An overview of the remarks by Professor Banaji, one of the proponents of implicit bias.
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Implicit bias is considered to be learned and therefore changeable. However, it is not easy; first, people need to convince themselves that they have biases. Concluding that "Oh, but I'll just tell myself not to be that way.” is incorrect.
Research by Calvin K. Lai et al. introduced interventions that reduce racial IAT scores. The most effective intervention was having participants imagine that someone from a group they held negative attitudes towards helped them, while someone from a group they held positive attitudes towards did not. The least effective was encouraging participants to become egalitarians.
However, the effects of these interventions did not last long. The society that strongly influences our implicit biases needs to change.
The IAT has been taken at least 40 million times since 2007. It analyzed biases against homosexuality, race, skin color, age, disability, and weight. Between 2007 and 2020, anti-homosexual bias decreased by 64%. The change was fastest among young people and self-identified liberals.
Why did anti-homosexual bias decrease significantly?
One reason could be that more people began to come out as homosexual to those close to them. This caused a conflict with religious norms, but affection for those who came out prevailed.
Hollywood’s involvement is another factor. The industry, with many homosexuals, created characters who were cool, smart, and kind.
Additionally, the Massachusetts Supreme Court was the first to declare the legalization of homosexuality.
Thus, addressing implicit bias may require measures at the individual, organizational or institutional, and governmental levels.
"So this is a very important lesson for us, that if we want to make change, maybe one of the messages from our research is that, try and do it at all three levels. And for that reason, I think we should be pleased that people in our society today use the word systemic so much more than we have. Systemic does not mean systematic, systemic means that the system needs to get engaged. And I would like to argue that the system consists of individual people, the system consists of institutions, the system consists of large governmental organizations that can move certain kinds of levers. I cannot say that one is more important than the other, but I would like to argue that if we go for system change, we will see change a lot faster."
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In the above discussion, the part stating “the least effective was encouraging participants to become egalitarians” contains an important point related to the misuse of implicit bias (unconscious bias) in Japan, which will be discussed later. We will return to this topic again.
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