Abstract
Elsewhere I’ve introduced the concept of ‘nonverbal marginalization’ and argued that patterns of automatic (and often nonconscious) nonverbal behaviors reflect and reinforce prejudicial attitudes—e.g., looking and smiling more at men and white people than women and people of color, which subtly excludes and undermines members of marginalized communities. In this work, I claim that nonverbal communication is often a vehicle for implicit bias.
This talk considers the extent to which agents can be morally responsible for nonverbal marginalization—particularly implicit varieties of nonverbal marginalization. I discuss nonverbal marginalization in relation to the broader literature on how people can be normatively responsible for their implicit biases. For example, it’s been argued that agents have a degree of responsibility for implicitly biased behavior (and/or can be appropriately blamed) if they are in control of the behavior (Levy 2017) or the behavior is in some sense attributable to them (Holyroyd, Scaife & Stafford 2017). However, here I’m interested in forward-looking approaches to moral responsibility—specifically, whether agents have responsibility for taking steps towards reducing future patterns of implicitly biased behavior (Saul 2013; also discussed in Holyroyd, Scaife & Stafford 2017).
The account I defend in this talk cashes out this notion of forward-looking responsibility in the case of implicit nonverbal marginalization, distinguishing between ‘synchronic’ moral responsibility and ‘diachronic’ moral responsibility, where having ‘diachronic’ responsibility involves being normatively ‘on-the-hook’ to undertake certain de-biasing interventions if one is aware such interventions would reduce their propensity to act in ways that reflect implicit bias in the future. Significantly, on my account you can have diachronic responsibility for your future implicitly biased patterns of behaviors while lacking synchronic responsibility for your presently implicitly biased actions, which I contend offers a more normatively and empirically realistic model of responsibility for implicit biases.
Applying my diachronic model of responsibility back to nonverbal marginalization, I conclude that while we might not be synchronically responsible for our nonverbally marginalizing patterns of behavior, we are nonetheless diachronically responsible for learned patterns of nonverbal marginalization if there exist de-biasing interventions to marginalization which we are aware of and could reasonably undertake. I conclude by outlining some of these possible interventions, suggesting that we plausibly have a diachronic responsibility to actively pursue these intervention techniques given the significant potential harms of (unchecked) patterns of nonverbal marginalization.
How to attend
This is a read-ahead and/or presentation seminar. The meetings have a hybrid format. We meet in person in GM 467 and digitally on Zoom (Zoom login required).
The meeting link, along with a copy of the abstract/pre-reading, will be made available in advance via the mailing list.