Part III – entitled “Interventions” – describes some strategies that can be used to decrease implicit bias in the courtroom. This is a daunting challenge since, by definition, we are not consciously aware of these biases that nevertheless influence our behavior. The article describes studies that show that increasing diversity, “the direct contact with countertypical people,” decreases the operation of implicit bias. Even increasing the manifestation of diversity in the courts through the kinds of pictures, posters, etc., that are on display can help. Judges present a special challenge since a survey showed that 97 percent of those surveyed thought they were in the top quarter in avoiding “racial prejudice in decisionmaking.” Just as all the children can’t be above average, all the judges can’t be in the top 20 percent in terms of their objectivity. This sense of certainty that one is not subject to bias is particularly dangerous since studies demonstrate that, when someone “believes himself to be objective, such belief licenses him to act on his biases.” So, judges as a group are likely to be particularly vulnerable to implicit bias. A way to increase motivation to be fair and to avoid letting implicit bias influence decisionmaking is to increase a person’s scientific knowledge about implicit bias. That can be done through individual study as well as part of the organized judicial education that helps train judges. As part of that education, judges can learn how to engage “in effortful, deliberative processing,” which includes reducing the level of one’s emotional state of mind when making decisions. Judges can also learn to “count,” or to consciously keep track of the number of situations in which implicit bias could play a role and to analyze whether or not implicit bias could have crept into the decisionmaking process.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 15:30:37 +0000
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