Kris Goffin
Affiliation: Maastricht University
Category: Philosophy
Keywords: Implicit bias, structural explanation, Dretske, Haslanger, fear
Date: Tuesday 2nd of September
Time: 18:00
Location: Room 232 (232)
View the full session: Affect
The focus of this paper is implicit bias and biased fear. Consider the following example: John is a white man. He thinks that “black men are criminals” is a harmful stereotype. At a subway station, John sees a black man and is scared. John’s fear seems to tell him that he is in danger. He does not experience fear of any of the other people at that subway station, who are all white. Explicitly John disapproves of stereotyping black men. Implicitly however, his fear seems to suggest that he somehow does endorse this stereotype. Implicit bias refers to biases in how we think, feel, or behave towards people of a certain social group, often corresponding to certain stereotypes, such as gender and racialized stereotypes. What makes these biases implicit is that they are unconscious, out of our control or introspectively unidentified (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995 ; Corneille & Hütter 2020). Many cases of bias are related to fear, such as the example I gave. I call the phenomenon where fear and implicit bias interfere “biased fear”. Implicit bias research has been criticized for presenting a far too individualistic explanation of a structural phenomenon. Racism and sexism, and other forms of social inequality are provided and sustained by social structures. Individual attitudes and biases are not the cause but merely a symptom of these structural inequalities embodied in societal structures. Implicit bias research is individualizing a structural phenomenon. Social injustices cannot be overcome by trying to change an individual's attitudes, but requires a collective and structural change. Haslanger (2015) most famously formulated these issues, but other researchers formulated similar ideas (Banks & Ford 2009 and Ayala-Lopez & Beeghly 2020).
Inspired by Haslanger’s account of structural explanations (Haslanger 2016), I will provide a structural account of implicit bias. Although Haslanger does not present a structural explanation for implicit bias herself, as she critiques implicit bias research for failing to address the underlying structures of sexism and racism, I will propose an account that does offer a structural explanation for implicit bias.
Haslanger’s concept of "structural explanations" is significantly influenced by Dretske’s (1988) analysis of behavior. Dretske distinguishes between two types of causes for behavior: triggering causes and structuring causes. A key example he provides is: “Clyde stood up when the queen entered the room.” To explain this behavior, you can ask two questions. One question is: “Why did Clyde stand up at this moment (and not a second before or after)?” The answer to this question, “because the queen entered the room,” identifies the triggering cause of Clyde’s action. This event explains why Clyde stood up at that specific moment and not earlier or later: it was precisely when the queen entered.
The triggering cause alone does not explain why Clyde exhibited the specific behavior of standing up. To understand this, we need to consider a structuring cause. This addresses the question: “Why did Clyde display this behavior? Why did he stand up instead of remaining seated or simply shifting in his chair?” This question seeks the reasons behind one's actions. In this case, the reason is that it is a social norm to stand when the Queen enters the room. This structuring cause also provides a structural explanation in Haslanger’s terms, as it refers to social structures—in this instance, a social norm that dictates behavior.
I will argue that most cognitive models of implicit bias focus primarily on triggering causes. In this context, triggering causes are akin to the "stimulus" concept in classical behaviorist theory. Behaviorists examine stimulus-response relationships to explain behavior. For example, if you condition dogs to associate a bell with food by ringing the bell every time they receive food, they will salivate (the response) whenever they hear the bell (the stimulus). While the triggering cause explains why the dog salivates at that moment, it does not account for why the dog reacts with salivation instead of jumping around or displaying some other behavior. Traditional models of implicit bias (e.g. Greenwald & Banaji, 1995) are not strictly behaviorist but share some similarities with these stimulus-response models (see also Mandelbaum 2016; Moors & Köster 2022). According to the standard model of bias, John’s behavior is driven by an association between black men and danger (the stimulus), which triggers an avoidance response. Thus, the explanation centers on the triggering cause: black men.
I will argue that traditional bias research confuses triggering causes with structuring causes. It simplifies biased behavior to a simple stimulus-response relationship. For example, John’s biased fear is explained as an association between a black man and a fear response. However, it is essential to consider explanations that involve structuring causes as well.
The underlying causes of biased behavior in this case are structural. Just as you would reference social norms to explain why Clyde stood up when the queen entered the room, you must consider social structures to understand implicit bias. Some have emphasized the significance of “norms” in explaining implicit bias. (Ayala-Lopez 2018, Banks & Ford 2009, Davidson & Kelly, 2018, Kelly, 2024, Madva, 2020)
Some cases of implicit bias do not align neatly with the concept of societal norms. For example, consider John's biased fear. I will argue that the term "bias" in this context does not refer to the individual attitude of a single person. Instead, it represents a tendency to be more sensitive to perceived danger in specific contexts. In John’s case, this heightened sensitivity can be attributed to a racist stereotype that is reinforced through a network of people, objects, and the relationships among them. I will present an account of how we can conceive of a societal structure as a structuring cause, based on Dretske’s theory of behavior. In this way, I will present a structural account of biased fear.