About

The puzzle

Every society contains many smaller social groups based on characteristics such as age, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, social class, and more. Today, we have incontrovertible evidence that membership in these groups can affect treatment in crucial life domains like education, employment, and healthcare.

Explicit prejudice in the form of blatant discrimination and stereotypes is on the decline. Most of us, whether individuals or institutions, are well-intentioned, fair-minded, and egalitarian. So how can these inequalities and inequities persist?

The answer: implicit bias.

Experimental psychologists created the concept of implicit bias to explain the continued existence of group-based disparities despite the rapid reduction or absence of explicit bias. Implicit bias is an umbrella term to refer to the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of which we may be unaware but that still create disparities in treatment.

Enter OIB.

Many institutions (for profit, non-profit, and governmental agencies) as well as the public quickly embraced the scientific concept of implicit bias; today, it is used as a path to improvement in every domain that shapes one’s opportunities and outcomes in life.

Outsmarting Implicit Bias (OIB) was founded by Mahzarin Banaji to disseminate science-based education to individuals and institutions searching for a way to understand and accurately teach about the science of implicit bias.

Our goals

We built OIB with the following goals:

1. Effectively present and update the science of implicit bias
2. Teach about implicit bias in an accessible (and even fun!) way
3. Show how implicit bias is relevant to all of us, regardless of group membership
4. Focus on actions we can take, ideally at three levels: individual, institutional, and societal