I'm still not understanding what happened on the IATs you took. Are you saying that the box you checked beforehand influenced the results? Or just that it's implausible that it found you were biased against your own ethnicity?
If unconscious biases were so important, I would expect companies in countries where such biases are generally much stronger (e.g., Singapore) not being able to compete with their western competitors.
'So important' doesn't have to be that important--even modest gains could justify such testing. Singapore has a lot of positives in its favor that could be compensating for its bias issues.
Maybe we can agree that studies are called for? Get a volunteer pool, measure IQ or a more task-specific ability measure, also measure bias, then form ability-controlled groups of varying bias levels. See if more biased groups do worse or not.
On the 1984 side, let's think about other mental things companies could test for. Trustingness of others' intentions? Trust of others' abilities? Or trust of authority? I have to admit that last one creeps the hell out of me, no matter how justified it may turn out to be from a performance-maximizing standpoint. |
