Research programs in empirical psychology over the past few decades have led scholars to posit implicit biases. This is due to the development of innovative behavioural measures that have revealed aspects of our cognitions which may not be identified on self-report measures requiring individuals to reflect on and report their attitudes and beliefs. But what does it mean to characterise such biases as implicit? Can we satisfactorily articulate the grounds for identifying them as bias? And crucially, what sorts of cognitions (...) are in fact being measured; what mental states or processes underpin such behavioural responses? In this paper, we outline some of the philosophical and empirical issues engaged when attempting to address these three questions. Our aim is to provide a constructive taxonomy of the issues, and how they interrelate. As we will see, any view about what implicit bias is may depend on a range of prior theoretical choices. (shrink)

This is the Editorial of the Research Topic (Special Issue) in Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in Neurorobotics: Intrinsic motivations and open-ended development in animals, humans, and robots.

Using an observational sample of players of a simple online game, we are able to trace the development of skill in that game. Information on playing time, and player location, allows us to estimate time of day during which practice took place. We compare those whose breaks in practice probably contained a night's sleep and those whose breaks in practice probably did not contain a night's sleep. Our analysis confirms experimental evidence showing a benefit of spacing for skill learning, but (...) it fails to find any additional benefit of sleeping during a break from practice. We discuss reasons why the well-established phenomenon of sleep consolidation might not manifest in an observational study of skill development. We put the spacing effect into the context of the other known influences on skill learning: improvement with practice, and individual differences in initial performance. Analysis of performance data from games allows experimental results to be demonstrated outside of the lab and for experimental phenomenon to be put in the context of the performance of the whole task. (shrink)

The evidence for rationalisation, which motivates the target article, is exaggerated. Experimental evidence shows that rationalisation effects are small rather than gross and, I argue, largely silent on the pervasiveness and persistence of the phenomenon. At least some examples taken to show rationalisation also have an interpretation compatible with deliberate, knowing reason-responsiveness on the part of participants.

Using an observational sample of players of a simple online game, we are able to trace the development of skill in that game. Information on playing time, and player location, allows us to estimate time of day during which practice took place. We compare those whose breaks in practice probably contained a night's sleep and those whose breaks in practice probably did not contain a night's sleep. Our analysis confirms experimental evidence showing a benefit of spacing for skill learning, but (...) it fails to find any additional benefit of sleeping during a break from practice. We discuss reasons why the well-established phenomenon of sleep consolidation might not manifest in an observational study of skill development. We put the spacing effect into the context of the other known influences on skill learning: improvement with practice, and individual differences in initial performance. Analysis of performance data from games allows experimental results to be demonstrated outside of the lab and for experimental phenomenon to be put in the context of the performance of the whole task. (shrink)

Implicit bias training (IBT) is now frequently provided by employers, in order to raise awareness of the problems related to implicit biases, and of how to safeguard against discrimination that may result. However, as Atewologun et al (2018) have noted, there is very little systematicity in IBT, and there are many unknowns about what constitutes good IBT. One important issue concerns the tone of information provided regarding implicit bias. This paper engages this question, focusing in particular on the observation that (...) much bias training is delivered in exculpatory tone, emphasising that individuals are not to blame for possessing implicit biases. Normative guidance around IBT exhorts practitioners to adopt this strategy (Moss-Racusin et al 2014). However, existing evidence about the effects of moralized feedback about implicit bias is equivocal (Legault et al 2011; Czopp et al 2006). Through a series of studies, culminating in an experiment with a pre-registered analysis plan, we develop a paradigm for evaluating the impact of moralized feedback on participants’ implicit racial bias scores. We also conducted exploratory analyses of the impact on their moods, and behavioural intentions. Our results indicated that an exculpatory tone, rather than a blaming or neutral tone, did not make participants less resistant to changing their attitudes and behaviours. In fact, participants in the blame condition had significantly stronger explicit intentions to change future behaviour than those in the ‘no feedback’ condition (see experiment 3). These results indicate that considerations of efficacy do not support the need for implicit bias feedback to be exculpatory. We tease out the implications of these findings, and directions for future research. (shrink)

Piéron's Law describes the relationship between stimulus intensity and reaction time. Previously (Stafford & Gurney, 2004), we have shown that Piéron's Law is a necessary consequence of rise-to-threshold decision making and thus will arise from optimal simple decision-making algorithms (e.g., Bogacz, Brown, Moehlis, Holmes, & Cohen, 2006). Here, we manipulate the color saturation of a Stroop stimulus. Our results show that Piéron's Law holds for color intensity and color-naming reaction time, extending the domain of this law, in line with our (...) suggestion of the generality of the processes that can give rise to Piéron's Law. In addition, we find that Stroop condition does not interact with the effect of color saturation; Stroop interference and facilitation remain constant at all levels of color saturation. An analysis demonstrates that this result cannot be accounted for by single-stage decision-making algorithms which combine all the evidence pertaining to a decision into a common metric. This shows that human decision making is not information-optimal and suggests that the generalization of current models of simple perceptual decision making to more complex decisions is not straightforward. (shrink)

In this panel six IS researchers from varying backgrounds will discuss whether epistemological anarchy, as proposed by the controversial philosopher Paul Feyerabend, has the potential to foster research progress and can help to create new insights in the IS field. Feyerabend is well known for his notion that "anything goes" in terms of methodology, and many scholars are concerned that this seemingly anarchistic sentiment can undermine efforts to systematically build and structure an epistemological and methodological foundation for an academic discipline. (...) This panel, which will be moderated by Horst Treiblmaier, includes as panelists Andrew Burton-Jones, Shirley Gregor, Rudy Hirschheim, Michael Myers, and Tom Stafford. The outcome of this discussion will be incorporated into a paper published in the DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems. (shrink)