It is impossible not to be biased.
From birth, as a survival instinct, the brain is hardwired to instantly assess others. Within the first few months of life, an infant will generally become attached to his parents and associate them with safety. This early attachment will begin to establish an in-group preference for faces that look like his and less toward those of other races (Xiao et al., 2018). This in-group preference is so profound that, for the rest of his life, the amygdala (the emotional brain) will have a higher activation when observing the faces of out-group members (Hart et al., 2000).
Emotion and bias are intricately linked because the amygdala plays a significant role in producing bias, and one of the primary roles of the amygdala is survival. As a result, anything we perceive as dangerous creates bias, and we are subconsciously alerted when meeting out-group members to determine if they pose a threat.
Bias in Schools
People, experiences, and repeated messages that are pervasive can bias us. When a student exhibits a behavior that causes a teacher to feel threatened, the teacher will experience unconscious bias. This bias will influence her thoughts and actions without her awareness.
Once the student is perceived as a threat, the teacher’s eyes will constantly scan for micro-movements using microsaccades, a feature of the eyes. The teacher’s unconscious bias will result in increased monitoring of that student by as much as 60% more than the other students in the classroom. Because of the increased monitoring, the teacher will likely catch that student’s misbehavior and miss that of students who are not perceived as threatening. In turn, the student will notice that he is constantly singled out more than his peers and act out more, which will only reinforce the teacher’s need to increase the level of monitoring. When the student complains that the teacher is singling him out, she honestly feels that is not the case, and she will be correct—but oh so wrong.
The increased monitoring is subconscious, meaning it happens within 200 milliseconds; comparatively, conscious thought occurs at 600 milliseconds or more. Nothing occurring within 200 milliseconds can be consciously known, yet it happens, influencing conscious thoughts and actions. If you ask this teacher if she intentionally focused on that student, she will honestly answer no. This is how bias works; it is a subconscious process influencing thoughts and actions without awareness. The lack of awareness results in no motivation to address it. No one fixes what they do not know is broken.
The above example provides a neuroscience-based explanation for the famous Yale study that discovered preschool-age Black boys are subconsciously monitored more closely than other students by their teachers (Gilliam et al., 2016).
The question we must ask is, why?
The Harvard Implicit Association Test shows that most people living in America tend to associate Black males with violence (Baron & Banaji,2006). Black males are so frequently associated with crime and violence in media that the brain has subconsciously made the association, creating a pervasive implicit bias. Disproportionate patterns in our environment tend to create implicit bias and as a result, most teachers, upon meeting their students, will already subconsciously perceive Black male students as threatening. The Harvard study demonstrated that the association with violence is so strong that it is made even with the faces of young children, who are usually perceived as innocent. The inability to see young Black male children the same as other children results in Black preschoolers being 3.6 times as likely as white preschoolers to receive one or more suspensions (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2016). It is important to note that societal biases are held by most people living in that society, so the bias is held regardless of race or gender.
The outcomes of implicit bias are so glaring that education has dedicated a lot of time and resources to counter its effects. However, traditional diversity and equity training is generally ineffective and sometimes even harmful to its intended goals (Legault et al., 2011; Sanchez & Medkik, 2004; Dobbin & Kalev, 2016). A more effective approach could be helping educators understand how the brain produces bias. Research suggests that understanding how the brain creates bias may be the key to truly impacting it (Kubota, 2024). Once individuals acknowledge the science, they are usually willing to take steps to counteract its adverse effects. Because of the clear evidence in public education data, many bias programs ask participants to admit they are complicitly biased without helping them understand how they are often unwitting participants. For example, let’s assume teachers knew and accepted that the brain would increase subconscious monitoring once a student is perceived as threatening. With that awareness, they may be willing to engage in a simple solution strategy: they will intentionally monitor the student and provide reinforcement when he is on task. This approach will counteract the focus on the negative and increase the capacity to establish a positive relationship with that student.
Educators should actively look for disproportionate patterns in the school environment that can produce negative biases.
Often decisions that are considered reasonable result in producing unintended biases. For example, the decision to put struggling readers in their own small reading group may cause us not to see they are all English learners. We religiously review school performance data and are unaware that the repeated association of a small subgroup of students with poor performance subconsciously associates them with academic failure. Decisions that produce subconscious biases are often born not out of malicious intent, but rather out of practicality or compassion. That is the nature of implicit bias: It operates unnoticed, and over time, it can become woven into the fabric of an institution. However, the brain cannot address that of which it is unaware.
Change What People See
Since patterns lead to bias, the simple answer is to change the pattern. Many schools address implicit bias by encouraging people to acknowledge their biases. This logic seems flawed. Implicit bias is a subconscious process; individuals are unaware of it. Identifying patterns that can produce a bias and working to change the pattern is a constructive strategy that most educators can support. For example, we know that the association of Black males with violence impacts schools’ discipline statistics. Studies uncovered that teachers rate the behaviors of Black males as more severe regardless of the infraction, and consistently administer more punitive disciplinary actions when compared to white males (Okonofua & Eberhardt, 2015). School records show that the length of suspensions when Black and white students fought each other was longer for the Black students (Barrett et al., 2017). This finding clearly illustrates how the same behavior is viewed and treated differently based on existing implicit biases. In addition, close observation of teacher–student classroom interactions consistently found that nonverbal attitudes toward Black males were less favorable than nonverbal attitudes toward white males (Ferguson, 2001). The most blatant indication of behavioral bias is that Black students make up only 16% of students in the United States but account for 42% of suspensions (Quereshi & Okonofua, 2017).
If we accept the science of implicit bias, we can implement strategies that guard against educators unwittingly assigning harsher consequences to Black male students. Some simple strategies can assist school leaders in avoiding the pattern of disproportionately administering more punitive consequences to them.
- Conduct a brief review of the consequences administered to other students for similar behaviors and ensure equal discipline approaches.
- Have another administrator review the incident without identifying the student and make a disciplinary recommendation.
These two strategies can help administrators recognize the tendency to consider harsher consequences for disciplinary infractions against Black male students. This awareness often makes them cognizant of the implicit bias. Increased sensitivity to the issue can help educators prevent disproportionate responses in the future. Adjusting suspension practices, along with teachers focusing on reinforcing positive behaviors of Black male students, are two practical measures schools can easily implement once they understand and accept the science of bias.
References
Baron, A. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2006). The development of implicit attitudes. Evidence of race evaluations from ages 6 and 10 and adulthood. Psychological Science, 17(1), 53–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01664.x
Barrett, N., McEachin, A., Mills, J. N., & Valant, J. (2017). Disparities in student discipline by race and family income (pp. 1–56). Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. educationresearchallianceNOLA.org
Dobbin F, Kalev A. 2016. Why diversity programs fail. Harv. Bus. Rev 94(7):52–6027491195
Ferguson, A. A. (2001). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of Black masculinity. University of Michigan Press.
Gilliam, W. S., Maupin, A. N., Reyes, C. R., Accavitti, M., & Shic, F. (2016). Do early educators’ implicit biases regarding sex and race relate to behavior expectations and recommendations of preschool expulsions and suspensions? Yale University, Child Study Center.
Hart, A. J., Whalen, P. J., Shin, L. M., McInerney, S. C., Fischer, H., & Rauch, S. L. (2000). Differential response in the human amygdala to racial outgroup vs ingroup face stimuli. Neuroreport, 11(11), 2351–2355. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001756-200008030-00004
Kubota, J.T. (2024). Uncovering Implicit Racial Bias in the Brain: The Past, Present & Future. Daedalus, 153, 84-105.
Legault L, Gutsell JN, Inzlicht M. 2011. Ironic effects of antiprejudice messages: how motivational interventions can reduce (but also increase) prejudice. Psychol. Sci 22(12):1472–77 [DOI]
Okonofua, J. A., & Eberhardt, J. L. (2015). Two strikes: Race and the disciplining of young students. Psychological Science, 26(5), 617–624. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615570365
Quereshi, A., & Okonofua, J. (2017, Winter). Locked out of the classroom: How implicit bias contributes to disparities in school discipline. Thurgood Marshall Institute: Education Equity No. 2. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4702736
Sanchez JI, Medkik N. 2004. The effects of diversity awareness training on differential treatment. Group Organ. Manag 29(4):517–36
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2016). 2013–2014 civil rights data collection: A first look. https://civilrightsdata.ed.gov/assets/downloads/2013-14-first-look.pdf
Xiao, N. G., Quinn, P. C., Liu, S., Ge, L., Pascalis, O., & Lee, K. (2018). Older but not younger infants associate own-race faces with happy music and other-race faces with sad music. Developmental Science, 21(2), 10.1111/desc.12537. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12537
