2023/05/16 by James Chamberlain, Jules Holroyd, Ben Jenkins +1 · 2 voices · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Critical Race Theory in Education #Racial and Ethnic Identity Research #Social and Intergroup Psychology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09515089.2023.2213245
openalex publication_date 2023/05/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/13
Recent empirical work attempts to investigate how implicit biases target those facing intersectional oppression. This is welcome, since early work on implicit biases focused on single axes of discrimination, such as race, gender, or age. However, the success of such empirical work on how biases target those facing intersectional oppressions depends on adequate conceptualizations of intersectionality and empirical measures that are responsive to these conceptualizations. Surveying prominent recent empirical work, we identify failures in conceptualizations of intersectionality that inform the design of empirical measures. These failures generate unsupported conclusions about the kinds of biases that those experiencing multiple oppressions face, and render proposed interventions to combat biases useless at best, harmful at worst. We also diagnose unwarranted assumptions about how stereotypes combine in complex concepts: first, that when “simple” social concepts combine the complex concepts inherit the associated stereotypes of their simpler constituent concepts; second that studies which focus on cognition about single social categories are investigating “simple” social concepts (cf. Goff and Khan 2013). We tease out recommendations to guide future investigations into biases that target those who experience multiple oppressions.