Race-, sex-, or religious-based bias, and their unsuccessful reduction, remain some of the most challenging areas for social scientists to conduct research. Such immutability may be a result of racial bias being analogous to a social virus, but unlike competing pandemic-based biological viruses, the structure and functioning of racial bias cannot be isolated under a microscope, and subsequently inoculated against via a society-wide vaccination roll-out. Racial bias is complex, it has both automatic and controlled processes, a multitude of moderating and mediating factors, and mutates according to the social context it infects. As a consequence of the ongoing challenges that racial bias presents to society and researchers who study it, a far more nuanced critique of this body of research than the one offered by Cesario's target article, is required.

I would like to begin my commentary with a strong defence of the strengths of experimental social psychology tradition, especially with its random assignment of participants to experimental and control conditions, the ability to make causal inferences compared to correlational research, and the potential to target these causes of bias and/or racism in prejudice-reduction interventions. Beyond acknowledging these empirical strengths, one concern lies with Cesario's somewhat naïve misrepresentation of experimental social psychology, where he reduces it to Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz's (Reference Greenwald, McGhee and Schwartz1998) implicit association test (IAT), Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink's (Reference Correll, Park, Judd and Wittenbrink2002) shooter bias task, and racial disparities in school disciplinary outcomes (using hypothetical vignettes). For the sake of accuracy, I would recommend that Cesario reframes his critique to the shooter bias and the IAT specifically, rather than using the broad phrase “experimental social psychology” throughout the target article. Without this necessary reframing, the article appears to ignore the many different and complex facets of experimental social psychology which also involves controlled decision making, real-world behavioral observations, applications, and longitudinal interventions. For example, one experimental social psychology area that has led the way in addressing the causes of racial bias is contact research, spurred on by Allport's (Reference Allport1954) original contact hypothesis formulations.

A wealth of contact research including experimental (White, Maunder, & Verrelli, Reference White, Maunder and Verrelli2020) and longitudinal (White & Abu-Rayya, Reference White and Abu-Rayya2012; White, Abu-Rayya, & Weitzel, Reference White, Abu-Rayya and Weitzel2014) research has shown that increased contact between members of different groups can reduce bias and prejudice and promote more positive intergroup relations. The prejudice-reducing effects of contact have been found to reduce anxiety consistently and robustly among both children and adults, and across many different types of contact settings and cultures (Tropp, White, Rucinski, & Tredoux, Reference Tropp, White, Rucinski and Tredouxin press). For example, experimentally based E-contact between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Muslim and Catholic students in Australia; people who identify as heterosexual and homosexual; people who identify as cisgender and transgender – where members of different groups engage in a structured, cooperative text-based online discussion with one another – has been found to reduce anxiety and prejudice, and prepare individuals for direct outgroup contact (White et al., Reference White, Maunder and Verrelli2020). Clearly, experimental E-contact research does involve the presence of “real-world decision makers” from different religious, racial and sexual minority backgrounds, as well as “actual behavioral differences” being integrated into the E-contact paradigm, as evidenced by the structured synchronous-texting that occurs between each group member. This is one of many empirical examples that support my contention that not all experimental social psychology research of bias and prejudice should be tarred with the same brush of containing “fatal flaws” identified by Cesario. A more targeted critique is, therefore, warranted.

Another radical proposal by Cesario is that implicit bias experimental research should be “abandoned.” Cesario's criticisms of poor ecological and predictive validity are not novel (see Blanton, Jaccard, Strauts, Mitchell, & Tetlock, Reference Blanton, Jaccard, Strauts, Mitchell and Tetlock2015; Corneille & Hütter, Reference Corneille and Hütter2020; Schimmack, Reference Schimmack2021). According to the author, the shooter bias task is “fatally flawed” because it excludes necessary dispatch information, such as knowing the citizen's race beforehand. Consequently, when Johnson, Cesario, and Pleskac (Reference Johnson, Cesario and Pleskac2018) included these features in their laboratory experiment, the shooter bias effect disappeared. The refined Correll, Hudson, Guillermo, and Ma (Reference Correll, Hudson, Guillermo and Ma2014) and Johnson et al.'s experiments clearly show that ecological improvements of the original paradigm impacted the levels of racial bias compared to what was initially reported. Cesario also claims that Blacks have higher violation rates than Whites, and that this ratio should be more accurately represented in the shooter bias task. Therefore, in addition to his methodological critique, the author presents a concerning undertone in his narrative that suggests that “with greater ecological validity White participants will report less racial bias…which is the truer picture,” a narrative that seems counter to the evidence of the high number of fatal deaths of innocent Black men at the hands of White policemen. Overall, there appears to be an uneasy dissonance in the author's narrative, on the one hand he appears content with the shooter bias task's external validity when trained White police officers show no bias, but is critical of the task when racial bias is found among untrained participants.

Instead of supporting Cesario's extreme proposition to abandon the implicit bias experimental tradition, I propose that it should be “improved and refined” while racism continues to socially and emotionally infect intergroup relations globally. Cesario's “abandonment” position also ignores the significant contributions that the implicit bias research tradition, albeit flawed, has made to better understanding the predictors, mediators, and outcomes of racial bias. For example, showing bias exists, either directly or indirectly, is a necessary first-step in any researcher's attempts to effectively reduce it. In fact, there are several instances where even Cesario suggests possible refinements to the shooter bias task that can improve its external validity. Additional advances would be to examine these implicit bias tasks (measured in millisecond reaction time) alongside more refined controlled attitudinal and behavioral measures that focus on intergroup interactions, as per Allport's (Reference Allport1954) contact theory, rather than solely on intragroup processes. There remains academic merit in continuing to use both implicit and explicit approaches to examining bias within laboratory and fieldwork settings to better understand the causes, consequences, and the effective reduction of the social virus that is racial bias, and subsequently strengthen and promote the rigor of experimental social psychology.