Hello, I just came across an interesting article by Kerry Kawakami and colleagues ("Just say no (to stereotyping): Effects of training in the negation of stereotypic associations on stereotype activation," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 78, No. 5). It describes a "stereotype negation" exercise in which participants assigned black and white faces to incongruent stereotypes (e.g., pressing the key for "no" when a black face was paired with "aggressive"). In the Kawakami study, the effects of the exercise lasted for 24 hours, as measured on pre-post performance on a Stroop task.
I'm wondering if anyone has run across an online version of the above, or anything similar which attempts to modify implicit racial bias by diminishing overlearned associations. I'm preparing a lecture for undergrads on this topic and would like to leave them with something optimistic, i.e. the idea that automatic responses may be at least partially modifiable. I've reached out to the author of the paper, but have yet to receive a response.
Obviously such a simple exercise is only one tiny piece of the puzzle, so rest assured that I will not be telling undergrads they can magically become un-racist by playing computer games. :)
Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed is foundational. The concise answer to hope for the issue of implicit bias is social activism. Implicit bias is induced through repetitive messaging and socially reinforced behavior. One can combat this through intentional daily counter-messaging and intentional contradictory daily habits. Lastly, outward confrontation of the social and systemic reinforcers of bias become evidence of the effectiveness of internal counter messaging.
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