Responding to feedback about implicit bias

Abstract

Providing people with feedback about their intergroup biases is a central part of many diversity training and other bias‐education efforts. Although this practice may increase self‐awareness, people sometimes respond negatively to learning about their own biases. In the present review, we provide a framework for understanding when feedback about intergroup bias should lead to behavior change intentions, and when it can work against that goal. Specifically, we suggest that feedback about performance on measures of bias (e.g., the Implicit Association Test) will cause psychological discomfort to the extent that feedback about intergroup bias is: (1) discrepant from self‐reported attitudes, and (2) more personally or socially unacceptable than self‐reported attitudes. We then suggest two possible routes stemming from that psychological discomfort: If people accept personal responsibility for feedback, they will respond to psychological discomfort with compunction and direct efforts toward behavior and attitude change. By contrast, if people reject personal responsibility for feedback, they will respond defensively, derogating the feedback and trying to prove that the results are inaccurate. We use responses to feedback about implicit bias as a test case to demonstrate our model and discuss the current state of the literature on responding to IAT feedback. We also discuss interventions that can move people from defensiveness to compunction and open our metaphorical “file drawer” to discuss lessons learned.