Empathy Intervention to Reduce Implicit Bias in Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

There have been long-term concerns regarding discriminatory discipline practices used with culturally and linguistically diverse students, with little research on the impact teacher-centered empathy interventions may have on this population. This randomized pretest–posttest control group design investigates the ability of a brief empathy-inducing intervention to improve the implicit bias of pre-service teachers, as measured by the Implicit Association Test. We found the empathy intervention statistically significant at decreasing the implicit bias of White female pre-service teachers toward Black individuals ( F = 7.55, η2 = 0.22, p = 0.01). Implications and future research are discussed, including extended intervention periods.