Unconscious bias training: the myths, the malaise, the malicious

Right now, the go-to strategy for improving diversity in the Fortune 500 is unconscious bias training.

In a video posted by Google ventures, Google HR scientist Brian Welle explains why our human race has grown so reliant on biases. He goes back to our earliest moments as cave dwellers when humans had to rely on bias to make fight or flight decisions in a split second. He fast-forwards to today: In any given second, a human receives 11 million bits of information, yet “we can only consciously process 40 bits in that single moment. That 99.996% delta between that 11 million bits and 40 bits is governed by unconscious, complex heuristics and algorithms we rely on to get through a day”. Welle proceeds to catalogue strategies for combatting biases (e.g.“question your first impulse” and “justify your decisions”) asking the listeners to pick one action to commit to focus on — noting that tackling multiple strategies can be “a lot”.

This is an example of what unconscious bias training looks like — and at Google, a world-class company we can look to for best practices in most regards. Does a one-hour lecture help you counter biases that are 50,000 years of human evolution in the making? And what of the majority of employees who won’t receive the training?

The fact is, research says “diversity training” isn’t working. A statement from a study by Harvard and Yale researchers on the merits of trainings as interventions for reducing prejudice: “We conclude that the causal effects of many widespread prejudice-reduction interventions, such as workplace diversity training and media campaigns, remain unknown.”

One researcher explained it to me in this way: “Most people will admit that they have biases. But at the time of the hiring decision they think to themselves, ‘This time my gut is right!’.” In my personal experience hiring managers will always return to their default behaviors (i.e., rely on biases) at times they are most stressed, which they typically are in hiring phases when teams are stretched thin.

I am thrilled that organizations are willing to spend resources on something like removing unconscious bias. But I’m concerned that our leading innovators are using an outmoded approach to tackle such a pervasive issue. I’ve always solved problems by building technology, and I’ve tackled big problems in the past like online fraud and website security for some of the largest companies in the world.

There are many places within the hiring and promotion pipeline that unconscious bias can be mitigated, and through software we can pinpoint those biased decisions in the moment they are happening. That’s something unconscious bias training will never be able to do. Instead, it’s time to innovate on how we are addressing bias and use software and other technologies to help us address these biases when they occur.