
The Central Park Five
Despite the indisputable and overwhelming evidence of the innocence of the Central Park Five, some involved in the case refuse to believe it.
“Implicit bias” exists when we unconsciously hold attitudes or judgments about other people or social groups. In the criminal legal system, implicit bias creates an unacceptable risk of wrongful conviction for people of color.
This video is a collaboration between Ethics Unwrapped and Illinois Innocence Project.
“Implicit bias“ exists when we unconsciously hold attitudes or judgments about other people or social groups. It is also called “unconscious bias.“ Having implicit bias means we harbor stereotypes about other people without realizing that we’re doing so. It’s a prejudice deep-seated within the human brain, below the conscious level.
Implicit bias is often negative. Research has shown negative unconscious bias against racial groups, genders, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized people. Although we may be prejudiced against our own group, more often we unconsciously hold positive stereotypes about people in our in-group, and negative stereotypes about people in out-groups.
Studies show that implicit bias often runs counter to our conscious, expressed beliefs. For example, not many physicians consciously hold racially discriminatory views. But research shows that doctors tend to recommend less pain medication for black patients than they do for white patients with the identical injury.[1] Likewise, not many people advocate for discrimination in hiring. But studies show that white applicants receive significantly more responses from potential employers than black applicants do, with the same resume.[2] As Daniel Kelly and colleagues note, people can be explicitly unbiased, yet implicitly biased.[3]
In the criminal legal system, implicit bias creates an unacceptable risk of wrongful conviction for people of color. Research has found implicit racial bias affecting prosecutors, judges, potential jurors, defense counsel, witnesses, parole boards, probation officers, pathologists, and police officers. While conscious racial bias does play a role in wrongful convictions, the impact of implicit racial bias in wrongful convictions cannot be overstated.
Of course, no system is perfect. For example, in the U.S., for every 300,000 car trips, two people are injured. And for every 300,000 surgeries, twenty-five people experience major medical mistakes or die. But for every 300,000 convictions in the U.S., an estimated 9,000 people are wrongfully convicted. Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences estimates that 4% of death row inmates are wrongfully convicted, meaning that nearly 100 innocent people are sitting on death row right now.[4] And, with nearly two million people incarcerated, there are likely 200,000 innocent people in U.S. jails and prisons today.[5]
Even though Black people are less than 14% of the American population, they represent more than 50% of the 3,500 plus innocent prisoners exonerated since 1989. According to data, Black Americans are 7 and a half times more likely than white Americans to be wrongfully convicted of murder, 8 times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of rape, and 19 times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of serious drug crimes.[6] On average, innocent black inmates spend 3 years longer in prison before being exonerated of murder than innocent white inmates do.[7]
Because implicit bias – racial or otherwise – operates at a mostly unconscious level, it is difficult to overcome. But fortunately, some research shows that stereotypes can be unlearned. And that safeguards can be put in place to minimize the impact of implicit bias.
For example, women used to make up only a very small percentage of musicians in symphony orchestras. Then orchestras began holding auditions where the applicants played behind a curtain – their genders were unknown to the judges. When this happened, the percentage of women chosen to play in symphony orchestras doubled.[8]
So, acknowledging the role of implicit bias is critical to addressing it. And learning the facts about implicit bias may help all of us guard against its dangerous impact.
[1] Vickie L. Shavers et al., “Race, Ethnicity, and Pain Among the U.S. Adult Population,” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 177-220 (Feb. 2010).
[2] Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” American Economic Review, Vol. 94, No. 4, pp. 991-1013 (2004).
[3] Daniel Kelly et al., “Race and Racial Cognition,” in The Moral Psychology Handbook p. 456 (John M. Doris, ed. 2010)
[4] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1306417111
[5] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html
[6] National Registry of Exonerations, Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States (2022). https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race%20Report%20Preview.pdf
[7] National Registry of Exonerations, Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States (2022). https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race%20Report%20Preview.pdf
[8] Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians. Claudia Goldin & Cecilia Rouse, Jan. 1997
Implicit bias is a behavioral ethics bias that exists when people unconsciously hold attitudes toward others or associate stereotypes with them. People’s implicit bias may run counter to their conscious beliefs without their realizing it. Implicit bias is also known as unconscious bias or implicit social cognition.
This video introduces implicit bias as it relates to wrongful conviction in the United States. As of May 16, 2024, there were nearly 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, and a significant percent of those people are wrongfully imprisoned. For more information and data on wrongful conviction in the U.S., visit the National Registry of Exonerations.
In teaching implicit bias, it may be a good idea to send your students to Harvard’s Project Implicit website so that they may take one or more of the tests that provide some (not all) of the academic evidence for implicit bias. Be aware that while there is widespread acceptance of the phenomenon of implicit bias, there is criticism of the evidence coming from this particular set of tests. Two of the academics behind Project Implicit, Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald wrote Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People (Delacorte Press 2013), which is a very accessible book on the topic. Another very accessible source is a March 27, 2018 article in Scientific American by psychologists Keith Payne, Laura Niemi, and John Doris entitled How to Think about “Implicit Bias”.
Accepting the fact of implicit bias should not be too difficult if you view our Concepts Unwrapped videos on several other kinds of bias generated by the human brain, including the Conformity Bias, the Self-Serving Bias, and the Overconfidence Bias.
An important issue in the ethics of “Big Data” and artificial intelligence has to do with the implicit bias that might affect the creating of algorithms and the analysis of data. Cathy O’Neil discusses this at length in her book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (Broadway Books 2016). A quick search of the internet on the topic “implicit bias and artificial intelligence” will bring up many sources for a fruitful discussion of this important topic. One controversial example is the fact that some versions of facial recognition software seem to be much more accurate when assessing white male faces than black female faces. This can have significant consequences when such software is deployed in the real world by police officers, insurance companies and others.
An interesting article is WGBH News “Addressing Gender and Racial Bias in Facial Recognition Technology“.
The “The Central Park Five” and “Meet Me at Starbucks” case studies that accompanies this video are informative examples of implicit bias in action.
Mahzarin Banaji & Anthony Greenwald, Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People (2013).
Marianne Bertrand et al., Implicit Discrimination, 95 American Economic Review 94 (2005).
Bogel-Burroughs, Nicholas. “Black Prisoners Face Higher Rate of Botched Executions, Study Finds.” The New York Times, 18 Apr. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/us/execution-lethal-injection-black-prisoners.html.
Jack Glaser & Eric Knowles, Implicit Motivation to Control Prejudice, 44 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 164 (2008).
A.R. Green et al., Implicit Bias Among Physicians and Its Prediction of Thrombolysis Decisions for Black and White Patients, 22 Journal of General Internal Medicine 1231 (2007).
Anthony Greenwald et al., Statistically Small Effects of the Implicit Association Test Can Have Societally Large Effects, 108 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 553 (2015).
Jerry Kang et al., Implicit Bias in the Courtroom, 59 UCLA Law Review 1124 (2012).
Daniel Kelly et al., Race and Racial Cognition, in The Moral Psychology Handbook 433 (John M. Doris, ed. 2010).
Patrick Kline, Evan K. Rose & Christopher R. Walters, “A Discrimination Report Card,” American Economic Review (forthcoming 2024);
Patrick Kline, Evan K. Rose & Christopher R. Walters, “Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 137, no. 4, pp. 1963-2036 (Nov. 2022).
Gregory Mitchel, “An Implicit Bias Primer,” (March 2018), available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3151740.
National Registry of Exonerations, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx
Keith Payne et al., How to Think About “Implicit Bias,” Scientific American, March 27, 2018.
Jesse Singal, Psychology’s Favorite Tool for Measuring Racism Isn’t Up to the Job, New Yorker, Jan. 11, 2017.
The latest resource from Ethics Unwrapped is a book, Behavioral Ethics in Practice: Why We Sometimes Make the Wrong Decisions, written by Cara Biasucci and Robert Prentice. This accessible book is amply footnoted with behavioral ethics studies and associated research. It also includes suggestions for related Ethics Unwrapped videos and case studies. Some instructors use this resource to educate themselves, while others use it in lieu of (or in addition to) a textbook.
Cara Biasucci also wrote a chapter on integrating Ethics Unwrapped in higher education, which can be found in the latest edition of Teaching Ethics: Instructional Models, Methods and Modalities for University Studies. The chapter includes examples of how Ethics Unwrapped is used at various universities.
An article written by Cara Biasucci and Robert Prentice describes the basics of behavioral ethics and introduces Ethics Unwrapped videos and supporting materials along with teaching examples. It also includes data on the efficacy of Ethics Unwrapped for improving ethics pedagogy across disciplines. Published in Journal of Business Law and Ethics Pedagogy (Vol. 1, August 2018), it can be downloaded here: “Teaching Behavioral Ethics (Using “Ethics Unwrapped” Videos and Educational Materials).”
Another article written by Ethics Unwrapped authors Minette Drumwright, Robert Prentice, and Cara Biasucci introduce key concepts in behavioral ethics and approaches to effective ethics instruction—including sample classroom assignments. Published in the Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, it can be downloaded here: “Behavioral Ethics and Teaching Ethical Decision Making.”
A detailed article written by Robert Prentice, with extensive resources for teaching behavioral ethics, was published in Journal of Legal Studies Education and can be downloaded here: “Teaching Behavioral Ethics.”
Another article by Robert Prentice, discussing how behavioral ethics can improve the ethicality of human decision-making, was published in the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. It can be downloaded here: “Behavioral Ethics: Can It Help Lawyers (And Others) Be their Best Selves?”
A dated (but still serviceable) introductory article about teaching behavioral ethics can be accessed through Google Scholar by searching: Prentice, Robert A. 2004. “Teaching Ethics, Heuristics, and Biases.” Journal of Business Ethics Education 1 (1): 57-74.