Self-regulation strategies that work to reduce negative biases
Let’s take a look at what research has found to be strategies that work to reduce bias. These are taken from my original Faculty Lecture, This Is Your Brain On Bias...or, The Neuroscience of Bias. (The text of this original lecture, plus bibliography, is attached to this section.) Some of this information is included in the Live Lecture on Ethnic Identity Development.
Reducing Bias is Emotional Regulation
Strategies for reducing bias, especially implicit bias, are self-regulation strategies. Getting our frontal lobes (self-regulation and conscious thought) to be in action during social interchanges, instead of our amygdala (fight/flight/freeze) actually involves both cognitive and emotional self-regulation. Cognitive assumptions about and emotional responses to human characteristics serve as "filters" through which we will see other people, even if these assumptions and responses are inaccurate. We learn these feelings and thoughts about others from our families, teachers, neighbors, friends, media, and more. Children gather all kinds of information and construct knowledge about their world from the moment they are born, and actually from before that time!
The regulation of our emotional responses to others (in terms of ethnicity/race, gender, ability, age, language, etc.) stands out as a major area that teachers and parents have avoided addressing. One of the reasons is that many people think children are born "innocent" and are incapable of having biases, yet research tells us this is not true. Children are especially learning the biases held by those very people who care for them, and even infants start learning them before they understand language.
Since bias harms people, and, as teachers, we have pledged to "do no harm" in our code of ethics, we have some work to do. Teachers of young children have two tasks that need to be incorporated into their tool kits both as teachers and as humans. First, we need to discover and address our own implicit (and explicit) biases that we learned along the way and consciously work to change these. If we do not, we will pass them on to the children with whom we work, even if we have positive intentions. The second task is to brainstorm how we can prevent and counteract the development of biases within the children in our care, and put these ideas into action in our classrooms.
The following are strategies that have been found to significantly reduce bias, especially implicit bias, and thus will help people gain emotional self-regulation. You can use these for identifying and reducing your own biases, and hopefully, these will help you brainstorm ways to put these skills into action in the classroom.
1. Notice positive examples of people who are different from you
Much research suggests that “both implicit and explicit stereotypes are responsive to current inputs, including the perceiver’s thoughts and social context.” The findings of a study by Blair, Ma, and Lenton suggest “that people may be able to achieve the … goal [of suppressing stereotypes] through the activation and strengthening of counterstereotype associations” through the use of mental imagery. (Blair, Ma, & Lenton 2001, 838)
“Thus, a more positive and proactive approach to changing stereotypes would be to encourage people to consider the diversity within social groups and especially the many examples of group members who disconfirm the stereotype.” (Blair, Ma, & Lenton 2001, 838) If done repeatedly, “implicit evaluations of historically stigmatized groups such as African Americans and older people may be modified, at least temporarily. (Dasgupta and Greenwald 2001, 806)
2. Implementation Intentions
Stewart and Payne, in a 2008 study on bringing automatic stereotyping under control, discuss a method called “implementation intentions”. This is a “special type of conscious control strategy” that uses if-then or when this–then that action plans. These “help people enact their goals more efficiently than general intentions.” (1332-4) For example, consider the two following statements in terms of how effective they would be in changing our behavior:
“When I leave work, I will exercise at the gym.”
vs.
“I will exercise more.”
The first statement is an implementation intention strategy that is being used to exercise more. The “if-then” nature of the first thought is more precise and has a specific outcome! The second one is more general.
In their three experiments, Stewart and Payne used the commonly held stereotype about African-American people, especially men, that they are more likely to be violent and commit crimes than European-Americans. They found that “automatic stereotyping was reduced when participants made an intention to think specific counterstereotypical thoughts whenever they encountered a Black individual.” The participants were instructed to say the word “safe” to themselves at each encounter, creating a new automatic association. Stewart and Payne point out that the changes seen, the reduction in stereotyping was “driven by a change in automatic stereotyping and not controlled thinking. [They were learning a new stereotype, if you will.] This benefit was acquired with little practice and it generalized to novel faces. Thus, implementation intentions may be an effective means for controlling automatic aspects of thought.” (1332)
For another example of an implementation intention, think about the stereotypes people have about anyone with a mobility problem or speech problem. People with characteristics such as these are often assumed to not be very smart. For this situation, the counterstereotype could be the word, “intelligent”. For Mexican-Americans, try “hard working”. For gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgendered people, try “moral” or “devoted parent”.
This particular strategy can be used by everyone, all the time, and in a private way. The authors of the study claim that just making the intention starts to change implicit associations and stereotypes. Implementation intentions appear to function in two ways. First, they increase the strength of the association between the environmental cue (seeing a Black individual) and the goal directed intention (the word “safe”)- think synapses, think neurotransmitters. The second way implementation intentions work is that they make both the cue from the environment (seeing a Black individual) and the goal directed intention increase in accessibility – it becomes easier. “Once a person has made the initial if-then intentions, these intentions require little motivation and effort to employ” say Stewart and Payne. (2008, 1334) “General intentions may not produce the intended response efficiently.” It needs to be specific, so for best results, you need to figure out what your specific implicit biases are and then come up with a counterstereotype to use.
Counterstereotypical implementation intentions operate at an automatic level. They serve to decrease “the influence of stereotypic associations on responses.” (Stewart and Payne 2008, 1342-3) So, this technique can change behavior. This, to me, is very big.
3. Increase contact with people who are different from you
In addition to employing implementation intention strategies, Stewart and Payne suggest that people work to change their social contexts. We should try to increase our intergroup contact – spend time with people who are not members of our in-group. This means that in institutional settings, such as schools and workplaces, we should increasingly and proactively diversify the work force. This must be a conscious effort. We must put procedures in place that prevent those in positions of power and authority, those who do the hiring, from defaulting to stereotypes in their judgments and going with in-group preferences.
In a place like a community college, if we purposefully work to achieve a highly diversified workforce, we increase the likelihood of people having significant, daily interactions with folks from out-groups. This increase in contact can lead to the formation of cross-group friendships.
4. Create and maintain authentic friendships with people who are different from you
Stewart and Payne suggest that we should try to create and maintain authentic friendships with people from out-groups. They also suggest we need to work on improving our familiarity with members of out-groups with the goal of increasing our ability to see each person in a more individual manner. In other words, try to overcome seeing members of an out-group as all “looking alike”! Changing the social context in an institution by working to diversify the workforce creates a social context in which this is much more likely to happen! Research on “friendships” lists “apparent availability” as one of the factors involved in the formation of friendships, thus many friendships are made in the workplace and in schools, where many of us spend a significant amount of time.
All of these strategies work to replace automatic stereotypes with attitudes that individuate. We are adding an association and strengthening it, so it can grab more cortical real estate. A conscious effort to individuate (to easily “tell apart” members of an out-group) can remove a default setting to stereotype and can remove the fear or withdrawal response in the amygdala. (Wheeler and Fiske 2005, 61)
5. Participate in diversity training
A 2001 article by Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary points out that voluntary participation in some type of diversity training which stresses “appreciation, rather than elimination, of group differences” has been found to be successful in reducing both explicit and implicit bias. (Rudman, et. al. 2001, 857) The reductions in explicit bias are, according to the authors, likely due to the content of the class. The reductions in implicit bias, however, appear to “represent an incidental learning process, one that is indirectly gained by participating in the course.” (Rudman, et. al. 2001, 866) Many authors have argued that automatic biases are learned indirectly.
“If people unintentionally acquire implicitly prejudicial attitudes and beliefs, why would it be necessary for them to deliberately unlearn them? Indeed, [in their study, Rudman, et. al. found that] people motivated to ‘try hard’ not to be prejudiced were unable to change their IAT [Implicit Association Test] scores [in tests of bias]. By contrast, people briefly exposed to positive Black exemplars [such as Martin Luther King, Jr.] or primed with counterstereotypic mental imagery did show reduced implicit biases through processes that seem to be relatively indirect.” (Rudman, et. al. 2001, 866)
This study by Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary was looking at students who were enrolled in a college seminar about prejudice and conflict. The authors found that those students “who evaluated the African-American professor and the course positively, who made friends with out-group members, and who reported feeling less threatened by out-group members also showed decreased implicit prejudice and [decreased] anti-Black stereotypes.” (2001, 866)
Summary: Understanding how bias works can loosen its grip on us.
“Prejudice appears to be the unfortunate consequence of lower-level affective processes that are not easily altered by higher-order reasoning.” It is possible, however, that people could “achieve non-bias through practice, selective attention, or interpersonal experiences that gradually recondition attitudes.” (Livingston and Drwecki 2007, 822)
In terms of supporting children's emotional self-regulation, we must turn the spotlight back on ourselves. We each have learned unconscious biases from those around us as we grew up. To prevent the passing on of this harmful legacy, we have to actively work on reducing our own unconscious and conscious biases. This ground work is essential and cannot be overlooked. No matter how hard a person tries to suppress bias, they remain. We have to learn new associations to overcome bias and to prevent its transmission to the children in our lives.
Repetition strengthens connections and lack of use weakens connections in the brain. For people who are highly motivated to reduce their implicit biases and who adopt one or more of the strategies described, repetition of the strategy will strengthen those neural networks and, in turn, may weaken the stereotypical ones. Every time we employ one of these strategies, we make an investment for an unbiased future and support emotional self-regulation.
Kathy A. Bobula, Ph.D.
2016
Reducing Bias is Emotional Regulation
Strategies for reducing bias, especially implicit bias, are self-regulation strategies. Getting our frontal lobes (self-regulation and conscious thought) to be in action during social interchanges, instead of our amygdala (fight/flight/freeze) actually involves both cognitive and emotional self-regulation. Cognitive assumptions about and emotional responses to human characteristics serve as "filters" through which we will see other people, even if these assumptions and responses are inaccurate. We learn these feelings and thoughts about others from our families, teachers, neighbors, friends, media, and more. Children gather all kinds of information and construct knowledge about their world from the moment they are born, and actually from before that time!
The regulation of our emotional responses to others (in terms of ethnicity/race, gender, ability, age, language, etc.) stands out as a major area that teachers and parents have avoided addressing. One of the reasons is that many people think children are born "innocent" and are incapable of having biases, yet research tells us this is not true. Children are especially learning the biases held by those very people who care for them, and even infants start learning them before they understand language.
Since bias harms people, and, as teachers, we have pledged to "do no harm" in our code of ethics, we have some work to do. Teachers of young children have two tasks that need to be incorporated into their tool kits both as teachers and as humans. First, we need to discover and address our own implicit (and explicit) biases that we learned along the way and consciously work to change these. If we do not, we will pass them on to the children with whom we work, even if we have positive intentions. The second task is to brainstorm how we can prevent and counteract the development of biases within the children in our care, and put these ideas into action in our classrooms.
The following are strategies that have been found to significantly reduce bias, especially implicit bias, and thus will help people gain emotional self-regulation. You can use these for identifying and reducing your own biases, and hopefully, these will help you brainstorm ways to put these skills into action in the classroom.
1. Notice positive examples of people who are different from you
Much research suggests that “both implicit and explicit stereotypes are responsive to current inputs, including the perceiver’s thoughts and social context.” The findings of a study by Blair, Ma, and Lenton suggest “that people may be able to achieve the … goal [of suppressing stereotypes] through the activation and strengthening of counterstereotype associations” through the use of mental imagery. (Blair, Ma, & Lenton 2001, 838)
“Thus, a more positive and proactive approach to changing stereotypes would be to encourage people to consider the diversity within social groups and especially the many examples of group members who disconfirm the stereotype.” (Blair, Ma, & Lenton 2001, 838) If done repeatedly, “implicit evaluations of historically stigmatized groups such as African Americans and older people may be modified, at least temporarily. (Dasgupta and Greenwald 2001, 806)
2. Implementation Intentions
Stewart and Payne, in a 2008 study on bringing automatic stereotyping under control, discuss a method called “implementation intentions”. This is a “special type of conscious control strategy” that uses if-then or when this–then that action plans. These “help people enact their goals more efficiently than general intentions.” (1332-4) For example, consider the two following statements in terms of how effective they would be in changing our behavior:
“When I leave work, I will exercise at the gym.”
vs.
“I will exercise more.”
The first statement is an implementation intention strategy that is being used to exercise more. The “if-then” nature of the first thought is more precise and has a specific outcome! The second one is more general.
In their three experiments, Stewart and Payne used the commonly held stereotype about African-American people, especially men, that they are more likely to be violent and commit crimes than European-Americans. They found that “automatic stereotyping was reduced when participants made an intention to think specific counterstereotypical thoughts whenever they encountered a Black individual.” The participants were instructed to say the word “safe” to themselves at each encounter, creating a new automatic association. Stewart and Payne point out that the changes seen, the reduction in stereotyping was “driven by a change in automatic stereotyping and not controlled thinking. [They were learning a new stereotype, if you will.] This benefit was acquired with little practice and it generalized to novel faces. Thus, implementation intentions may be an effective means for controlling automatic aspects of thought.” (1332)
For another example of an implementation intention, think about the stereotypes people have about anyone with a mobility problem or speech problem. People with characteristics such as these are often assumed to not be very smart. For this situation, the counterstereotype could be the word, “intelligent”. For Mexican-Americans, try “hard working”. For gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgendered people, try “moral” or “devoted parent”.
This particular strategy can be used by everyone, all the time, and in a private way. The authors of the study claim that just making the intention starts to change implicit associations and stereotypes. Implementation intentions appear to function in two ways. First, they increase the strength of the association between the environmental cue (seeing a Black individual) and the goal directed intention (the word “safe”)- think synapses, think neurotransmitters. The second way implementation intentions work is that they make both the cue from the environment (seeing a Black individual) and the goal directed intention increase in accessibility – it becomes easier. “Once a person has made the initial if-then intentions, these intentions require little motivation and effort to employ” say Stewart and Payne. (2008, 1334) “General intentions may not produce the intended response efficiently.” It needs to be specific, so for best results, you need to figure out what your specific implicit biases are and then come up with a counterstereotype to use.
Counterstereotypical implementation intentions operate at an automatic level. They serve to decrease “the influence of stereotypic associations on responses.” (Stewart and Payne 2008, 1342-3) So, this technique can change behavior. This, to me, is very big.
3. Increase contact with people who are different from you
In addition to employing implementation intention strategies, Stewart and Payne suggest that people work to change their social contexts. We should try to increase our intergroup contact – spend time with people who are not members of our in-group. This means that in institutional settings, such as schools and workplaces, we should increasingly and proactively diversify the work force. This must be a conscious effort. We must put procedures in place that prevent those in positions of power and authority, those who do the hiring, from defaulting to stereotypes in their judgments and going with in-group preferences.
In a place like a community college, if we purposefully work to achieve a highly diversified workforce, we increase the likelihood of people having significant, daily interactions with folks from out-groups. This increase in contact can lead to the formation of cross-group friendships.
4. Create and maintain authentic friendships with people who are different from you
Stewart and Payne suggest that we should try to create and maintain authentic friendships with people from out-groups. They also suggest we need to work on improving our familiarity with members of out-groups with the goal of increasing our ability to see each person in a more individual manner. In other words, try to overcome seeing members of an out-group as all “looking alike”! Changing the social context in an institution by working to diversify the workforce creates a social context in which this is much more likely to happen! Research on “friendships” lists “apparent availability” as one of the factors involved in the formation of friendships, thus many friendships are made in the workplace and in schools, where many of us spend a significant amount of time.
All of these strategies work to replace automatic stereotypes with attitudes that individuate. We are adding an association and strengthening it, so it can grab more cortical real estate. A conscious effort to individuate (to easily “tell apart” members of an out-group) can remove a default setting to stereotype and can remove the fear or withdrawal response in the amygdala. (Wheeler and Fiske 2005, 61)
5. Participate in diversity training
A 2001 article by Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary points out that voluntary participation in some type of diversity training which stresses “appreciation, rather than elimination, of group differences” has been found to be successful in reducing both explicit and implicit bias. (Rudman, et. al. 2001, 857) The reductions in explicit bias are, according to the authors, likely due to the content of the class. The reductions in implicit bias, however, appear to “represent an incidental learning process, one that is indirectly gained by participating in the course.” (Rudman, et. al. 2001, 866) Many authors have argued that automatic biases are learned indirectly.
“If people unintentionally acquire implicitly prejudicial attitudes and beliefs, why would it be necessary for them to deliberately unlearn them? Indeed, [in their study, Rudman, et. al. found that] people motivated to ‘try hard’ not to be prejudiced were unable to change their IAT [Implicit Association Test] scores [in tests of bias]. By contrast, people briefly exposed to positive Black exemplars [such as Martin Luther King, Jr.] or primed with counterstereotypic mental imagery did show reduced implicit biases through processes that seem to be relatively indirect.” (Rudman, et. al. 2001, 866)
This study by Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary was looking at students who were enrolled in a college seminar about prejudice and conflict. The authors found that those students “who evaluated the African-American professor and the course positively, who made friends with out-group members, and who reported feeling less threatened by out-group members also showed decreased implicit prejudice and [decreased] anti-Black stereotypes.” (2001, 866)
Summary: Understanding how bias works can loosen its grip on us.
“Prejudice appears to be the unfortunate consequence of lower-level affective processes that are not easily altered by higher-order reasoning.” It is possible, however, that people could “achieve non-bias through practice, selective attention, or interpersonal experiences that gradually recondition attitudes.” (Livingston and Drwecki 2007, 822)
In terms of supporting children's emotional self-regulation, we must turn the spotlight back on ourselves. We each have learned unconscious biases from those around us as we grew up. To prevent the passing on of this harmful legacy, we have to actively work on reducing our own unconscious and conscious biases. This ground work is essential and cannot be overlooked. No matter how hard a person tries to suppress bias, they remain. We have to learn new associations to overcome bias and to prevent its transmission to the children in our lives.
Repetition strengthens connections and lack of use weakens connections in the brain. For people who are highly motivated to reduce their implicit biases and who adopt one or more of the strategies described, repetition of the strategy will strengthen those neural networks and, in turn, may weaken the stereotypical ones. Every time we employ one of these strategies, we make an investment for an unbiased future and support emotional self-regulation.
Kathy A. Bobula, Ph.D.
2016
