Episode 20: The Humean Stain, Part 2

Tatter

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Implicit bias has been studied by many social psychologists, and one particular measure, the Implicit Association Test (or IAT) has often been used in that research. It has also been used by practitioners, often for purposes of raising participants' awareness of their own biases. And millions have completed IAT's online at the Project Implicit website.

In this episode, I continue a discussion with six people who have all thought about the IAT, with the conversation covering such topics as (a) how well the IAT predicts discriminatory behavior and other behavior, (b) whether it's appropriate for the Project Implicit website to give individualized feedback to visitors who complete online IAT's there, and (c) the content and effectiveness of implicit bias training. My guests are psychologists Calvin Lai, Brian Nosek, Mike Olson, Keith Payne, and Simine Vazire, as well as journalist Jesse Singal.

LINKS
--Interpreting correlation coefficients (by Deborah J. Rumsey)
--Project Implicit (where you can take an IAT)
--Brian Nosek's departmental web page
--Calvin Lai's departmental web page
--"Psychology's favorite tool for measuring racism isn't up to the job" (Jesse Singal, in The Cut)
--Keith Payne's departmental web page
--Michael Olson's departmental web page
--Simine Vazire's departmental web page
--The Black Goat (podcast on which Simine Vazire is a co-host)
--"Understanding and and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity (Greenwald, Poehlmann, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009)
--"Statistically small effects of the Implicit Association Test can have societally large effects" (Greenwald, Banaji, & Nosek, 2015)
--"Using the IAT to predict ethnic and racial discrimination: Small effects sizes of unknown societal significance" (Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Mitchell, & Tetlock, 2015)
--"Arbitrary metrics in psychology" (Blanton & Jaccard, 2006)
--"The bias of crowds: How implicit bias bridges personal and systemic prejudice" (Payne, Vuletich, & Lundberg, 2017; access is subscription-controlled)
--"Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test" (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998)
--A summary of David Hume's thoughts on the association of ideas
--Two Psychologists Four Beers (podcast featuring psychologists Yoel Inbar and Mickey Inzlicht)
--Very Bad Wizards (podcast featuring psychologist David Pizarro and philosopher Tamler Sommers)

Cover art credit: "Still Life with Bottles, Wine, and Cheese," John F. Francis (1857; public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, copyright tag: PD-US)

Special Guests: Brian Nosek, Calvin Lai, Jesse Singal, Keith Payne, Michael Olson, and Simine Vazire.