Check out Dr. Cox’s recently published paper that comprehensively reviews 15+ years of experimental research on the bias habit-breaking training:
To hear more about our work, check out our video below, or listen to a radio interview with Dr. Cox here: https://www.wpr.org/shows/reducing-bias
Check out Diverse Joy, our monthly podcast!
In every episode, Dr. William T. L. Cox and Dr. Amber Nelson infuse science, practical skills, and most of all joy into conversations about diversity!
Evidence-Based Approaches to Reduce Bias, Create Inclusion, and Promote Equity
Increasingly, universities, government bodies, corporations, and other organizations have become concerned with identifying effective methods to reduce bias, create inclusion, and promote equity. Abundant evidence indicates that, however well-intentioned, diversity and bias intervention efforts that are not based on scientific evidence at best do not work and very often make bias problems worse (e.g., Apfelbaum et al., 2012; Dobbin & Kalev, 2013; Legault et al., 2011; Paluck & Green, 2009). In response, nearly every major scientific organization (e.g., NIH, NSF, AAAS) has emphasized the need for evidence-based approaches to addressing bias and promoting diversity (e.g., Moss-Racusin, et al., 2014).
The goal of understanding, predicting, and changing human behavior is best served by the scientific method, and addressing issues of bias, diversity, and inclusion is no exception; it requires a scientific, evidence-based approach to create change and demonstrate the effectiveness of efforts to reduce bias and enhance diversity.
The bias habit-breaking training was the first and remains the only intervention that has been shown experimentally to produce long-term changes in bias, inclusion, and equity (for a review, see Cox, 2023).
We want to empower as many people as possible with evidence-based approaches to reducing bias, creating inclusion, and promoting equity. Contact us if you’re interested in booking a training for your organization.
The Bias Habit-Breaking Training
The bias habit-breaking training was developed by Dr. Patricia Devine, Dr. William Cox, and their colleagues, building on more than 30 years of scientific research on prejudice, stereotyping, and bias. Foundational to the work is Dr. Devine’s prejudice habit model (Devine, 1989), which originated the very notion of “implicit bias” or “unintentional bias”.
Over the past 16 years, this training has been administered with many different audiences, including public school teachers, professors, graduate students, lawyers, judges, doctors, police officers, tech companies, and others. Randomized-controlled tests have shown that the training causes long-term decreases in measured levels of implicit bias and increases in awareness and concern about racial and other forms of discrimination. The training equips people with tools to recognize and address bias, and experiments have shown that people who have completed the training are significantly more likely to speak up against bias and confront bias in the world around them, up to at least 2-3 years post-training. One large-scale experimental test of the training led to a 43% increase in the hiring of members of underrepresented groups (Devine, Forscher, Cox, Kaatz, Sheridan, & Carnes, 2017). In over a dozen randomized-controlled studies, our team has tested this training’s replicability and long-term effectiveness, with effects lasting up to at least 2-3 years.