Biases are widely believed to perpetuate social injustices. Indeed, even programs designed to reduce implicit biases often fail to do so. That’s the diagnosis of recent research from the University of Washington, which chronicles the poor return on many bias reduction interventions.

The researchers believe that a better approach would be to view implicit bias as a fundamental public-health problem so that the issue is tackled more broadly at an institutional level.

“Anti-bias training methods have not effectively dealt with discrimination due to implicit and systemic biases,” the researchers explain. “We find, however, that public-health-inspired solutions—programs that prevent biases from causing discrimination and tools to uncover and fix disparities—are much more likely to succeed, but they require buy-in from business and political leaders.”

Public health

The findings emerged after an extensive review of 25 years worth of research into implicit bias. A public-health approach can be effective in tackling both the implicit biases and the systemic form, neither of which have really been successfully addressed by training programs to date.

The recommended approach has two main elements to it. The first of these is to adopt preventative and harm-avoiding remedies, such as procedures that explicitly prevent someone from knowing the demographics of an individual or a group when making decisions about them.

The second main element aims to eliminate discretion. This element aims to create new policies that are restricted to certain non-demographic but decision-relevant information.

Into practice

To put these recommendations into practice, the researchers propose four main strategies that organizations can use to help reduce the discrimination that arises from implicit bias.

• Make disparity-finding a standard practice.
• Prioritize the use and development of strategies based on bias prevention rather than strategies based on individual and group anti-bias initiatives.
• Use caution regarding remedies described as “training.” Training might improve education about biases, but it is unlikely to change implicit associations that cause discrimination.
• Integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts into the organizational structure.

“Damages from implicit and systemic bias, which may be unintentional, contribute significantly to contemporary social injustices,” the authors conclude. “Reducing discriminatory bias will depend on business and political leaders understanding that it is in their power to implement effective fixes.”