Unconscious Bias Training: Does it really work?

Unconscious bias training programmes are now ubiquitous, with many organisations running training for their employees in some format or another. Most are short, maybe half a day or less, although a few are longer.  Some take place in the classroom, some are on-line.  Some are mandatory, some are voluntary.  We have not been able to establish the value of this industry, but we are fairly certain it runs into hundreds of millions of dollars globally.  Some high-profile examples of businesses taking action to train their staff have been widely reported on, (one well known business closed all its branches for half a day training for all its staff) but is this money well spent? Does it achieve any more than positive PR, and a tick in the diversity training box? 

Of course, no reasonable person now disputes the need to tackle unconscious bias in order to try and reduce or even remove it, and we certainly applaud organisations for doing so.  To say otherwise would be to fly in the face of the overwhelming evidence base demonstrating the pernicious impact of unconscious bias that still exists across a range of contexts, including employment, health, legal and education.   But despite the extensive efforts, examples of bias and the ensuing inequalities, are still rife in organisations.   So, we want to ask the question: does the training actually work? Or to be more precise (and more constructive), we ask ‘What works?’  If we can pin-point what works and what doesn’t, then training budgets could be spent more wisely, and we might stand a chance of actually reducing bias.

What evidence is there for the effectiveness of unconscious bias programmes?  The answer is: very little indeed.  This is in large part due to the lack of published evaluation studies, and those that are available, are so varied in the methods used in the training that it makes comparisons and generalisations difficult. Organisations and HR departments are notoriously poor at carrying out proper evaluations of training.  We are not talking about the collection of immediate feedback and happy sheets, which while good to do, tells us nothing about the actual impact of the training.  

We would like to make a plea to organisations and providers: Invest in carrying out rigorous evaluations of training, monitoring not only changes in individual bias, but changes in the impact of this, and do this over time, not just immediately after the training.  Finding ways to measure relevant behaviour is certainly a challenge – but that is not a reason for leaving it in the ‘too difficult pile’, and in our view, it is doable with some careful thought and planning.  It is the only way to know whether what your training is making a positive difference and any training provider worth their salt, should be able to advise you on how to do this.

So, what do we know about what works? Some published studies have aimed to identify this – and by ‘works’, we mean results in a reduction in unconscious bias.  Whilst this is not as extensive as we would ideally like, we can draw some conclusions from these studies which can be built into the training design.  Our knowledge about the psychology of bias, also gives us some indications of what is more likely to work.

We do know that one-shot interventions do not work.  Classic ‘sheep-dip’ training courses, which are typically short in duration, and predominantly focused on awareness raising, are unlikely to reduce bias.  Indeed, there is real evidence this approach can actually entrench people’s biases further.  When you consider automatic biases result from years of repeated exposure to associations and attitudes, and are engrained deep in our personal psychology, it really doesn’t make sense to think these can be undone through a half-day of awareness raising.  Next time you are tempted to run sessions of this kind, however engaging they are, stop and ask yourself whether this is the best use of your budget!  We would go even further and urge you not to bother.  But what then should you do?

While it is not enough to simply make people aware of their biases and tell them how these may show up, some self-awareness is of course useful (after all most people do not see themselves as biased – the difference between our explicit intentions and our unconscious biases). Educating people about the nature of bias is also useful by explaining how it arises and showing people what the real-world impact of bias can be.  But evidence shows us this is not enough to bring about a change in individuals’ behaviour. To undo and reverse these deep-seated patterns of thinking requires not just self-awareness, but strategies, effort and practice.

Effortful strategies which require a more deliberate thought process (use of ‘system 2’ thinking), work on inhibiting the automatic, fast and instinctive, ‘system 1’ thinking, which is heavily prone to bias. Completely separate parts of the brain are engaged by these two types of thinking – the former more evolved and rational, the latter more primitive and emotional. In practice, this means having techniques to slow down thinking and decision making, taking time to gather and weigh up evidence in a balanced, logical manner – particularly important for making fair judgements about people.  

Other strategies which can work to reduce bias, and therefore include in training programmes, include giving people tasks which strengthen counter stereotype associations and providing positive exemplars of counterstereotypes which serve to challenge our biased associations and replace them with more appropriate ones (think women as successful engineers; men as successful nurses).  Techniques such as these involve creating new neural pathways in the brain and cementing these in through practice and repetition. We know now that our brains have plasticity and biases have been shown to be malleable.

Techniques which seem to prove less effective include appealing to people’s egalitarian values and also (perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively) engaging in perspective taking through imagining the perspective of others in the outgroup.  Clearly, imagining is not enough.  What works is practice and repetition - laying down those new neural pathways.  So, we urge you to think longer term.  Changing automatic bias will not happen with good intentions and one brief training intervention.  And if we are serious about training delivering results, we need to bust some well ingrained habits through a sustained effort of practice, follow-up and continued reinforcement.