Six Strategies to Educate Students about Implicit Bias

Implicit bias concerns unconscious beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes that influence our behavior and choices (Kruse et al., 2022).  As consumers of media, students need to be aware that implicit bias is woven throughout every video watched, book read, and song listened to.  Furthermore, students’ own original work is impacted by this same phenomenon. Therefore, instructors need to address this issue through direct instruction and student-led activities to improve critical thinking and media literacy (Austin & Domgaard, 2024).

Figure 1

Path leads to decision which changes the path in two directions [Digital Image].

Note. “Path leads to decision which changes the path in two directions” by fotogestoeber.de,  n.d., Canva, https://www.canva.com/photos/MADZ_EPjqwY/

Six Suggested Learning Strategies

Research suggests using a minimum of two learning strategies to teach about bias (Kruse et al., 2022).

Pre-assessments

Prior to beginning bias training, survey students to acknowledge where their bias identification and self-awareness skills lie.  Harvard’s (2011) “Project Implicit Youth” is a useful Implicit Association Test to reveal students’ personal biases and instruct them in how bias affects all people.

Interactive Games

The Theater of the Oppressed games are an interactive method of teaching about bias.  Created by Augusto Boal, the activities are meant to develop participants’ empathy for oppressed groups.  The activities may also be useful for students to identify their own biases.  The Philadelphia Theatre of the Oppressed (2011) offers a variety of games as options to include on their website.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) has been shown to reduce prejudice and increase empathy (Roswell et al., 2020; Tassinari et al., 2024).  Positive contact with avatars of different races in VR settings is shown to improve attitudes towards other racial groups.  1,000 Cut Journey is a free VR program that has yielded positive results in combatting bias (Cogburn et al., 2018).

MediaWise Programs

Students of all ages can benefit from media literacy and recognizing bias; therefore Tsvetkova et al. (2024) developed a program with videos, games, free courses, and other resources available to teach about identification of misinformation and bias.

Compare/Contrast Sources

Read two articles on the same event from two different news sources.  Students should identify similarities and differences in what is focused on, the evidence presented, and the perspective promoted.  This strategy is also called Civic Online Reasoning approach and is known to be a crucial practice for checking validity and credibility of sources (Martini et al, 2025).

Discussion groups

In every learning context, either large or small discussion groups paired with another activity can be effective in helping students identify and reflect on lessons learned.

Conclusion

There are a myriad of implications of learning to identify bias in others and ourselves. Because bias shapes how we make sense of the world, we need to be aware of when it is at play.  As we teach students to identify bias, they will process information more objectively, correctly categorize fact and opinion, and better avoid being manipulated.  

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References

Austin, E. W., & Domgaard, S. (2024). The Media Literacy Theory of change and the Message Interpretation Process Model. Communication Theory, 34(4), 167–177. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtae018

Bullard, E. C. (2025). Theatre of the Oppressed (TO). Salem Press Encyclopedia.

Cogburn, C. D., Bailenson, J., Ogle, E., Asher, T., & Nichols, T. (2018). 1000 cut journey. ACM SIGGRAPH 2018 Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality, 1–1. https://doi.org/10.1145/3226552.3226575

Cogburn, C. D., Bailenson, J., Ogle, E., Asher, T., & Nichols, T. (2018). 1000 cut journey. ACM SIGGRAPH 2018 Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality, 1–1. https://doi.org/10.1145/3226552.3226575 

fotogestoeber.de. (n.d.).  [Path leads to decision which changes the path in two directions]. Canva. https://www.canva.com/photos/MADZ_EPjqwY/

Harvard University. (2011). Project Implicit Youth. Ethical Considerations. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/youth.html 

Kruse, J. A., Collins, J. L., & Vugrin, M. (2022). Educational strategies used to improve the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of health care students and providers regarding implicit bias: An integrative review of the literature. International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances, 4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnsa.2022.100073 

Martini, C., Floris, M., Ronzani, P., Ausili, L., Pennacchioni, G., Adorno, G., & Panizza, F. (2025, October 1). The impact of interventions against science disinformation in high school students. Nature News. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-16565-6

Philadelphia Theatre of the Oppressed. (2011). Games classes: What we played. Philadelphia Theatre of the Oppressed. https://tophiladelphia.blogspot.com/2011/10/games-for-actors-non-actors.html

Roswell, R. O., Cogburn, C. D., Tocco, J., Martinez, J., Bangeranye, C., Bailenson, J. N., Wright, M., Mieres, J. H., & Smith, L. (2020). Cultivating empathy through virtual reality: Advancing conversations about racism, inequity, and climate in medicine. Academic Medicine, 95(12), 1882–1886. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000003615

Tassinari, M., Aulbach, M. B., Harjunen, V. J., Cocco, V. M., Vezzali, L., & Jasinskaja-Lahti, I. (2024). The effects of positive and negative intergroup contact in virtual reality on outgroup attitudes: Testing the contact hypothesis and its mediators. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 27(8), 1773–1798. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684302241237747

Tsvetkova, V., Marcus, S., & McCarthy, J. H. (2023, April 25). MediaWise programs. Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/mediawise/programs/