'SHAME RITUAL': University of Tennessee business course requires ‘implicit bias’ testing
‘Implicit bias testing is nothing more than a shame ritual designed to make us feel bad,’ one student said.
Implicit bias tests have been widely criticized.
A business administration class at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) tests students’ “Implicit Bias” through a Harvard University survey.
A presentation obtained by Campus Reform from a 300-level course in the Haslam College of Business alleges that “[n]o matter how unbiased we think we are, we may have subconscious negative opinions towards ourselves and / or those who are outside our group.”
An assignment for the course required students to take an “Implicit Association Test” (IAT) provided by Harvard’s “Project Implicit.” The IAT measures participants’ alleged tendencies to stereotype different groups of people.
There are different IATs that claim to reveal the participant’s preference for different identity groups, including “Gay - Straight,” “Fat - Thin,” “Transgender People - Cisgender People,” and “Black - White.”
The “Black - White” IAT starts by asking students to best describe their racial preferences, ranging from choices such as “I strongly prefer White people to Black people” to “I strongly prefer Black people to White people.”
The tests use photo and word categorization games. Students are directed to choose a topic and then categorize images representing people in a certain identity group as well as positive and negative words. The test calculates the participant’s bias result based on the speed at which they respond to matching pairs, suggesting that a faster reaction time correlates to an automatic association between two concepts.
UTK’s course required students to complete three IATs and provide screenshots showing completion.
IATs have been broadly criticized and their supposed accuracy called into question.
“We all understand that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. Implicit bias testing is nothing more than a shame ritual designed to make us feel bad,” Elijah Boatwright, a junior business student, told Campus Reform.
A 2017 Heritage Foundation study claimed that the “IAT has not been shown to correlate with other established measures of prejudice and discrimination or to predict discriminatory behavior” and that “[t]here are high rates of false positives and false negatives associated with the test.”
A 2020 Scientific American op-ed stated that IATs can be counterproductive, causing “anger and frustration” among certain test takers. It concluded that implicit bias training is “likely be ineffective at best; at worst, it’s a poor use of limited resources that could cause more damage and exacerbate the very issues it is trying to solve.”
Project Implicit aims to “contribute to a more aware and equitable society by shedding light on the hidden influences that shape our perceptions and interactions,” according to its website.
Campus Reform has contacted the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Harvard University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
