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Another excellent prac�cal �p involved urging readers to work against bias
by being aware of our similari�es. One source of bias is the human tendency
to prefer in-groups (whatever group I belong to) over out-groups (any
groups that I don’t belong to), so no�cing the ways in which we share one
or more in-groups is a powerful way to use this bias for good rather than
evil. For example, I (a White man) might find myself in a conversa�on with
a Black woman, and think that she is Not My People (out-group) because of
the social iden��es that we do not share. But if I find out that this hypothe-
�cal person reads Jim Butcher novels, does Judo, follows Jesus, and has
strong opinions about Doctor Who, suddenly she is My People (in-group),
and we’re about to have a really fun conversa�on. Social psychologists have
consistently found that conflict between groups is overcome by finding
common ground: an iden�ty that encompasses both of us, a common goal
to be pursued, or a common enemy to be defeated. Focusing on what divi-
des us keeps us divided.

The Bad
The topic of prac�cal �ps for overcoming bias flows into my cri�cisms of The
Unbiased Self. One weak spot in the book involves Devers’ handling of
the Implicit Associa�on Test (IAT). The IAT is a cogni�ve reac�on-�me mea-
sure that allows researchers to examine biases in the ways that we process
social informa�on. For example, Nosek and colleagues (2002) used to IAT to
show that Black and White par�cipants showed preference for faces within
their own racial groups by being (on average) 158 milliseconds faster when
those faces were paired with posi�ve words such as “friend” and “love,” and
when other-race faces were paired with nega�ve words such as “terrible”
and “agony.” Devers describes a set of studies using the IAT to show that
implicit bias is a real thing. However, her prac�cal advice in this sec�on was
only that we study IAT research and familiarize ourselves with the idea of
implicit bias. There was no sugges�on for what to do to counteract one’s
implicit biases. The IAT is in fact a source of controversy in social psychologi-
cal circles, as IAT scores show li�le connec�on to real-world behavior, and
interven�ons designed to reduce implicit biases only result in changing
one’s score in the laboratory tasks, not in any actual interpersonal interac�-
ons.
In addi�on to uncri�cally presen�ng the IAT, Devers makes the claim that we
can make ourselves less biased by becoming more collec�vis�c. Cross-cultu-
ral researchers have a long-standing tradi�on of placing cultures on a collec-
�vis�c-individualis�c spectrum, with more-collec�vis�c cultures emphasi-
zing group membership and harmony, and more-individualis�c cultures em-
phasizing independence and personal choice. Devers points to ways in
which our culture (America is very individualis�c) makes us biased in favor
of self-enhancement, and proposes collec�vism as an an�dote. Indeed,
people from collec�vis�c cultures do perform be�er at tasks such as taking
others’ perspec�ves. However, Devers completely misses the possibility
that collec�vism might also introduce its own set of biases. Lin and collea-

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