Psychological understanding is a required capacity for moral competence in the sense that understanding the intentions, beliefs, and interests of others is a critical input for evaluating the responsibilities involved in their behaviors and understanding, in turn, how to interact with them to achieve our purposes. For its part, interaction with others is at the heart of both capacities, since both are essential and closely related components of human social life. My aim in this paper, in relation to both assumptions, (...) will be to highlight a structural similarity between ordinary psychological cognition and moral cognition, showing as certain differentiated types of explanations on one domain and the other allows to identify a theoretical framework consistent that, in turn, it can account for the relationships between the two. For this, I will refer first, synthetically, to the _Social Intuitionist Model_ (MIS) of J. Haidt (2001), as it exemplifies a non-classical and dual approach to moral cognition in which moral intuitions play a more basic role than reasons. In the field of psychological cognition, I will refer with more detail to _the interactive or second-person approach_, enriched by the dual approach to cognition, in particular by the proposals on implicit or “minimal” varieties of mental attribution. In this context, I will identify the so-called _expressive behaviors: _their nature and role in human behavior and interactions, and their significance as the evidential basis for psychological understanding. They constitute the primary objects of psychological intuitions. I hope to show that expressive signals are “readable” through the intuitive abilities that detect them and understand their psychological significance in efficient ways. Having exposed the theoretical affinities between the MIS and the interactive-dual approach, I will emphasize that, just as for the first, moral intuitions come first, and reasons later, also for the interactive-dual approach of psychological understanding, psychological intuitions come first, and reasons later. (shrink)

Are individuals morally responsible for their implicit biases? One reason to think not is that implicit biases are often advertised as unconscious, ‘introspectively inaccessible’ attitudes. However, recent empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, although often in partial and inarticulate ways. Here I explore the implications of this evidence of partial awareness for individuals’ moral responsibility. First, I argue that responsibility comes in degrees. Second, I argue that individuals’ partial awareness of their implicit biases makes (...) them (partially) morally responsible for them. I argue by analogy to a close relative of implicit bias: moods. (shrink)

Research programs in empirical psychology from the past two decades have revealed implicit biases. Although implicit processes are pervasive, unavoidable, and often useful aspects of our cognitions, they may also lead us into error. The most problematic forms of implicit cognition are those which target social groups, encoding stereotypes or reflecting prejudicial evaluative hierarchies. Despite intentions to the contrary, implicit biases can influence our behaviours and judgements, contributing to patterns of discriminatory behaviour. These patterns of discrimination are obviously wrong and (...) unjust. But in remedying such wrongs, one question to be addressed concerns responsibility for implicit bias. Unlike some paradigmatic forms of wrongdoing, such discrimination is often unintentional, unendorsed, and perpetrated without awareness; and the harms are particularly damaging because they are cumulative and collectively perpetrated. So, what are we to make of questions of responsibility? In this article, we outline some of the main lines of recent philosophical thought, which address questions of responsibility for implicit bias. We focus on (a) the kind of responsibility at issue; (b) revisionist versus nonrevisionist conceptions of responsibility as applied to implicit bias; and (c) individual, institutional, and collective responsibility for implicit bias. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is what I will call “biased emotion”. Biased emotions are emotions which are influenced by implicit bias. An example is racially biased fear. A person who explicitly denies that every black man is dangerous, might implicitly have the tendency to be afraid of black men. Biased emotions lead to certain types of behavior, such as avoidance behavior out of fear. Some have argued that behavioral expressions of biased emotions are not attributable. Because fearful behavior is (...) supposedly reflex-like, it can be considered as “external” to who one really is. I will, however, argue that behavioral expressions of biased emotions are not reflexes but behavior which reflects a person’s goals and what one cares about. For this reason, I will argue that behavioral expressions of biased emotions are attributable and reveal who one truly is. (shrink)

Implicit intergroup biases have been shown to impact social behavior in many unsettling ways, from disparities in decisions to “shoot” black and white men in a computer simulation to unequal gender-based evaluations of résumés and CVs. It is a difficult question whether, and in what way, agents are responsible for behaviors affected by implicit biases. I argue that in paradigmatic cases agents are responsible for these behaviors in the sense that the behavior is “attributable” to them. That is, behaviors affected (...) by implicit biases reflect upon who one is as a moral agent. (shrink)

“Implicit bias” is a term of art referring to relatively unconscious and relatively automatic features of prejudiced judgment and social behavior. While psychologists in the field of “implicit social cognition” study “implicit attitudes” toward consumer products, self-esteem, food, alcohol, political values, and more, the most striking and well-known research has focused on implicit attitudes toward members of socially stigmatized groups, such as African-Americans, women, and the LGBTQ community.[1] For example, imagine Frank, who explicitly believes that women and men are equally (...) suited for careers outside the home. Despite his explicitly egalitarian belief, Frank might nevertheless implicitly associate women with the home, and this implicit association might lead him to behave in any number of biased ways, from trusting feedback from female co-workers less to hiring equally qualified men over women. Psychological research on implicit bias is relatively recent (§1), but a host of metaphysical (§2), epistemological (§3), and ethical questions (§4) about implicit bias are pressing.[2]. (shrink)