2020 taught us how to fix deeply flawed system

This is the year that broke thetruth. This is the year when millions of Americans —and not just your political opponents— seemed impervious to evidence, willing to believe themost outlandish things if it suited their biases, andeager todevelop fervid animosities basedoncrude stereotypes.

Worse, thiswas theyear that called into question the very processes by which our society supposedlymakes progress.

So many of our hopes are based on the idea that thekey tochangeis education. We canteach each other tobemore informed andmakebetter decisions. We canstudy social injustices and change our behavior to fight them.

But this was the year that showed that our models for how we change minds or change behavior are deeplyflawed.

It turns out that if you tell someone their facts are wrong, you don’ t usually win them over; youjust entrenchfalse belief.

Oneof themost studied examplesof thisflawedmodel is racial diversity training. Over the lastfewdecades, most large corporations andother institutions have begun such programs to combat the bias andracism pervasive in organizational life. Thecourses teach people about bias, they combat stereotypes and they encourage people toassumethe perspectives of others in disadvantaged groups.

These programs are obviously well intended, andthey often describe systemic racism accurately, but the bulk of the evidence suggests they don’t reduce discrimination. Firms that use such courses see no increase in managerial diversity. Sometimes they seeanincrease in minority employee turnover.

FrankDobbin andAlexandra Kalev offereda clearsummaryof the research in a 2018 essay in Anthropology Now. One meta-analysis of985studies of anti-bias interventions found little evidence that these programs reduced bias. Other studies sometimes do find a short-termchangein attitudes, but veryfewfinda widespread changein actualbehavior.

Dobbin and K al ev offer a few reasons for why these programs generally don’twork as intended. First, “short-term educational intervention sin general do not change people.” This is as true forworker safety courses as it is for efforts tocombatracism. Second, someresearchers arguethat the training activates stereotypes in people’s mindsrather than eliminating them. Third, training canmake people complacent, thinking that because theywent throughthe programthey’ve solvedthe problem.

Fourth, the mandatory training makes many white participants feel left out, angry andresentful, actually decreasing their support forworkplace diversity. Fifth, people don’t like tobe toldwhat to think.

Thesedays a lot of the training is set up to combat implicit bias. This is based on research led by Anthony Green wald, Ma hz arin Ban aji and Brian Nosek, showing that most Americans, and especially most white Americans, have hidden bias es that influence who gets hired, whogets promoted and how people are seen.

Implicit bias is absolutely real. Theproblemis that courses to reduceits effects don’t seemtowork. AsGreenwald toldKnowable Magazine: “I seemost implicit bias training as window dressing that looksgoodboth internally to an organization and external ly, as if you’ re concerned and trying todosomething. But it can be deployed without actually achieving anything, which makes it in fact counter productive .”

Part of the problemis that a lot of discrimination is structural; not in people’s attitudes but in organizational practices and the way society is setup.

Finally, our trainingmodelof “teaching people tobegood” is basedonthe illusion that you can change people’ s mind sand behaviors by presenting them with new information andnewthoughts. If thiswere generally so, moral philosophers would behave better than the rest of us. Theydon’t.

People change in new environments, in permanent relationship with diverse groups of people. Their embodied minds adapt to the environments ina million different ways we will never understand or be able to plan. Decades ago, the social psychologist Gordon All port wrote about the contact hypothesis, thatdoing life togetherwith people of other groups can reduce prejudice and change minds. It’ s how new emotional bonds are formed, how new concept ions of who is“us” andwhois“them” comeinto being.

The superficial way to change mind sand behavior doesn’t seemtowork, to bridge either racial, partisanor class lines. Real changeseemsto involve putting bodies from different groupsin thesameroom, onthe same team and in the same neighborhood. That’snational serviceprograms. That’s residential integration programs across all lines of difference. That’ s workplace diversity, equity and inclusion—permanent physical integration, not training.

This points to a more fundamental vision of socialchange, but it is ahardwonlesson fromabitterly divisive year.