Michael Brownstein (John Jay College) - What is the status of research on implicit bias? Criticism is ubiquitous. Recent meta-analytic reviews suggest that the Implicit Association Test is a “poor” predictor of behavior (Oswald et al. 2013) and that changes in scores on implicit measures may not be associated with changes in behavior (Forscher, Lai, et al., ms). Prominent philosophers have questioned the validity of research on implicit social cognition altogether. Edouard Machery (2017), for example, describes an ongoing “rescue mission” within the field, implying that the relevant research is in peril of being discredited. Machery argues that leading methods for studying and theorizing about implicit bias need to be rethought from the ground up, writing that we should not “build theoretical castles on such quicksand.” Headlines in the popular press have been even more pointed. New York Magazine reports, “Psychology’s Favorite Tool for Measuring Racism Isn’t Up to the Job” (Singal 2017); the Chronicle of Higher Education asks, “Can We Really Measure Implicit Bias? Maybe Not” (Bartlett 2017); and most pointedly, the Wall Street Journal describes “The False ‘Science’ of Implicit Bias” (MacDonald 2017). I argue that while there are significant challenges and ample room for improvement, research on the causes, structure, and behavioral effects of implicit bias continues to deserve a role in the sciences of the mind as well as in efforts to understand, and ultimately combat, discrimination and inequality. First, I describe the central issues that have been described as crises, anomalies, or puzzles for the field. To demonstrate that these alleged anomalies are empirical questions on which progress is steadily being made, I place them in the broader historical context of theorizing on the relationship between attitudes and behavior. I respond to potential criticism, and then, finally, point to directions for future research. Along the way, I highlight the importance of these issues for fundamental questions about the architecture of the mind and the metaphysics of action, especially how mental states, attitudes, and dispositions interact with contextual factors to produce behavior. Specifically, I aim to make progress toward a person-by-situation interactionist theory of the mind and action, which requires rethinking the premises underlying enduring philosophical debates about the importance of personal variables (such as beliefs, traits, or even virtues) and situational opportunities and constraints (including social, environmental, and bodily factors).
