Implicit bias has expanded beyond academic research and, like cognitive dissonance and nudges, entered into the cultural mainstream. Politicians talk about it, journalists write about it, and corporations require their employees to be trained about it. At the same time, the measures and methods used to study implicit bias have come under increasing criticism. How can implicit bias be so prevalent and yet stand on such apparently shaky grounds? In this talk I describe a new theory that describes implicit bias not primarily as a feature of individual minds, but as a feature of social contexts. Akin to the “wisdom of crowds” effect, implicit bias may emerge as the aggregate effect of individual fluctuations in concept accessibility that are ephemeral and context-dependent. This Bias of Crowds theory treats implicit bias tests as measures of situations more than persons. Viewing implicit bias from this perspective resolves several puzzles in the existing literature, turns supposed methodological weaknesses into strengths, and generates new insights into how and why implicit bias propagates inequalities.

Keith Payne is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill. He studies the effects of inequality on human thought and behavior, and how psychological patterns create and reinforce racial and economic disparities. He is author of The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the way we Think, Live, and Die, and the forthcoming Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America’s Dangerous Divide.

The RCGD Seminar Series on the Social Psychology of Systemic Racism meets Mondays from 3:30 to 5 at ISR Thompson 1430. When speaker permission is given, events will be recorded and later posted to YouTube.

What are the points of connection between structures and individuals when we think about bias? In the Fall 2024 RCGD Seminar Series “The Social Psychology of Systemic Racism,” an all-star lineup of behavioral and political psychologists will define what, in their words, makes systemic racism systemic, and how extra-individual levels of analysis could be incorporated in social psychological theories and methods.

Group Dynamics Seminar Series
The Group Dynamics Seminar series is considered one of the longest running seminar series in the social sciences. It has been running uninterruptedly since it was founded by Kurt Lewin in the 1920’s in Berlin. The seminar series runs every semester on a theme chosen by faculty organizer/s who are affiliated with the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Institute for Social Research. A very important feature of this seminar today is its interdisciplinary nature. Recent themes have included political polarization, evolution and human behavior, and cultural psychology