
NSF Org: |
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences |
Recipient: |
|
Initial Amendment Date: | July 5, 2017 |
Latest Amendment Date: | July 5, 2017 |
Award Number: | 1651174 |
Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
Program Manager: |
Steven Breckler
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
Start Date: | July 15, 2017 |
End Date: | October 31, 2019 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $174,932.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $174,932.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
|
History of Investigator: |
|
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
450 JANE STANFORD WAY STANFORD CA US 94305-2004 (650)723-2300 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
|
Primary Place of Performance: |
1500 W Third Street, Suite 126 Columbus OH US 43235-2843 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
|
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
|
Parent UEI: |
|
NSF Program(s): | Cross-Directorate Activities |
Primary Program Source: |
|
Program Reference Code(s): |
|
Program Element Code(s): |
|
Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
This project brings together experts on prejudice and discrimination to have a deep discussion and write up a report to understand what various measures of bias represent and best ways to measure implicit bias. During the past century, racial attitudes in America have been radically transformed. The country has shifted from one of explicit separation and discrimination to one endorsing multiculturalism and implementing policies to level the playing field and compensate for past discrimination. Surveys measuring public opinion in the United States have shown a slow and steady trend toward more endorsement of this new view. Yet events continue to occur raising questions in the public mind about whether racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination continue to be prevalent and consequential in America. As a result, many companies and government agencies are now spending considerable resources to train workers to minimize the impact of such bias on the work they do caring for medical patients, enforcing laws, and much more. These efforts are based on the presumption and research that racism and other forms of bias are prevalent in contemporary society and shape people's decisions and behavior in important ways. Are these presumptions justified by the existing body of scientific evidence? And are the expenditures of businesses, police departments, and other government agencies well founded and likely to be successful in optimizing thinking and action?
This conference will take a close and objective look at this question by taking stock of the existing literatures on racial bias and other forms of bias to gauge what we know and what we do not yet know about these issues. The conference will bring together a group of the leading experts on racism and prejudice to review the literature, discuss strengths and weaknesses of existing evidence, and identify fruitful directions for future work. Goals of the conference include helping scientists and the general public to have a clear and complete understanding of the state of scientific evidence on the issues, measurement, and strengths and limitations of the area. A report will summarize conference insights, and will be disseminated widely. The report will help business and government agencies to work more efficiently and effectively to understand and address bias, and will help the scientific community optimize its research moving forward.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
During the past century, fewer and fewer Americans have expressed anti-African-American attitudes in scientific national surveys. Yet, this huge change in explicitly-stated opinions has not been accompanied by the disappearance of unequal treatment of Black Americans and White Americans. Differential treatment continues in many domains of life—healthcare, housing, education, employment, and the justice system.
During the last few decades, social psychology has proposed a possible explanation for this apparent contradiction: perhaps many or even most American White people harbor anti-African-American prejudice but do not admit it to themselves or others, including survey researchers. Based on a huge and growing scientific literature, this notion of implicit bias has entered mainstream awareness in the country; it has been mentioned during presidential debates, has been the focus of best-selling books, and has been the inspiration for a huge industry training employees to avoid implicit bias in their work. Thus, it might appear that implicit bias is a well-established concept that is tremendously consequential and is changeable through interventions.
But in fact, much that has been presumed about implicit bias is not yet supported by the existing empirical literature. Multiple ways of measuring implicit bias yield very different results. Implicit bias measurements predict prejudicial behaviors quite weakly. And studies that changed implicit bias observed no reliable changes in behavior. Thus, there is much left to learn about implicit bias.
This project was designed to take careful stock of current scientific understanding of implicit bias, its measurement, origins, consequences, and change. Twenty-five leading scholars attended a conference to review the state of the literature and have subsequently written chapters to compose a book to be published by Cambridge University Press. The books also includes a chapter by a blue-ribbon committee of top scholars taking stock of the current state of knowledge about implicit bias and proposing exciting directions for future research on the topic that can be encouraged by new research funding.
The insights gained will help companies to create workplaces in which employees can thrive and be productive, help companies to create retail settings in which customers can be comfortable in their roles as consumers of goods and services, help agencies such as the military maximize the efficiency of their teams and minimize interpersonal friction, help educational and child development institutions to design learning environments in which students flourish, and in other ways enhance quality of life in the U.S. and abroad. Furthermore, the book will help the news media and popular press to understand and discuss implicit bias and prejudice in ways increasingly faithful to the existing research evidence.
Last Modified: 02/20/2020
Modified by: Jon A Krosnick
Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.