Implicit Bias

The relationship of implicit bias to perceptions of teaching ability: examining good looks, race, age, and gender A relação entre preconceitos implícitos e as percepções sobre a capacidade de ensino: examinando boa aparência, raça, idade e sexo La relación de los prejuicios implícitos y las percepciones sobre la capacidad de enseñanza: analizando la buena apariencia, raza, edad y sexo Abstract Education leaders consistently make quick decisions that have substantial impacts on the students and educators, with whom they work, often based on ambiguous and incomplete information. Thus, in this fast-paced, imperfect decision-making environment, implicit, unconscious biases can influence their decisions. To become better decision-makers, education leaders must learn to identify their implicit biases and then minimize their negative influences. In this study of 1,751 U.S. participants, we examine perceptions of teaching ability based solely on a person's appearance and how this initia...

There appears to be a fundamental inconsistency between the literature which suggests that healthcare workers appear to be hold equality as a core personal value, while at the same time, some minority groups appear to consistently receive lower quality healthcare. Recent evidence using Implicit Association Tests (IAT) suggests that this phenomenon is the result of biases which, rather than being a conscious choice, should be characterised as primarily unconscious and that, in addition, the high levels of cognitive load associated with clinical practice increase the likelihood of biases of this kind. However, a range of measures aimed at making egalitarian goals chronically accessible, such as stimulating perspective taking, encouraging counter-stereotypical stimuli and targeted experience with minority groups have been identified as possible solutions in other fields and may be adapted to use within healthcare settings. We suggest that rather than bias being seen as a problem of att...

Firefighters make life-or-death decisions based on shared understandings of whose lives matter. Drawing on three years of participant observation as a volunteer firefighter and 30 semistructured interviews, I examine tensions surrounding the value firefighters place on their own lives and the lives of the public they serve. There is a tension between firefighters and their officers over the value of a firefighter's life. Firefighters tend to be cavalier in their willingness to endanger their own lives in high-risk situations, while fire officers feel responsible for protecting the lives of their crew. A second tension exists between prejudiced individuals and an institutional culture of public service. Some firefighters harbor individual prejudices, which are at odds with an institutional culture of egalitarian service. Fire service, state, county, department, crew, and peer cultures suppress individual prejudices. This case study suggests that deep integration into an institutional culture of public service mitigates discriminatory behavior. Instead of evaluating discrimination among first responders as an individual-level trouble, bias and its associated dysfunctions can be reframed as a social issue to be ameliorated through cultural reform.

This qualitative phenomenological case study explored the lived experiences of a purposive sample of 20 current and past early education teachers who have experience in assessing children through observational assessment. The purpose of this study was to determine if bias affects the documentation of observational assessment and the implementation of the graduated teacher’s teaching methods. The study included 20 interviews of teachers who spoke verbal responses to qualitative open-ended questions in recorded sessions. Data from interviews, literature, and theory were transcribed and analyzed by using the Nvivo9 program. Five themes emerged from the triangulated Nvivo analysis. One of the significant findings was the unexpected outcome found that 55 percent of teachers identified an influence of oral bias. The discovery of the findings left several new unanswered questions that are recommended for further study to continue the improvements of Early Education assessments: Further research is recommended to find what influence teacher bias has on child development. The final recommendation for further research includes a study that will prove or disprove the new model (Appendix K) created with this paper.
ISBN: 978-1-303-14971-9

This paper proposes and defends the multifactorial view of stereotyping. According to this view, multiple factors determine whether or not any act of stereotyping increases the chance of an accurate judgment being made about an individual to whom the stereotype is applied. To support this conclusion, various features of acts of stereotyping that can determine the accuracy of stereotyping judgments are identified. The argument challenges two existing views that suggest that it is relatively easy for an act of stereotyping to increase the chance of an accurate judgment being made. In the process, it shows why stereotyping that associates black people more strongly than white people with criminality in the United States cannot be defended, and actions to reduce the stereotyping criticized, on the basis that engaging in this form of stereotyping increases the chance of accurate judgments. As each of these important conclusions is supported by results from empirical psychology, the discussion exemplifies and vindicates the naturalistic approach to epistemology, according to which psychological findings provide an important contribution to understanding the epistemic standing of beliefs.

Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge takes the reader on tour of the nature, value, and limits of self-knowledge. Mitchell S. Green calls on classical sources like Plato and Descartes, 20th-century thinkers like Freud, recent developments in neuroscience and experimental psychology, and even Buddhist philosophy to explore topics at the heart of who we are. The result is an unvarnished look at both the achievements and drawbacks of the many attempts to better know one’s own self.

Key topics in this volume include:

    Knowledge – what it means to know, the link between wisdom and knowledge, and the value of living an "examined life"

    Personal identity – questions of dualism (the idea that our mind is not only our brain), bodily continuity, and personhood

    The unconscious — including the kind posited by psychoanalysis as well as the form proposed by recent research on the so-called adaptive unconscious

    Free will – if we have it, and the recent arguments from neuroscience challenging it

    Self-misleading – the ways we willfully deceive ourselves, and how this relates to empathy, peer disagreement, implicit bias, and intellectual humility

    Experimental psychology – considerations on the automaticity of emotion and other cognitive processes, and how they shape us

This book is designed to be used in conjunction with the free ‘Know Thyself’ MOOC (massive open online course) created through collaboration of the University of Connecticut's Project on Humility and Conviction in Public Life, and the University of Edinburgh’s Eidyn research centre, and hosted on the Coursera platform (www.coursera.org/course/knowthyself). The book is also suitable as a text for interdisciplinary courses in the philosophy of mind or self-knowledge, and is highly recommended for anyone looking for a short overview of this fascinating topic.

This investigation began with the thought that women in philosophy were likely to suffer stereotype threat, which could lead to both underperformance and departure from the subject.  We expected to find that women implicitly associated philosophy with maleness, but instead we found that women increasingly implicitly associated philosophy with femaleness, an in-group bias that we did not expect to find.  Our UK study allowed us to rule out drop-out rate as an explanation for this.  However, we also found that male (and related items) are common components of the explicit stereotype for philosopher, which could plausibly serve to underpin stereotype threat amongst women in philosophy. 

Our findings, then, lend empirical support to the implicit bias and stereotype threat explanations for the underrepresentation of women in philosophy. The necessary conditions for these explanations to make sense seem to be in place: there is (among men, the majority of philosophers) an implicit tendency to associate philosophy with maleness, and for both women and men maleness (and associated items) are part of the explicit stereotype of a philosopher.

This study shows how labels anchored in unconscious bias can contribute to the gender institution. It draws on interviews with women leaders in Canadian for-profit organizations to illustrate how labels relate to unconscious bias towards women leaders, how labels delegitimize or legitimize women leaders, and how women leaders react to labels. Guided by these results, the study theorizes how the micro-level practice of labeling anchored in unconscious bias can uphold or disrupt gender categories and associated gendered social roles, thus shaping the gender institution.

A primary goal of prejudice and stereotyping research is to reduce intergroup disparities arising from various forms of bias. For the last 30 years, much, perhaps most, of this research has focused on implicit bias as the crucial construct of interest. There has been, however, considerable confusion and debate about what this construct is, how to measure it, whether it predicts behavior, how much it contributes to intergroup disparities, and what would signify successful intervention against it. We argue that this confusion arises in part because much work in this area has focused narrowly on the automatic processes of implicit bias without sufficient attention to other relevant psychological constructs and processes, such as people’s values, goals, knowledge, and self-regulation (Devine, 1989). We believe that basic research on implicit bias itself is important and can contribute to reducing intergroup disparities, but those potential contributions diminish if and when the research disregards controlled processes and the personal dilemma faced by sincerely nonprejudiced people who express bias unintentionally. We advocate a renewed focus on this personal dilemma as an important avenue for progress.

When we focus on hierarchical human needs, we lose appreciation for how complex functions, including actualization are part of getting even our basic needs met, as adolescents and adults. This creates implicit bias that could influence one to presume that people living in poverty are somehow less intelligent or creative that those living in affluence. This attitude would reinforce the marginalization (and perhaps justify dependence) of those not having their basic needs met in society where it stands. For example, should schools for children living in poverty drill students in math and reading and enforce punitively strict behavior codes while banning social studies, art and music? A hierarchical approach to needs might seem to justify that kind of dehumanizing, oppressive policy.

“I regret that only now, in my last annual meeting speech, am I telling you about my own struggles. My fear of being judged negatively and the dark shadow of stigma nearly kept me from seeking help.”

2018 Association of American Medical Colleges President and CEO Darrell Kirch, MD

This unit activity guides students through an interrogation of bias, normativity, and co-cultural experiences within the context of dis/ability and appearance. Specifically, students complete implicit bias tests related to ability and body size, read about historical displays of bodily difference in circuses and “freak shows,” and then watch and discuss scenes from the film The Greatest Showman. In so doing, students engage in transformational learning that equips them to communicate more effectively with and about people with physical differences. Students develop their understanding of how cultural systems marginalize disabled bodies and think critically about how dis/ability intersects with other marginalized identities, including visible bodily differences, racial and ethnic identities, gender identities, and class identities.

Courses: Intercultural Communication, Critical-Cultural Studies,
Communication Theory, Rhetoric and Dis/ability.

Objectives: This activity is designed to help students (1) critically
reflect on cultural norms and their own and others’ pre/
misconceptions related to dis/ability and physical difference in an
intersectional manner, (2) identify and comprehend co-cultural
communication strategies, and (3) improve intercultural
competence, including effectively communicating with and about
people with dis/abilities and physical differences.

Background: Implicit biases are present in the general population and among professionals in various domains, where they can lead to discrimination. Many interventions are used to reduce implicit bias. However, uncertainties remain as to their effectiveness. Methods: We conducted a systematic review by searching ERIC, PUBMED and PSYCHINFO for peer-reviewed studies conducted on adults between May 2005 and April 2015, testing interventions designed to reduce implicit bias, with results measured using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) or sufficiently similar methods.

Description: Interracial couples are an understudied but increasingly common social group in the U.S. We used direct and indirect measures to examine implicit and explicit biases (respectively) against interracial couples among samples of: (a) predominantly White (non-Black; n=1,217), (b) Black (n=293), and (c) Multiracial (n=284) respondents recruited from the U.S. Results provide evidence of implicit and explicit bias against Black-White interracial couples among respondents in the predominantly White Sample and the Black Sample. There was no evidence of such biases among self-identified Multiracial respondents, in fact, they self-reported favoritism for interracial couples. Consistent with psychological theory and our preregistered hypotheses, we found that personal experience with interracial romance and self-reported contact with interracial couples tended to predict lower levels of bias against interracial couples. This research exposes a robust bias against a growing social group (interracial couples) among predominantly White respondents and Black respondents relative to respondents who identify as Multiracial.

There is ample evidence of racial and gender bias in young children, but thus far this evidence comes almost exclusively from children's responses to a single social category (either race or gender). Yet we are each simultaneously members of many social categories (including our race and gender). Among adults, racial and gender biases intersect: negative racial biases are expressed more strongly against males than females. Here, we consider the developmental origin of bias at the intersection of race and gender. Relying on both implicit and explicit measures, we assessed 4‐year‐old children's responses to target images of children who varied systematically in both race (Black and White) and gender (male and female). Children revealed a strong and consistent pro‐White bias. This racial bias was expressed more strongly for males
than females: children's responses to Black boys were less positive than to Black girls, White boys or White girls. This outcome, which constitutes the earliest evidence of bias at the intersection of race and gender, underscores the importance of addressing bias in the first years of life

Cordelia  Fine  is currently  an  ARC  Future  Fellow  in Psychological  Sciences  and  Associate Professor  at  the  Melbourne  Business  School,  University  of  Melbourne. In  this  volume,  she conducts a wide-ranging, cogent deconstruction of popularly quoted “evidence” for gendered brain differences and untangles their powerful influence. Fine builds a well-scaffolded — and well-documented — overview  of  “neurosexism,”  the  latest  incarnation  of  essentialist theorizing.

Rationale, aims, and objectives:
The benefits for shared decision-making (SDM) in delivery of high-quality and personalized care are undisputed, but what is it about the dynamics of the delivery room that leads some to doubt that true SDM is possible? How difficult can it be to establish SDM as the norm when caring for a woman in labour? The discussion around SDM, autonomy, and rationality is timely and highly relevant to wider practice.

Method:
The concept of a person's autonomy in decision-making about their body and health is generally accepted and is indeed enshrined in law in many countries. This ought to lay the foundation for SDM in obstetrics. Yet, women's experience speaks to an uncomfortable truth, namely, that it is far from commonplace. We are interested in exploring this tension between the law and the practice.

Results:
We examine a theory of female rationality and its application to women in labour, and juxtapose this with the view from the front line of care delivery. Is a woman in labour able to fully engage in an SDM process? In answering this question, associations in the discourses and practises around women's capacity during labour are revealed, which act as barriers, consciously or unconsciously, to establishing SDM as the norm in obstetrics and midwifery.

Conclusions:
The recent UN report advocating a human rights-based approach to end mistreatment and violence against women in reproductive health services has a particular focus on childbirth and obstetric violence. This paper contributes to the recognition of obstetric violence as a human rights violation. It offers conceptual tools to diagnose the impact of gender stereotypes during childbirth and to eliminate women's discrimination in the field of reproductive health.

Anti-Jewishness persists because it is a simple, off-the shelf,
solution to so many possible aggrievements, embedded and
normalized by history across many cultures, including the
cultures of the world’s two largest religions and Marxism.
It requires little expense and no particular intelligence or
creativity, flourishing among intellectuals and the illiterate
alike. Anti-Jewishness is a time-tested system of resentment,
hate, fear, and conspiracy constructs that almost anyone
can play to experience strong senses of righteousness,
personal and social connection and empowerment. Jews
need not even be present. It is also a highly infectious social
disorder to which humans have no known antidote or
long-term immunity.

Anti-Jewishness has thus far been endemic for millennia
and unresponsive to reason, educational and public health
measures. Playing instructions and supportive subcultures
are readily available through publications, video, and film
media, social media, and the internet.

The emerging area of the Philosophy of Birth is invaluable, first, to diagnose fallacious assumptions about the relation between the womb and reason, and, ultimately, to challenge potentially damaging narratives with major impact on birth care. With its analysis of eighteenth century epistemic and medical discussions about the role of the uterus in women's reasoning (or lack of reasoning), this article supports two arguments: first, that women's "flawed thinking" was a premise drawn by many modern intellectual men, one that was presented as based upon empirical evidence; and second, that the pervasive construction of the uterus as an element that renders women wild, uncontrollable, and irrational continues to influence contemporary obstetrics (and maybe even to nurture obstetric violence), even as today's medicine and science consider themselves to be free of any such prejudices.
    This article shows the role that Giacomo Casanova played in debunking these prejudices and presents his short manuscript on the issue as an important contribution to the literature of the Enlightenment, with its argument against women's supposed "natural" inferiority and for the idea that differences in education (rather than anatomical differences) were to blame for women's subordinate position in society.
    Detailed analysis of the "thinking uterus" debate illuminates the different ways in which various arguments from/by the "anti-uterine" lobby were used to justify the subordination of women: sometimes emphasizing the connection between the uterus and thought and sometimes negating it, but always concluding that women's inferiority is to be found in some known or yet-to-be-discovered anatomical, and mainly sexual, deficiency or problem.

Methodological nationalism assumes that, to understand a phenomenon, nation-states are the relevant units of analysis. This assumption has been recognized as a source of bias in most of the social sciences. Does it bias Rawls’ understanding of justice, too? This paper argues that it does for at least two reasons. Firstly, what Rawls thinks justice requires on a global scale falls short of what states and international organisations actually do. Secondly, framing the difference principle in national terms, as Rawls did, is a way to increase the “citizenship rent”, or the revenue a person receives just by being citizen of a rich country . The paper argues that methodological nationalism biases Rawls’ understanding of justice by affecting both the plausibility and the coherence of his theory.

In this critical theoretical conceptualization situated in Disability Critical Race Theory (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013), we identify the current education system as a series of dysfunctional education ecologies. We next analyze how dysfunctional education ecologies are maintained through implicit bias, consider how these biases may impact classroom interactions, and reframe bias as dysconscious racism (King, 1991). Finally, we explore how school personnel can use transformative praxis (Freire, 1970) to actively dismantle these dysfunctional education ecologies through a shift in both their epistemological and axiological commitments to develop functional ecologies of learning by enacting a DisCrit Classroom Ecology.

Oppression is easily recognized. That is, at least, when oppression results from overt, consciously professed racism, for example, in which violence, explicit exclusion from economic opportunities, denial of adequate legal access, and open discrimination perpetuate the subjugation of a group of people. There are relatively clear legal remedies to such oppression. But this is not the case with covert oppression where the psychological harms and resulting legal and economic exclusion are every bit as real, but caused by concealed mechanisms subtly and systematically employed. In many cases, those with power and privilege use cultural stereotypes in order to sustain an unjust status quo. This is so even if the biases are implicit, automatic, and contrary to the consciously professed beliefs of the stereotyper. Furthermore, since many of these biases are not consciously reasoned into one’s system of beliefs, and since they are notoriously difficult to bring to consciousness and dislodge via direct, logical confrontation, some other creative means of resistance is needed.
I argue that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people up to changing their minds. Subversive humor confronts serious matters, but in a playful manner that fosters creative and critical thinking, and cultivates a desire and skill for recognizing incongruities between our professed ideals and a reality that does not meet those standards. Successful subversive wits create fictional scenarios that highlight such moral incongruities, but, like philosophical thought experiments, they reveal a moral truth that also holds in the real world. Such humor offers opportunities for “border crossing” where the audience is encouraged to see from the perspectives of marginalized people who, because they inhabit ambiguous spaces in between the dominant and subordinate spheres, are in an epistemically privileged position with respect to matters of oppression. Subversive humorists open their audiences to the lived experiences of others, uncover the absurdities of otherwise covert oppression, and appeal to our desire to be truthful and just.

Ofrecer una teoría de la responsabilidad por sesgos implícitos exige tanto pronunciarse sobre las condiciones normativas para la responsabilidad, como identificar los rasgos que, de acuerdo al estado de la investigación empírica, poseen los sesgos implícitos. La respuesta positiva o negativa a la pregunta por la responsabilidad puede depender tanto de ajustes normativos como de ajustes empíricos. Aquí me concentraré en dos puntos empíricos y uno normativo. Es decir, intentaré, por un lado, identificar si y, en su caso, es posible afirmar de los sesgos que satisfacen las condiciones de consciencia y control. Por otro lado, avanzaré un argumento para introducir algunos ajustes en el modo de entender la exigencia de control.

Reason and rationality, upon which modern, westernized, societies have been founded, have powerfully characterized the nature of human relations with other species and with the natural world. However, countless indigenous and traditional worldviews tell of a very different reality in which humans, conceived of as instinctual and intuitive, are a part of a complex web of ecological relationships. Other species, elements of the natural world, and people are active participants in relations overflowing with communications, interactions sometimes recorded in ethnographies, or as ‘myths’ and ‘stories’. The present article draws upon a range of traditions to explore the biases which shape how indigenous and traditional life-ways are represented in westernized contexts; the phenomenon of receiving direct insight or intuitive knowing from more-than-human worlds; and the numerous valuable understandings regarding the nature of the human being, other species, and how to live well, that are offered by a deeper comprehension of different worldviews. I also argue that the various capacities for instinctual and intuitive knowledge which accompanies these life-ways are endemic to the human species yet overlooked, the correction of which might work to usefully recalibrate our ethical relations with each other, and with other life on earth.

Discussions of issues confronting law enforcement can be enhanced by using a social psychological perspective that emphasizes the importance of contexts’ influence on internal capacities and characteristics to the understanding of human behavior.  This chapter shows the utility of such an approach within the context of racial disparities in policing.  We focus on judgments of fairness, especially as it pertains to how officers treat people and make decisions, and outline how racial disparities drive the perception that law enforcement is procedurally unfair and serve to erode public trust and support for the law.  Attention is then turned to how normal mental functioning that is essential to social behavior can promote such disparities in even the most egalitarian individuals.  In particular, we describe (1) the role of implicit racial bias and how automatic associations between racial groups and criminality can motivate differential behavior and (2) the importance of social identity and how threats to that identity can evoke responses that facilitate racial disparities.

Investigaciones llevadas a cabo en ámbito jurídico pretenden mostrar que también los funcionarios encargados de aplicar la ley están sometidos a la influencia de sesgos implícitos. La categorización social cumple funciones tanto en la interpretación de los textos normativos, como en la identificación de los hechos relevantes del caso. En esos dos ámbitos, los jueces deben llevar a cabo razonamientos que involucran la percepción de sujetos y su inclusión en grupos. Las categorías usadas pueden ser conscientes y, por lo tanto, estar bajo el control del juez; pero también, se afirma, pueden ser reflejo de sesgos implícitos. En todos estos casos, se afirma, la posibilidad de que sesgos implícitos influyan en la decisión del juez aumenta el efecto perjudicial de la discriminación. Por un lado, porque dado al carácter implícito de tales sesgos, es posible que los jueces decidan de manera discriminatoria aun sin darse completamente cuenta de que lo están haciendo. Por otro lado, porque el impacto discriminador que puede tener el proceso de categorización social es mayor cuando se trata de sesgos implícitos intrainstitucionales. Desde mi punto de vista, queda todavía por precisar exactamente cuál es el rendimiento específico de estas investigaciones para estrategias de control de la decisión judicial. Por ello, en este trabajo quisiera detenerme en el modo en que las investigaciones sobre sesgos permitirían identificar decisiones judiciales equivocadas, concentrándome sobre todo en las decisiones interpetativas, i.e., en las decisiones judiciales acerca del significado de las disposiciones normativas. En este sentido, la conclusión más conservadora que propondré es que, incluso si los sesgos implícitos son un componente de nuestro modo de razonar y comportarnos, es necesario distinguir entre, por un lado, el hecho que la acción sea causada por una actitud o estado mental inconsciente o fuera del control del agente y, por otro lado, el hecho que el resultado de esa acción sea correcto o incorrecto según cierto criterio normativo. La distinción es importante, no sólo por razones terminológicas sino, más que nada, porque permite, por un lado, advertir los compromisos conceptuales de las afirmaciones acerca de sesgos implícitos y, por otro lado, precisar la incidencia o relevancia de la investigación sobre sesgos implícitos respecto de la decisión judicial.

There has been much recent discussion of the harmful role prejudicial stereotypes play in our communicative exchanges.  For example, Miranda Fricker (2007) explores a type of injustice (testimonial injustice) which arises when the credibility judgements we make about speakers are informed by prejudicial stereotypes.  One might, according to Fricker, wrong someone by assigning them a low credibility due to their race or gender.  This discussion has produced many important insights.  However, it has so far focused on the role stereotypes play in our epistemic assessments of communicative actions, rather than our interpretations of such actions (interpretations which underlay our epistemic assessments)1.  Yet, the same prejudicial stereotypes that infect credibility judgements can also infect our interpretation. For example, imagine a black man wrongly suspected of rape in depression era Alabama. Suppose that he is overheard saying 'she seemed vulnerable' whilst describing his motivations for being at his accuser's home.  Given the context and the prejudices of the time (with black men being seen as predatory toward white women), he would likely be misinterpreted as stating that he saw her as an easy target. Call this 'Interpretative Injustice'. This paper explores the sources of interpretative injustice, and considers some of the harms to which it gives rise. There are several harms caused by interpretative injustice.  Firstly, it silences.  It prevents certain groups from being able to efficiently communicate knowledge to other (perhaps more powerful) groups.  Secondly, it results in speakers being held epistemically responsible for propositions they never intended to communicate.  And thirdly, it contributes to the illusion that prejudicial low credibility judgements are epistemically justified. I close by arguing that if Miranda Fricker's strategy for treating testimonial injustice is implemented in absence of a treatment of interpretative injustice then we risk epistemically harming hearers with little benefit to  speakers.  Thus testimonial injustice and interpretative injustice are best treated in tandem.

In this paper, I explore a practical version of the skepticism-dogmatism debate. On the one hand, phenomena such as implicit bias put pressure on us to be skeptics about our beliefs. On the other hand, phenomena such as gaslighting put pressure on us to be dogmatists about our beliefs, to stick to our guns. This gives rise to a puzzle. Intuitively, we want to say that the person with implicit bias and the person who is gaslighted differ with respect to their epistemic status, yet things look the same on the inside to each of them. Thus, the internalist faces a problem in accounting for the epistemic differences between them. In contrast, although the externalist can account for an epistemic difference between the gaslighted woman and the man with implicit bias, the externalist still faces two objections, according to which externalism fails to offer a genuinely normative epistemology. First, it fails to capture the sense in which agents who ignore misleading higher-order evidence are blameworthy. Second, it fails to offer action-guiding norms. In response to the first objection, I reject the presupposition. I argue that to blame people like the gaslighted woman is to be an epistemic fetishist. In response to the second, I endorse an Epistemic Affirmative Action proposal. Ultimately, I think that phenomena such as gaslighting encourage us to rethink what it means for an epistemological theory to be normative.

“The effect of gender bias / stereotypes on organisational tasks in Leicestershire’s finance sector”
By Ihuoma Faith Obioma

“My own definition is, a feminist is a man or a woman who says ‘yes, there’s a problem with gender [equality] as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better.’ All of us, women and men must, do better. We should all be feminists”
-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Author / Writer)
--------------------------------------

Over the last decade, implicit bias has emerged as the primary explanation for discrimination and workplace inequalities. Gender inequality is often based on the thinking and perception of a particular society, these are usually in relation to one’s gender role i.e. considering men to be tough and leaders and women as vulnerable and soft. The powerhouse of implicit bias is closely related to gender stereotyping. There are currently more women in the finance sector than men, but this hasn’t made it any easier for women to excel at work. Even with gender equality policies, organisations setting gender quotas, and anti-discrimination policies, implicit gender bias produces barriers hindering women. The study seeks to provide the industry with strategies for a more inclusive workforce (not just in employment but employee participation). To achieve this, relevant literature was reviewed and data gathered through interviews of 9 employees from 4 banks operating in Leicestershire. A thematic analysis was carried out to highlight commonalities and differences across the dataset. After which it was observed that although individuals categorise themselves, as well as people around them under stereotypical traits. They also recognise that males and females cannot be compared due to vast similarities and differences and thus, the need for diversity in organisations. The findings also show that males as well as young females who have just entered into the industry believe that there is no discrimination or bias. While females who have longer years of experience acknowledge that they have faced biases and discrimination not only vertically but also horizontally in their different banks. In relation to uncovering bias amongst their colleagues, there was a mix of responses from both genders which were grouped into passive and proactive strategies.

The 17 th century author François Poulain de la Barre was both an important contributor to the history of feminist thought and a thoroughgoing Cartesian. Poulain borrows from many of Descartes's doctrines, including his dualism, distrust of epistemic authority, accounts of imagination, and passion, and at least some aspects of his doxastic voluntarism; here I examine how he uses a Cartesian notion of prejudice for an anti-essentializing philosophy of women's education and the formation of the tastes, talents and interests of individuals. 'Prejudice' remains Descartes's notion of an entrenched, yet self-imposed doxastic commitment, but also takes on the sense of social-political group bias, founded on custom, transmitted through education, serving interests, and forming social expectations. Poulain also expands on the Cartesian notion and themes by emphasizing widespread, yet unjustified social opinions in favor of the status quo in both epistemic practices and epistemic authorities, while considering how biased beliefs about sexual difference and gender identity can be internalized even by those who suffer most from them. At the same time, he shows how powerful Cartesian concepts can be for feminist methodology.

This workshop will introduce participants to the theory of intersectionality and its various permutations and implications in the classroom as well as the workplace. The workshop will seek to engage participants in an overall discussion of how multiple self-identities influence individuals in the workplace and how others interpret these identities. Using a guided question and small group discussion approach, this interactive workshop will attempt to teach practical strategies for understanding others with the intent of building a more inclusive learning and workplace environment. The workshop will also include a discussion of common barriers and how these barriers can be turned into learning opportunities for creating a more dynamic workplace.

We inhabit a nomos-a normative universe. We constantly create and maintain a world of right and wrong, of lawful and unlawful, of valid and void. No set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning.-Robert Cover 1

What is epistemic injustice? Who is vulnerable to it, and whom does it affect? What forms does it assume? What are its political and social consequences? And finally, how can we counter it? In a colossal volume extending over forty chapters, Ian James Kidd, Jose Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. have collected a rich philosophical resource on epistemic injustice.

Previous studies suggest that visual encoding of ethnicity of in-group/out-group members might influence empathy and sensorimotor sharing. Here, we investigated whether mental perspective taking, presumably a precursor of empathy, is also influenced by in-group/ out-group perception and the implicit attitudes toward it. We used an embodied egocentric visual-perspective taking task, the full body rotation task (FBR), in which participants were asked to mentally rotate themselves into the position of dark-or light-skinned bodies. FBR was contrasted to a pure sensorimotor task, the hand laterality task (HLT), in which participants were asked to mentally rotate their hand to the posture of seen light-or dark-skinned hands, which does not require mental simulation of another person's perspective. We expected the FBR but not the HLT to be influenced by the skin color of the stimuli and by the individual implicit biases toward out-group members. Contrary to this hypothesis, we found that neither skin color nor implicit biases modulated reaction times (RTs) in either task. The data thus suggest that unlike other empathy tasks, skin color does not influence visuospatial perspective taking.

This paper offers an unorthodox appraisal of empirical research bearing on the question of the low representation of women in philosophy.  It contends that fashionable views in the profession concerning implicit bias and stereotype threat are weakly supported, that philosophers often fail to report the empirical work responsibly, and that the standards for evidence are set very low—so long as you take a certain viewpoint.