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The End of Bias
4/5. What it sounds like – a tour of the embryonic research on how to eliminate bias in thinking and in systems. For a hot second I was like 'ugh, why is a white woman writing this book? Why do we have to hear about how this is part of her journey of uninternalizing bias?' And then I came to my senses and realized of course she should be the one writing this book; the people who need to do the work should do the work.
Mostly very interesting and helpful. I'm pleased to see the data confirms my observation that diversity programs that attempt to glorify non-dominant cultures are ineffective if not counterproductive as they generally trigger stereotype threat. It's much better to run programs that emphasize the individuality and variety of people within groups. Also, I was pleased to read an actual explanation for why mindfulness work is associated with bias reduction; it's a connection a lot of people have made, but she comes up with some actually sensible reasons why it might work.
I will say that, like all survey books of this sort, the approach to methodology and study soundness is light at best. To be fair, a lot of the material she has to work with is small and observational, but still. Also, I lost a lot of faith in her interpretive powers when she described a study that blindfolded participants for a short period of time to simulate blindness and didn't blindfold others, then found the blindfolded participants spent more time helping a blind confederate finish a task. She blithely took this as evidence that creating this sort of fake experiential learning opportunities counters bias, which oof. There is a lot wrong with that thinking. (1) fake disability experiential learning promotes ableism and dangerously distorted understandings of what disability experience feels like, and generally only reenforces stereotyped notions of how disabling a particular condition is, this has been documented in a few small studies and broadly by pretty much every disabled person I know; (2) extent of time helping is an inherently ableist frame to use to measure bias (why not time collaborating? Or even just talking?); (3) measuring time helping is also a really problematic proxy for bias reduction – the implicit assumption is that less help equals more bias? Whereas in my experience, most "help" I receive is a product of ableist assumptions, and the more insistent a person is on spending more time at it, the exponentially more that is true. I could go on. She didn't run that study, but the fact she totally blew all of the nuance and just casually used it to bolster a broader point makes me worry what I'm not seeing in the studies on racism she references.
Still interesting, though.
4/5. What it sounds like – a tour of the embryonic research on how to eliminate bias in thinking and in systems. For a hot second I was like 'ugh, why is a white woman writing this book? Why do we have to hear about how this is part of her journey of uninternalizing bias?' And then I came to my senses and realized of course she should be the one writing this book; the people who need to do the work should do the work.
Mostly very interesting and helpful. I'm pleased to see the data confirms my observation that diversity programs that attempt to glorify non-dominant cultures are ineffective if not counterproductive as they generally trigger stereotype threat. It's much better to run programs that emphasize the individuality and variety of people within groups. Also, I was pleased to read an actual explanation for why mindfulness work is associated with bias reduction; it's a connection a lot of people have made, but she comes up with some actually sensible reasons why it might work.
I will say that, like all survey books of this sort, the approach to methodology and study soundness is light at best. To be fair, a lot of the material she has to work with is small and observational, but still. Also, I lost a lot of faith in her interpretive powers when she described a study that blindfolded participants for a short period of time to simulate blindness and didn't blindfold others, then found the blindfolded participants spent more time helping a blind confederate finish a task. She blithely took this as evidence that creating this sort of fake experiential learning opportunities counters bias, which oof. There is a lot wrong with that thinking. (1) fake disability experiential learning promotes ableism and dangerously distorted understandings of what disability experience feels like, and generally only reenforces stereotyped notions of how disabling a particular condition is, this has been documented in a few small studies and broadly by pretty much every disabled person I know; (2) extent of time helping is an inherently ableist frame to use to measure bias (why not time collaborating? Or even just talking?); (3) measuring time helping is also a really problematic proxy for bias reduction – the implicit assumption is that less help equals more bias? Whereas in my experience, most "help" I receive is a product of ableist assumptions, and the more insistent a person is on spending more time at it, the exponentially more that is true. I could go on. She didn't run that study, but the fact she totally blew all of the nuance and just casually used it to bolster a broader point makes me worry what I'm not seeing in the studies on racism she references.
Still interesting, though.