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[22]Leadership
Can you train people to be less prejudiced?
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Starbucks employees attend racial bias seminar (Credit: Getty Images)
Researchers have found that, in some cases, diversity training can be
more harmful than beneficial.
T

This story is from [25]The Inquiry on BBC World Service. It was
presented by Helen Grady and produced by Josephine Casserly and
Dearbhail Starr. To listen to more episodes of The Inquiry, please
click [26]here. Adapted by Sarah Keating.

In April two black men went into a Starbucks in Philadelphia. They were
early for a business meeting, so they sat down to wait. Two minutes
later, the store manager called the police.

“I have two men in my café that are refusing to make a purchase or
leave,” the store manager said in a recording released by the police.

Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson explained that they didn’t want to
order until their colleague arrived. When their colleague turned up, he
found the police forcibly removing the two men from the coffee shop in
handcuffs.
Starbucks closed 8,000 stores for one day to host racial bias training
for its employees after two black customers were arrested while waiting
for a friend (Credit: Getty Images)

Starbucks closed 8,000 stores for one day to host racial bias training
for its employees after two black customers were arrested while waiting
for a friend (Credit: Getty Images)

The incident, which was filmed by another customer, blew up on social
media, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz responded by admitting he
believed his store manager "demonstrated her own level of unconscious
bias".

The Starbucks boss put his money where his mouth is and closed 8,000
stores for one day so staff could attend anti-bias training. Other
organisations are rolling out similar workshops. They’re keen to make
sure all staff and customers are treated fairly. But do these
programmes work? Can you train people to be less prejudiced?

Jamie Perry, assistant professor of human resources at Cornell
University, thinks you can, but in order for it to be effective, the
training must make you aware of both your explicit (or conscious) and
implicit biases.

The theory is that a slow drip of stereotypes seeps into each and every
one of us. Sometimes inherited by our family, sometimes based on who we
do and don’t see in power, and sometimes picked up from friends or the
media.

Effective anti-bias training “teaches you strategies to consciously
push down these biases”, says Perry. “For example, you might hold in
your head that women can only do administrative jobs. So counteracting
that is priming yourself every day to think about women in managerial
roles…that’s how you might replace a negative stereotype.”

And while Perry believes this training can reduce prejudice at work,
she says a one-time workshop is less effective than a series of ones
that take place over a larger period of time.

“It’s a journey, not a destination that you reach,” she says.

Under equality laws, firms that fail to tackle discrimination face
costly lawsuits, and there’s [27]evidence that happy, diverse
workforces are more creative. So, there’s money to be made in anti-bias
training from face-to-face workshops to online self-guided courses.

Alexandra Kalev, a sociologist at Tel Aviv University, used to think
that diversity training was effective, that it felt like common sense –
and then she investigated the impact of training.
Given the number of high-profile police shootings of unarmed black men,
law enforcement officials are introducing racial bias training – but
does it work? (Credit: Getty Images)

Given the number of high-profile police shootings of unarmed black men,
law enforcement officials are introducing racial bias training – but
does it work? (Credit: Getty Images)

Her team looked at 800 companies over 30 years and evaluated the impact
of diversity training. They discovered some surprising – and troubling
– findings.

Firstly, they found that this training normalises the message that
implicit bias is everywhere and so we are all biased. “If I am
interviewing black and white candidates it can be normal that I will
feel more attracted or have a better gut feeling regarding the white
candidates.”

They also found that people react negatively to efforts to control
them, and often they perceive diversity training as such. Kalev points
out that they hear from trainers that people often respond to diversity
training with anger and resistance. “So basically force feeding
anti-bias breeds more bias.”

She says one way to overcome this very deeply wired human reaction is
to make diversity training voluntary, but that’s not an idea that’s
popular with companies. They want to be able to show in court that they
spent money to reduce prejudice in their workplaces should they need to
in the future.

“The effect of bias training is very weak if you look at the long run,”
says Kalev. “A company is better off doing nothing than mandatory
diversity training.”

Yale University psychology professor John Dovidio explains implicit
bias is similar to a phobia. “You can teach people who have a fear of
flying all you want about flight safety records but that knowledge
doesn’t actually address emotional experiences that they’re having.”

You can teach people who have a fear of flying all you want about flight
safety records but that knowledge doesn’t actually address emotional
experiences that they’re having

The only way you can get rid of a phobia is to give people experiences
showing them that it’s safe, he says. People trust their own first-hand
experiences.

So how do you apply that to a workplace? “Provide people with
opportunities to interact with members of different groups,” says
Dovido. “The best way to do it is around projects where people are
working cooperatively, where people have shared goals because this
common connection allows us to think of others and ourselves as team
members and make race or gender recede into the background.”

However, if biases are formed over a lifetime, dismantling them will be
slow work. So, what can we do in the here and now?

Jennifer Eberhardt, a social psychologist at Stanford University, has
first-hand experience of how young implicit biases start, as well as
how powerful they can be even against ourselves.

IFRAME: [28]https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06ckvxc/player

On a flight with her five-year-old son, he pointed out the only other
black passenger on board and told his mum that he looked just like his
daddy. Before she could explain that the man shared no similarities to
his father except for skin color, her son added, “I hope he doesn’t rob
the plane.” Eberhardt asked him why he said that. “He looked at me with
these sad eyes, a sad face and he says ‘I don’t know why I said that, I
don’t know why I was thinking that,’” she remembers.

In relation to workplace prejudice, Eberhardt explains that to
counteract bias, managers could create objective boundaries around a
job description. These boundaries make it harder for our biases to
creep in, and we also become less biased when there’s proper scrutiny
about our decisions. The idea is that we all behave better when we know
we’re being watched.

It is for this reason that many police forces have introduced body
cameras so officers interactions with the public are recorded.

“Now there’s scrutiny,” Eberhardt says, “now they’re being watched so
when they are in the thick of things, having that camera there reminds
them of their larger mission, of their values. It reminds them of their
better selves.”

Dismantling prejudice is slow and risky work. It involves forcing
people out of their comfort zones and helping them to get to know the
kind of people they don’t usually spend time with.

So can you train people to be less prejudiced? If you’re relying on
short courses and workshops the answer is no – especially if they are
mandatory. But if it’s part of a bigger plan to encourage diversity and
build in scrutiny then you’re in with a chance.

You might not change how people think and feel but you can change how
they act and that’s a start.

--

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