There are different types of individuals. Training on implicit bias awareness in the workplace seeks to eliminate the subconscious biases of employees and ensure that they aren’t affecting employees’ behaviors, but reality is that there isn’t any evidence showing whether or not this method of training really works.

A majority of the acquisition of cognitive biases takes place automatically. This can make it difficult to recognize in the event of unjustified connections. The Implicit Association Test, or IAT is a test that attempts to gauge the biases of humans in order to learn more about the nature of these biases, however, as of now, it’s still unclear the accuracy of this test. If a person takes the IAT several times, they may receive drastically different results. That means this test may not be particularly valid. It’s not always easy to predict what the IAT will test.

In the same way that aiming to less discriminatory towards people of different backgrounds is certainly a worthwhile goal, acknowledging one’s biases -the way the implicit bias awareness program seeks to assist employees with -does not necessarily translate into changing behavior. Training must help employees be able to recognize their prejudices, but also motivate them to be more respectful.

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