Breaking Down Bias: Proven Techniques for Reducing Prejudice in Society

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Breaking Down Bias: Proven Techniques for Reducing Prejudice in Society

Advanced Social Psychology · Chapter 6: Gender, Race, and Reducing PrejudiceSection 6.7 · lesson 39 of 8511 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

A portfolio problem, and the wrong question to ask about any single lever.

  • Distinguish the levels at which prejudice can be reduced
  • Summarize evidence for perspective-taking, empathy, and affirmation
  • Apply recategorization and habit-breaking approaches
  • Assess the evidence on organizational diversity training

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Everything said in the video, section by section (1,385 words). Read along, or search it.

Gender, Race, and Reducing Prejudice

Breaking Down Bias

This is the section that turns everything in the last three chapters into practice. And it opens with a warning about how to read it. Every technique here has evidence behind it. Every technique here is also, on its own, insufficient. That is not a hedge. It is the central empirical finding of the field. We will cover individual-level techniques first. Perspective-taking, empathy, and self-affirmation. Then recategorization, and the habit-breaking protocol. Then the most widespread intervention in corporate life, which does not work. And finally a better question to ask about any intervention at all.

The Framing

Prejudice Reduction Is a Portfolio Problem

Prejudice is sustained by processes at several levels simultaneously. Cognitive processes, meaning automatic associations and stereotype activation. Affective processes, meaning anxiety, contempt, and fear. Interpersonal ones, meaning the norms of contact and conflict. Institutional ones, meaning organizational practice. And structural ones, meaning the cumulative social order. Here is the consequence that shapes everything in this section. Interventions designed at one level rarely overturn the others. So the advanced framing treats prejudice reduction as a portfolio problem. Combinations of individual, interpersonal, organizational, and structural interventions. Those work better than any single lever pulled hard in isolation. Keep that in mind as each technique is presented on its own.

Galinsky

Perspective-Taking

Start with perspective-taking, from Galinsky and Moskowitz in the year two thousand. They instructed participants to take the perspective of an outgroup target. To imagine a day in the person's life. Or to write a brief narrative from their point of view. The result is that this reliably reduces stereotype expression. And it reduces ingroup favoritism. The proposed mechanism is worth stating carefully. It increases the cognitive overlap between representations of self and outgroup. The outgroup member gets partly filed under self. Note what the instruction actually is, because this matters for design. It is a task, not an appeal. Nobody is asked to care more about anyone. They are asked to write something from a point of view, and the change follows.

Batson

Empathy That Generalizes

Batson's parallel research, from nineteen ninety-one, concerns empathy. Empathy-induced attitude change, specifically. And it established something that was not obvious in advance. Empathy elicited toward a specific outgroup member generalizes. It generalizes to attitudes toward the group as a whole. That generalization is the non-trivial part of the finding. Remember subtyping, from section five point six. A single counter-example is usually quarantined as an exception. Here, the individual case does carry to the category. Both perspective-taking and empathy effects are modest in magnitude. But both are reliable. And both have been incorporated into a wide range of educational programs. And organizational programs as well.

Cohen Et Al., 2006

Self-Affirmation, and a Closed Gap

The next result is the most striking in this section. Because of the ratio between how small the intervention is. And how large the outcome turned out to be. Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, and Master ran it in two thousand six. The intervention was a brief structured writing exercise. Students wrote about a personally important value. That is all. The outcome was that it substantially closed the racial achievement gap. For African American middle-school students, over an academic year. With effects extending across years in follow-up work. The theorized mechanism connects back to chapter four. It buttresses global self-integrity against a specific identity threat. The threat of negative stereotypes about academic performance. Now report the evidence base accurately, because it is not uniform. Comparable interventions have been tested in higher education and medical settings. And in gender-related STEM contexts. With a broadly favorable but heterogeneous evidence base.

Gaertner And Dovidio

The Common Ingroup Identity Model

Gaertner and Dovidio's Common Ingroup Identity Model dates from two thousand. Intergroup bias can be reduced by inducing recategorization. Members of separate groups come to see themselves as one superordinate ingroup. The mechanism is worth stating precisely. When participants think of themselves as us, rather than as us versus them. Something specific transfers. The cognitive and affective advantages usually reserved for ingroup members. Those get extended to former outgroup members. The model has been supported in laboratory and in field settings. And it accounts for some long-term effects of superordinate goals. The ones demonstrated in the previous section. Notice what this does and does not do. The bias machinery is not dismantled. It is pointed at a wider circle.

The Critique

When a Wider We Is Not Welcome

Critics raise two objections to pure recategorization. And both are serious enough to change how you would design an intervention. The first is that it can mask rather than resolve. Superordinate recategorization can paper over real intergroup grievances. A shared identity does not settle a distributional dispute. The second is that it can be experienced as identity-erasing. Specifically by members of subordinated groups. Who are typically the ones asked to give something up. The corrective is dual identity. Preserving subgroup identity while adding a superordinate one. African American and American, rather than one instead of the other. This is the same trade-off from section five point four. Arriving from the intervention side rather than the theory side. And the answer turns out to be the same.

Devine Et Al., 2012

Implicit Bias as a Breakable Habit

Devine, Forscher, Austin, and Cox published a different approach in twenty twelve. They call it a prejudice habit-breaking intervention. The conceptual move is to treat implicit bias as a habit. A habit susceptible to deliberate modification. Which reframes it from a fixed property into something with a change procedure. The protocol combines six components. Awareness training. Stereotype-replacement strategies. Counter-stereotypic imagery. Individuating attention. Perspective-taking. And contact. Notice that several of those are the standalone techniques we have already covered. Combined, rather than tested one at a time. Participants showed reduced implicit bias scores eight weeks post-intervention. And they reported behavioral change. Note that follow-up window. Eight weeks is a durable measurement, not an immediate one.

Dasgupta

Counter-Stereotypic Exemplars

One of those components has its own literature. Dasgupta and colleagues studied counter-stereotypic exemplars, in two thousand four. Brief exposure to such exemplars produces immediate reductions in implicit bias. Measured on the Implicit Association Test. The exemplars are admired members of a stereotyped group. Admired Black leaders. Accomplished female scientists. The reduction is immediate, which is what makes the technique attractive. It is also cheap and easy to deploy, which is a warning sign. Because durability of effects requires sustained exposure. Not one-shot interventions. A single session moves a score. It does not move a habit. Which is exactly why the Devine protocol combines exemplars with five other components.

The Portfolio

Seven Strategies and Their Mechanisms

Put the seven evidence-based strategies side by side. Perspective-taking increases self-other overlap. Empathy induction generalizes from an individual to the group. Self-affirmation buttresses global self-integrity against threat. Common ingroup identity recategorizes them as us. Counter-stereotypic exemplars weaken automatic group-trait associations. Habit-breaking treats implicit bias as a modifiable habit. And structural and policy reform changes institutional incentives. Notice that the last row is different in kind from the other six. The first six operate on people. The seventh operates on the conditions those people act in. That distinction is what the next slide is about.

Dobbin And Kalev

The Most Widespread, Least Evidenced Intervention

Mandatory single-session diversity training is extremely widespread. It is among the most common prejudice-reduction interventions in organizational life. And it is one of the least well-evidenced. Dobbin and Kalev published a longitudinal review in twenty sixteen. More than eight hundred United States firms. Mandatory diversity training produced no measurable improvement. No improvement in the representation of women or racial minorities in management. And in some cases it produced backlash. By contrast, a different set of interventions produced measurable gains. Voluntary training rather than mandatory. Structured hiring and promotion procedures. Mentoring programs. And task-force-led accountability mechanisms. Look at that second list carefully. Three of the four are procedures, not persuasion. So the empirical lesson is blunt. Attitude-targeting interventions are insufficient if institutional incentives stay unchanged.

Consolidate

Ask a Better Question

Paluck, Porat, Clark, and Green reviewed the contemporary literature in twenty twenty-one. They advance several practical principles for design. Interventions work best when they are theoretically grounded. When they are sustained over time, rather than one-shot. When they are multi-component. And when they are evaluated with rigorous outcome measures. Including behavioral change, not self-reported attitudes alone. They are also most effective when paired with structural changes. Changes that align institutional incentives with the new norms. Which brings us to the last point, and it is about how you ask the question. Does this intervention reduce prejudice is an incomplete question. The operative questions are, for whom, under what conditions, and for how long. Carry those three into every claim you meet about reducing bias.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Breaking Down Bias: Proven Techniques for Reducing Prejudice in Society

Does perspective-taking reduce prejudice?
Yes, research shows it can reduce stereotype expression and ingroup favoritism. Galinsky and Moskowitz (2000) asked participants to write about a day in the life of an outgroup member from that person's point of view. Those who took the perspective expressed fewer stereotypes, apparently because it increased overlap between how they represented themselves and the outgroup. The effect is modest but reliable, and it comes from a task rather than an appeal to care more.
What is a self-affirmation intervention?
A self-affirmation intervention is a brief writing exercise in which people reflect on a personally important value, which can buffer them against identity threat. In a 2006 study, Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, and Master had seventh graders complete such exercises, and the racial achievement gap for African American students shrank by about 40 percent over the term, with benefits lasting in follow-up work. Later studies in other settings have produced more mixed results.
Does diversity training work?
Mandatory single-session diversity training has little evidence of lasting effect. Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev's 2016 review of more than 800 U.S. firms found mandatory training did not increase the share of women or racial minorities in management, and sometimes produced backlash. Voluntary training, structured hiring and promotion, mentoring programs, and task forces that create accountability did show gains. Changing procedures and incentives tends to matter more than trying to change attitudes alone.
What is the prejudice habit-breaking intervention?
The prejudice habit-breaking intervention, published by Patricia Devine and colleagues in 2012, treats implicit bias as a habit that can be changed with deliberate practice. It combines awareness training with strategies such as stereotype replacement, counter-stereotypic imagery, individuation, perspective-taking, and increasing contact. Participants showed reduced implicit bias scores eight weeks later. By contrast, a single brief exposure to counter-stereotypic exemplars can lower test scores quickly, but such effects tend to fade without sustained practice.

About the Advanced Social Psychology course

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Advanced Social Psychology (Psychology 310) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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