outcome of cases.” Bills to mandate judiciary implicit bias requirements have also been introduced in New Jersey and Texas.
Radical activists, moreover, have begun using implicit bias arguments to justify calls for systematic changes to jury selection and juror decision making. Anona Su argues for some version of implicit bias training for jurors. Emma Bienias et al. further argue that implicit bias pervades the legal profession. Their prescribed policies include the administration of the Implicit Association Test and “Behavioral Changes” to “interrupt” one’s own implicit biases. Bienias et al. further recommends “Commitment by management to diversity,” implicit bias training, “Commitment to women in counter-stereotypical roles,” and mentoring.
[RELATED: Why ‘Implicit Bias Training’ Makes No Sense]
Implicit bias training has affected the police particularly. Illinois’ curriculum for probationary law enforcement officers and triennial in-service training requirements now must include “cultural competency, including implicit bias and racial and ethnic sensitivity.” In 2020, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed legislation requiring law enforcement officers to take implicit bias training as part of their cultural diversity training curriculum. In 2022, the New Jersey Assembly passed two further bills that would require police officers to undergo diversity and implicit bias training.
The implicit bias revolution is most dangerous in this infiltration of the realm of law and order. Implicit bias removes individual intent and action from the law and replaces it with a statistical study of putative discrimination. The law no longer remains a means to ascertain individual innocence and guilt, but a means for the administrative state to impose “equity,” regardless of individual merit or justice. Its means, moreover, are arbitrarily assigned statements of what “equity” should consist of, while the evidence for implicit bias—for discrimination of any sort—is statistical. Every aspect of the irreproducibility crisis of modern science—groupthink, false positives, small samples—thereby become exported from the world of scientific and social scientific research to the world of law and justice. Implicit bias would be the means by which our courts replace law with the false positives and groupthink that are the radical bureaucrats’ understanding of the scientific method. Radical activists now seek to use false positives to establish policy goals by means of judicial fiat, jury tampering, and subordinating the very ideal of individual justice to the ideology of identity-group equity.
Implicit bias theory and the IAT have been debunked as thoroughly as any scientific theory can be. No Americans should be subject to policy based on nonsense—much less policy intended to promote the radical ideology of identity politics. Policymakers should rescind forthwith regulations that affect the personnel involved in executing law and order, such as judges, lawyers, and policemen.
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Cover designed by Jared Gould using images by Vitalii Vodolazskyi (Adobe Stock, Asset ID: 621765405) and Hq Visual Studio (Adobe Stock, Asset ID: 846562542).
