Guilty by Implicit Racial Bias: The Guilty/Not Guilty Implicit Association Test (original) (raw)
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[PDF]Implicit Bias in the Courtroom
Given the substantial and growing scientific literature on implicit bias, the time has now come to confront a critical question: What, if anything, should we do about implicit bias in the courtroom? The author team comprises legal academics, scientists, researchers, and even a sitting federal judge who seek to answer this question in accordance with behavioral realism. The Article first provides a succinct scientific introduction to implicit bias, with some important theoretical clarifications that distinguish between explicit, implicit, and structural forms of bias. Next, the Article applies the science to two trajectories of bias relevant to the courtroom. One story follows a criminal defendant path; the other story follows a civil employment discrimination path. This application involves not only a focused scientific review but also a step-by-step examination of how criminal and civil trials proceed. Finally, the Article examines various concrete intervention strategies to counter implicit biases for key players in the justice system, such as the judge and jury.
Implicit bias in the courtroom
Given the substantial and growing scientific literature on implicit bias, the time has now come to confront a critical question: What, if anything, should we do about implicit bias in the courtroom? The author team comprises legal academics, scientists, researchers, and even a sitting federal judge who seek to answer this question in accordance with behavioral realism. The Article first provides a succinct scientific introduction to implicit bias, with some important theoretical clarifications that distinguish between explicit, implicit, and structural forms of bias. Next, the Article applies the science to two trajectories of bias relevant to the courtroom. One story follows a criminal defendant path; the other story follows a civil employment discrimination path. This application involves not only a focused scientific review but also a step-by-step examination of how criminal and civil trials proceed. Finally, the Article examines various concrete intervention strategies to counter implicit biases for key players in the justice system, such as the judge and jury.
A Matter of Fit: The Law of Discrimination and the Science of Implicit Bias
Introduction Integrating the insights gleaned from scientific research into the framework of the law requires courts to appreciate the empirical complexities of the former and the analytical details of the latter. This is no simple feat. It requires juxtaposing the lessons and limitations of science with the demands of the law. This feat has proved particularly nettlesome—or, at least, controversial—in regard to the degree to which scientific research on implicit bias, or stereotypes, helps discrimination claims under Title VII. 1 This subject presents a wide cross section of the challenges endemic to the connection between law and science, including ambiguity regarding the meaning of the law, inherent limitations in studying the subject of implicit bias, enigmatic interpretations of research data, and imperfect correspondence between the reach of science and the precepts of the law. A fair evaluation of the relevance of research on implicit bias demands a clear exposition of the la...
Addressing Implicit Bias in the Courts
2013
1. The Open Society Institute, the State Justice Institute, and the National Center for State Courts funded the preparation of this article. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. This article summarizes the National Center for State Courts’ project on implicit bias and judicial education. For the full report of the project, see PAMELA M. CASEY, ROGER K. WARREN, FRED L. CHEESMAN II & JENNIFER K. ELEK, HELPING COURTS ADDRESS IMPLICIT BIAS: RESOURCES FOR EDUCATION (2012) (hereinafter HELPING COURTS), available at http://www.ncsc.org/\~/media/Files/PDF/ Topics/Gender%20and%20Racial%20Fairness/IB_report_033012. ashx. 2. Various state-court reports of racial fairness task forces and commissions can be found through the National Center for State Courts’ website at http://www.ncsconline.org/Projects\_Initiatives/ REFI/SearchState.asp. To access the National Center for State Courts’ Interactive Database of State Prog...
2015
\\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\83-3\GWN304.txt unknown Seq: 2 18-JUN-15 15:54 2015] IMPLICIT RACIAL BIAS 1009 of profiling. In sum, the Court's current conception of race discrimination is anemic and in urgent need of reform. Chin's and Vernon's arguments increase the likelihood that the Court will condemn racial discrimination as unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. This would mark an important first step towards moving the Court to adopt a more realistic and broader conception of the harms of race discrimination.
Forgotten Racial Equality: Implicit Bias, Decision-Making and Misremembering
bepress Legal Series, 2006
In this Article, I claim that judges and jurors unknowingly misremember case facts in racially biased ways. Drawing upon studies from implicit social cognition, human memory research, and legal decisionmaking, I argue that implicit racial biases affect the way judges and jurors encode, store, and recall relevant case facts. I then explain how this phenomenon perpetuates racial bias in case outcomes. To test the hypothesis that judges and jurors misremember case facts in racially biased ways, I conducted an empirical study in which participants were asked to recall facts of stories they had read only minutes earlier. Results of the study confirmed the hypothesis that participants remembered and misremembered legally relevant facts in racially biased ways. For example, participants who read about an African-American story character were significantly more likely to remember aggressive facts from the story than participants who read about a Caucasian story character. Other results indicated that these racial memory biases were not related to explicit racial preferences. The presence and power of implicit memory bias in legal decisionmaking raises concerns about the legal system's ability to achieve social justice. Multifaceted responses, including debiasing techniques and cultural change efforts, are needed. Debiasing
Racial Bias in Juridic Judgment at Private and Public Levels
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2006
Mock jurors (college students and prospective jurors) made individual decisions regarding liability and damages (before and after deliberation) in response to a case of sexual harassment. There were no significant differences in damage awards from college students and prospective jurors. There was evidence of racial bias among White mock jurors against plaintiffs who accused a Black supervisor of sexual harassment: Lower damages were recommended for plaintiffs who accepted an offer to meet for drinks in a Black supervisor's room than for plaintiffs who accepted the same offer from a White supervisor. There was also evidence of racial bias among White mock jurors against Black plaintiffs: Lower damages were recommended for Black plaintiffs than for White plaintiffs. These effects were present in the individual judgments of college students and prospective jurors. However, these forms of racial bias did not carry over into the decisions made by juries comprised of college students or prospective jurors. Subtle racial biases operating primarily at a subconscious level may get washed out in the complex task of coming to agreement on an appropriate award. The effects of manipulated variables on damage awards probably are overestimated in general in mock juror studies that do not examine group verdicts. Public opinion surveys paint a rosier picture of the attitudes of Whites toward Blacks than in the past (Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, & Krysan, 1997). Nevertheless, discrimination against Blacks still prevails in many facets of life that have a negative impact on quality of life (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), and a substantial proportion of Whites still may be opposed to full racial equality (
'I'm happy to own my implicit biases': Public encounters with the Implicit Association Test
British Journal of Social Psychology, 2018
The implicit association test (IAT) and concept of implicit bias have significantly influenced the scientific, institutional, and public discourse on racial prejudice. In spite of this, there has been little investigation of how ordinary people make sense of the IAT and the bias it claims to measure. This article examines the public understanding of this research through a discourse analysis of reactions to the IAT and implicit bias in the news media. It demonstrates the ways in which readers interpreted, related to, and negotiated the claims of IAT science in relation to socially shared and historically embedded concerns and identities. IAT science was discredited in accounts that evoked discourses about the marginality of academic preoccupations, and helped to position test-takers as targets of an oppressive political correctness and psychologists as liberally biased. Alternatively, the IAT was understood to have revealed widely and deeply held biases toward racialized others, eliciting accounts that took the form of psycho-moral confessionals. Such admissions of bias helped to constitute moral identities for readers that were firmly positioned against racial bias. Our findings are discussed in terms of their implications for using the IAT in prejudice reduction interventions, and communicating to the public about implicit bias.