The dangers of unconscious bias training

To read the press releases, you would think we’ve found the panacea to racism in the form of unconscious bias training. Numerous organisations, including the Labour party, have announced they would be putting their staff through such programmes. This follows in the footsteps of the civil service, which has required all civil servants to undertake unconscious bias training since 2018, magistrates, for whom the training is compulsory, and the Met police, where it forms part of ongoing officer training. Google, Facebook, the FTSE 100, government departments — including the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice — and non-profits proudly advertise the programmes they put their staff through. But the one rather important question nobody is asking is: does unconscious bias training actually work? And to that question science provides us a clear answer: no, it doesn’t.

A sensible place to start in understanding why unconscious bias training doesn’t work, is to look at unconscious bias itself and what we know about it.