I'm using this post to hold a link to this good breakdown on unconscious bias from Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-…
Key Points:
- "The stability of the [IAT] is low, meaning that if you take the same test a few weeks apart, you might score very differently."
- "And the correlation between a person’s IAT scores and discriminatory behavior is often small."
- "There is a mountain of evidence—independent of any single test—that implicit bias is real." (as opposed to the IAT itself)
- "unlike palm readers, research psychologists aren’t usually in the business of telling you, as an individual, what your life holds in store. Most measures in psychology, from aptitude tests to personality scales, are useful for predicting how groups will respond on average, not forecasting how particular individuals will behave."
- "Field experiments demonstrate that real-world discrimination continues, and is widespread."