Jordan Peterson on psychology: what the evidence says · JRE #877
SUBJECT: PSYCHOLOGY
The short answer
Peterson claims mandatory unconscious bias training has no evidence of effectiveness and that existing evidence suggests it backfires. The broader research literature on implicit bias and diversity training is mixed rather than uniformly negative: a 2025 systematic review of interventions to reduce implicit bias in high-stakes professional judgments found that individual-level approaches focused on raising awareness or changing attitudes -- the model used in most corporate unconscious bias trainings -- consistently underperformed structural interventions like decision protocols and standardized rubrics, with little evidence of lasting or real-world effects.
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
there's no evidence, by the way, that that works at all. In fact, the evidence that there is suggests quite the contrary.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Peterson claimed mandatory unconscious bias training has no evidence of working and that existing evidence points the other way. The broader research literature on implicit bias and diversity training is mixed rather than uniformly negative: a 2025 systematic review of interventions to reduce implicit bias in high-stakes professional judgments found that individual-level approaches focused on raising awareness or changing attitudes -- the model used in most corporate unconscious bias trainings -- consistently underperformed structural interventions like decision protocols and standardized rubrics, with little evidence of lasting or real-world effects. This supports the substance of Peterson's skepticism about the typical training model, but his framing that there is "no evidence" it works at all, and that evidence uniformly suggests backfire, overstates a literature better characterized as showing weak, inconsistent, and non-durable effects rather than proven harm across the board.