Prejudiced and unaware of it: Evidence for the Dunning-Kruger model in the domains of racism and sexism

K. West and A. A. Eaton
Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 146, 1 August 2019, Pages 111-119

Abstract

Prior research, and high-prolife contemporary examples, show that individuals tend to underestimate their own levels of bias. This underestimation is partially explained by motivational factors. However, (meta-) cognitive factors may also be involved. Conceptualising contemporary egalitarianism as type of skill or competence, this research proposed that egalitarianism should conform to the Dunning-Kruger model. That is, individuals should overestimate their own ability, and this overestimation should be strongest in the least competent individuals. Furthermore, training should improve metacognition and reduce this overestimation. Two studies on racism (N = 148), and sexism (N = 159) partially supported these hypotheses. In line with the Dunning-Kruger model, participants overestimated their levels of racial and gender-based egalitarianism, and this pattern was strongest among the most prejudiced participants. However, diversity training did not affect participants' overestimation of their egalitarianism. Implications for contemporary prejudice, and prejudice-reducing strategies are discussed.

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Conclusions

For many reasons, contemporary discussions of prejudice can be quite acrimonious. Members of socially advantaged groups may find such discussions difficult, unpleasant, or threatening Apfelbaum, Pauker, Ambady, Sommers, & Norton, 2008; Dover, Major, & Kaiser, 2016; Norton et al., 2006). Political divisions may lead members of both advantaged and disadvantaged groups to attribute overly negative motivations to the other group (Goff et al., 2014; Reeder, 2005; Taber, Brook, & Franklin, 2006). Motivation certainly forms an important part of the picture. However, this research suggests that, even if such motivational considerations were accounted for, there may be important cognitive hindrances to understanding and reducing prejudice that would have to be addressed. In line with the Dunning-Kruger model, this research found that very prejudiced individuals (i.e., those low in egalitarianism) may be genuinely unaware of their shortcomings because they lack the meta-cognition necessary to perceive them. It is thus possible that some solutions to contemporary prejudice may rely less on motivation and more on education.

The research is here.

How to talk someone out of bigotry

Brian Resnick
vox.com
Originally published 29 Jan 20

Here is an excerpt:

Topping and dozens of other canvassers were a part of that 2016 effort. It was an important study: Not only has social science found very few strategies that work, in experiments, to change minds on issues of prejudice, but even fewer tests of those strategies have occurred in the real world.

Typically, the conversations begin with the canvasser asking the voter for their opinion on a topic, like abortion access, immigration, or LGBTQ rights. Canvassers (who may or may not be members of the impacted community) listen nonjudgmentally. They don’t say if they are pleased or hurt by the response. They are supposed “to appear genuinely interested in hearing the subject ruminate on the question,” as Broockman and Kalla’s latest study instructions read.

The canvassers then ask if the voters know anyone in the affected community, and ask if they relate to the person’s story. If they don’t, and even if they do, they’re asked a question like, “When was a time someone showed you compassion when you really needed it?” to get them to reflect on their experience when they might have felt something similar to the people in the marginalized community.

The canvassers also share their own stories: about being an immigrant, about being a member of the LGBTQ community, or about just knowing people who are.

It’s a type of conversation that’s closer to what a psychotherapist might have with a patient than a typical political argument. (One clinical therapist I showed it to said it sounded a bit like “motivational interviewing,” a technique used to help clients work through ambivalent feelings.) It’s not about listing facts or calling people out on their prejudicial views. It’s about sharing and listening, all the while nudging people to be analytical and think about their shared humanity with marginalized groups.

The info is here.

Could a Rising Robot Workforce Make Humans Less Prejudiced?

Jackson, J., Castelo, N. & Gray, K. (2019).
American Psychologist. (2019)

Automation is becoming ever more prevalent, with robot workers replacing many human employees. Many perspectives have examined the economic impact of a robot workforce, but here we consider its social impact: how will the rise of robot workers affect intergroup relations? Whereas some past research suggests that more robots will lead to more intergroup prejudice, we suggest that robots could also reduce prejudice by highlighting commonalities between all humans. As robot workers become more salient, intergroup differences—including racial and religious differences—may seem less important, fostering a perception of a common human identity (i.e., “panhumanism.”) Six studies (∑N= 3,312) support this hypothesis. Anxiety about the rising robot workforce predicts less anxiety about human out-groups (Study 1) and priming the salience of a robot workforce reduces prejudice towards out-groups (Study 2), makes people more accepting of out-group members as leaders and family members (Study 3), and increases wage equality across in-group and out-group members in an economic simulation (Study 4). This effect is mediated by panhumanism (Studies 5-6), suggesting that the perception of a common human in-group explains why robot salience reduces prejudice. We discuss why automation may sometimes exacerbate intergroup tensions and other-times reduce them.

From the General Discussion

An open question remains about when automation helps versus harms intergroup relations. Our evidence is optimistic, showing that robot workers can increase solidarity between human groups. Yet other studies are pessimistic, showing that reminders of rising automation can increase people’s perceived material insecurity, leading them to feel more threatened by immigrants and foreign workers (Im et al., in press; Frey, Berger, & Chen, 2017), and data that we gathered across 37 nations—summarized in our supplemental materials—suggest that the countries that have automated the fastest over the last 42 years have also increased more in explicit prejudice towards out-groups, an effect that is partially explained by rising unemployment rates.

The research is here.

Certain Moral Values May Lead to More Prejudice, Discrimination

American Psychological Association Pressor
Released December 20, 2018

People who value following purity rules over caring for others are more likely to view gay and transgender people as less human, which leads to more prejudice and support for discriminatory public policies, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association.

“After the Supreme Court decision affirming marriage equality and the debate over bathroom rights for transgender people, we realized that the arguments were often not about facts but about opposing moral beliefs,” said Andrew E. Monroe, PhD, of Appalachian State University and lead author of the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General®.

“Thus, we wanted to understand if moral values were an underlying cause of prejudice toward gay and transgender people.”

Monroe and his co-author, Ashby Plant, PhD, of Florida State University, focused on two specific moral values — what they called sanctity, or a strict adherence to purity rules and disgust over any acts that are considered morally contaminating, and care, which centers on disapproval of others who cause suffering without just cause — because they predicted those values might be behind the often-heated debates over LGBTQ rights. 

The researchers conducted five experiments with nearly 1,100 participants. Overall, they found that people who prioritized sanctity over care were more likely to believe that gay and transgender people, people with AIDS and prostitutes were more impulsive, less rational and, therefore, something less than human. These attitudes increased prejudice and acceptance of discriminatory public policies, according to Monroe.

The info is here.

The research is here.

Deep learning: Why it’s time for AI to get philosophical

Catherine Stinson
The Globe and Mail
Originally published March 23, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Another kind of effort at fixing AI’s ethics problem is the proliferation of crowdsourced ethics projects, which have the commendable goal of a more democratic approach to science. One example is DJ Patil’s Code of Ethics for Data Science, which invites the data-science community to contribute ideas but doesn’t build up from the decades of work already done by philosophers, historians and sociologists of science. Then there’s MIT’s Moral Machine project, which asks the public to vote on questions such as whether a self-driving car with brake failure ought to run over five homeless people rather than one female doctor. Philosophers call these “trolley problems” and have published thousands of books and papers on the topic over the past half-century. Comparing the views of professional philosophers with those of the general public can be eye-opening, as experimental philosophy has repeatedly shown, but simply ignoring the experts and taking a vote instead is irresponsible.

The point of making AI more ethical is so it won’t reproduce the prejudices of random jerks on the internet. Community participation throughout the design process of new AI tools is a good idea, but let’s not do it by having trolls decide ethical questions. Instead, representatives from the populations affected by technological change should be consulted about what outcomes they value most, what needs the technology should address and whether proposed designs would be usable given the resources available. Input from residents of heavily policed neighbourhoods would have revealed that a predictive policing system trained on historical data would exacerbate racial profiling. Having a person of colour on the design team for that soap dispenser should have made it obvious that a peachy skin tone detector wouldn’t work for everyone. Anyone who has had a stalker is sure to notice the potential abuses of selfie drones. Diversifying the pool of talent in AI is part of the solution, but AI also needs outside help from experts in other fields, more public consultation and stronger government oversight.

The information is here.

Is utilitarian sacrifice becoming more morally permissible?

Ivar R.Hannikainen, Edouard Machery, & Fiery A.Cushman
Cognition

Volume 170, January 2018, Pages 95-101

Abstract

A central tenet of contemporary moral psychology is that people typically reject active forms of utilitarian sacrifice. Yet, evidence for secularization and declining empathic concern in recent decades suggests the possibility of systematic change in this attitude. In the present study, we employ hypothetical dilemmas to investigate whether judgments of utilitarian sacrifice are becoming more permissive over time. In a cross-sectional design, age negatively predicted utilitarian moral judgment (Study 1). To examine whether this pattern reflected processes of maturation, we asked a panel to re-evaluate several moral dilemmas after an eight-year interval but observed no overall change (Study 2). In contrast, a more recent age-matched sample revealed greater endorsement of utilitarian sacrifice in a time-lag design (Study 3). Taken together, these results suggest that today’s younger cohorts increasingly endorse a utilitarian resolution of sacrificial moral dilemmas.

The article is here.

Here is a portion of the Discussion section:

A vibrant discussion among philosophers and cognitive scientists has focused on distinguishing the virtues and pitfalls of the human moral faculty (Bloom, 2017; Greene, 2014; Singer, 2005). On a pessimistic note, our results dovetail with evidence about the socialization and development of recent cohorts (e.g., Shonkoff et al., 2012): Utilitarian judgment has been shown to correlate with Machiavellian and psychopathic traits (Bartels & Pizarro, 2011), and also with the reduced capacity to distinguish felt emotions (Patil & Silani, 2014). At the same time, leading theories credit highly acclaimed instances of moral progress to the exercise of rational scrutiny over prevailing moral norms (Greene, 2014; Singer, 2005), and the persistence of parochialism and prejudice to the unbridled command of intuition (Bloom, 2017). From this perspective, greater disapproval of intuitive deontological principles among recent cohorts may stem from the documented rise in cognitive abilities (i.e., the Flynn effect; see Pietschnig & Voracek, 2015) and foreshadow an expanding commitment to the welfare-maximizing resolution of contemporary moral challenges.

The Dark Side of Morality: Group Polarization and Moral-Belief Formation

Marcus Arvan
University of Tampa

Most of us are accustomed to thinking of morality in a positive light. Morality, we say, is a matter of “doing good” and treating ourselves and each other “rightly.” However, moral beliefs and discourse also plausibly play a role in group polarization, the tendency of social groups to divide into progressively more extreme factions, each of which regards other groups to be “wrong.” Group polarization often occurs along moral lines, and is known to have many disturbing effects, increasing racial prejudice among the already moderately prejudiced, leading group decisions to be more selfish, competitive, less trusting, and less altruistic than individual decisions, eroding public trust, leading juries to impose more severe punishments in trial, generating more extreme political decisions, and contributing to war, genocide, and other violent behavior.

This paper argues that three empirically-supported theories of group polarization predict that polarization is likely caused in substantial part by a conception of morality that I call the Discovery Model—a model which holds moral truths exist to be discovered through moral intuition, moral reasoning, or some other process.

The paper is here.

AI Learning Racism, Sexism and Other Prejudices from Humans

Ian Johnston
The Independent
Originally published April 13, 2017

Artificially intelligent robots and devices are being taught to be racist, sexist and otherwise prejudiced by learning from humans, according to new research.

A massive study of millions of words online looked at how closely different terms were to each other in the text – the same way that automatic translators use “machine learning” to establish what language means.

Some of the results were stunning.

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“We have demonstrated that word embeddings encode not only stereotyped biases but also other knowledge, such as the visceral pleasantness of flowers or the gender distribution of occupations,” the researchers wrote.

The study also implies that humans may develop prejudices partly because of the language they speak.

“Our work suggests that behaviour can be driven by cultural history embedded in a term’s historic use. Such histories can evidently vary between languages,” the paper said.

The article is here.

Jail cells await mentally ill in Rapid City

Mike Anderson
Rapid City Journal
Originally published February 7, 2017

Mentally ill people in Rapid City who have committed no crimes will probably end up in jail because of a major policy change recently announced by Rapid City Regional Hospital.

The hospital is no longer taking in certain types of mentally ill patients and will instead contact the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office to take them into custody.

The move has prompted criticism from local law enforcement officials, who say the decision was made suddenly and without their input.

“In my view, this is the biggest step backward our community has experienced in terms of health care for mental health patients,” said Rapid City police Chief Karl Jegeris. “And though it’s legally permissible by statute to put someone in an incarceration setting, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do.”

This is the second major policy change to come out of Regional in recent days that places limits on the type of mental health care the hospital will provide.

The article is here.

The "Bad Is Black" Effect: Why People Believe Evildoers Have Darker Skin Than Do-Gooders

Alter, A., Stern, C. Granot, Y., & Balcetis, E.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2016 Dec;42(12):1653-1665.

Abstract

Across six studies, people used a "bad is black" heuristic in social judgment and assumed that immoral acts were committed by people with darker skin tones, regardless of the racial background of those immoral actors. In archival studies of news articles written about Black and White celebrities in popular culture magazines (Study 1a) and American politicians (Study 1b), the more critical rather than complimentary the stories, the darker the skin tone of the photographs printed with the article. In the remaining four studies, participants associated immoral acts with darker skinned people when examining surveillance footage (Studies 2 and 4), and when matching headshots to good and bad actions (Studies 3 and 5). We additionally found that both race-based (Studies 2, 3, and 5) and shade-based (Studies 4 and 5) associations between badness and darkness determine whether people demonstrate the "bad is black" effect. We discuss implications for social perception and eyewitness identification.

The article is here.

7 Ways We Know Systemic Racism Is Real

benjerry.com

Here is an excerpt:

Racism at Every Level of Society

Systemic racism is about the way racism is built right into every level of our society. Many people point to what they see as less in-your-face prejudice and bias these days, compared to decades past, but as Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

While fewer people may consider themselves racist, racism itself persists in our schools, offices, court system, police departments, and elsewhere. Think about it: when white people occupy most positions of decision-making power, people of color have a difficult time getting a fair shake, let alone getting ahead. Bottom line: we have a lot of work to do.

The blog post is here.

The Ethics of Behavioral Health Information Technology

Michelle Joy, Timothy Clement, and Dominic Sisti
JAMA. Published online September 08, 2016.
doi:10.1001/jama.2016.12534

Here is an excerpt:

Individuals with mental illness and addiction experience negative stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, distancing, and marginalization—social dynamics commonly called stigma. These dynamics are also often internalized and accepted by individuals with mental health conditions, amplifying their negative effect. Somewhat counterintuitively, stigmatizing beliefs about these patients are common among health care workers and often more common among mental health care professionals. Given these facts, the reinforcement of any stigmatizing concept within the medical record system or health information infrastructure is ethically problematic.

Stigmatizing iconography presents the potential for problematic clinical consequences. Patients with dual psychiatric and medical conditions often receive low-quality medical care and experience worse outcomes. One factor in this disparity is the phenomenon of diagnostic overshadowing. For example, diagnostic overshadowing can occur in patients with co-occurring mental illness and conditions such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes. These patients are less likely to receive appropriate medical care than patients without a mental health condition—their psychiatric conditions overshadow their other conditions, potentially biasing the clinician’s judgment about diagnosis and treatment such that the clinician may misattribute physical symptoms to mental health problems.

The article is here.

The patient called me ‘colored girl.’ The senior doctor training me said nothing

By Jennifer Adaeze Anyaegbunam
Stat
Originally posted April 11, 2016

Medicine struggles with a chronic disease: racism.

Medical schools try to combat this disease with diversity initiatives and training in unconscious bias and cultural sensitivity. I’m about to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, so I’ve been through such programs.

They’re not enough.

Every one of us needs to own the principles that protect us and our patients from racism and bias. That means learning to see prejudice and speaking up against it. But that is far, far easier said than done.

Again and again during my four years of training, I encountered racism and ignorance, directed either at patients or at me and other students of color. Yet it was very hard for me to speak up, even politely, because as a student, I felt I had no authority — and didn’t want to seem confrontational to senior physicians who would be writing my evaluations.

The article is here.

The Whitewashing Effect: Using Racial Contact to Signal Trustworthiness and Competence

Stephen T. La Macchia, Winnifred R. Louis, Matthew J. Hornsey, M. Thai, & F. K. Barlow
Pers Soc Psychol Bull January 2016 42: 118-129
doi:10.1177/0146167215616801

Abstract

The present research examines whether people use racial contact to signal positive and negative social attributes. In two experiments, participants were instructed to fake good (trustworthy/competent) or fake bad (untrustworthy/incompetent) when reporting their amount of contact with a range of different racial groups. In Experiment 1 (N = 364), participants faking good reported significantly more contact with White Americans than with non-White Americans, whereas participants faking bad did not. In Experiment 2 (N = 1,056), this pattern was replicated and was found to be particularly pronounced among those with stronger pro-White bias. These findings suggest that individuals may use racial contact as a social signal, effectively “whitewashing” their apparent contact and friendships when trying to present positively.

The entire article is here.

Bias, Black Lives, and Academic Medicine

By David A. Ansell and Edwin K. McDonald
The New England Journal of Medicine
Originally published February 18, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

First, there is evidence that doctors hold stereotypes based on patients' race that can influence their clinical decisions.  Implicit bias refers to unconscious racial stereotypes that grow from our personal and cultural experiences. These implicit beliefs may also stem from a lack of day-to-day interracial and intercultural interactions. Although explicit race bias is rare among physicians, an unconscious preference for whites as compared with blacks is commonly revealed on tests of implicit bias.

Second, despite physicians' and medical centers' best intentions of being equitable, black–white disparities persist in patient outcomes, medical education, and faculty recruitment.

The entire article is here.

The Effect of Belief in Free Will on Prejudice

By Xian Zhao, Li Liu, Xiao-xiao Zhang, Jia-xin Shi, and  Zhen-wei Huang
Published: March 12, 2014 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0091572

Abstract

The current research examined the role of the belief in free will on prejudice across Han Chinese and white samples. Belief in free will refers to the extent to which people believe human beings truly have free will. In Study 1, the beliefs of Han Chinese people in free will were measured, and their social distances from the Tibetan Chinese were used as an index of ethnic prejudice. The results showed that the more that Han Chinese endorsed the belief in free will, the less that they showed prejudice against the Tibetan Chinese. In Study 2, the belief of the Han Chinese in free will was manipulated, and their explicit feelings towards the Uyghur Chinese were used as an indicator of ethnic prejudice. The results showed that the participants in the condition of belief in free will reported less prejudice towards Uyghur Chinese compared to their counterparts in the condition of disbelief in free will. In Study 3, white peoples’ belief in free will was manipulated, and their pro-black attitudes were measured as an indirect indicator of racial prejudice. The results showed that, compared to the condition of disbelief in free will, the participants who were primed by a belief in free will reported stronger pro-black attitudes. These three studies suggest that endorsement of the belief in free will can lead to decreased ethnic/racial prejudice compared to denial of the belief in free will. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The entire study is here.

Preventing Weight Bias: A Toolkit for Professionals in Clinical Practice

Yale Rudd Center
Resource for Clinicians

Weight bias jeopardizes patients' emotional and physical health. As the majority of Americans are now overweight or obese, this is an important clinical concern, one that no provider can afford to ignore.

This toolkit is designed to help clinicians across a variety of practice settings with easy-to-implement solutions and resources to improve delivery of care for overweight and obese patients. The resources are designed for busy professionals and customized for various practice settings. They range from simple strategies to improve provider-patient communication and ways to make positive changes in the office environment , to profound ones, including self-examination of personal biases.

The entire 8 Module Toolkit is here.

Behind Flurry of Killing, Potency of Hate

By KATRIN BENNHOLD
The New York Times
Published: October 12, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

“What you’re seeing in that moment,” he said in an interview last week, “is not a human being.”

It is dangerous to assume that it takes a monster to commit a monstrosity, said Herbert Kelman, professor emeritus of social ethics at Harvard.

“We are all capable of such things,” said Mr. Kelman, 86, whose family fled Vienna under the Nazis in 1939. “It doesn’t excuse anything, it doesn’t justify anything and it is by no means a full explanation. But it’s something that is worth remembering: We are dealing in a sense with human behavior responding to certain circumstances.”

Overcoming a deep-seated proscription against killing is not easy. In his book “Ordinary Men,” Christopher R. Browning described how a German police battalion staffed with fathers, businessmen and plumbers struggled as they executed thousands of Jews in Poland.

The entire story is here.