RT Article
T1 The Right to Feel Comfortable: Implicit Bias and the Moral Potential of Discomfort
JF Ethical theory and moral practice
VO 23
IS 1
SP 237
OP 250
A1 Munch-Jurisic, Ditte Marie
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2020
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1694953424
AB An increasingly popular view in scholarly literature and public debate on implicit biases holds that there is progressive moral potential in the discomfort that liberals and egalitarians feel when they realize they harbor implicit biases. The strong voices among such discomfort advocates believe we have a moral and political duty to confront people with their biases even though we risk making them uncomfortable. Only a few voices have called attention to the aversive effects of discomfort. Such discomfort skeptics warn that, because people often react negatively to feeling blamed or called-out, the result of confrontational approaches is often counterproductive. To deepen this critique, I distinguish between awareness discomfort and interaction discomfort, developing a contextual approach that draws on recent research on negative affect and emotions to chart a more complete picture of the moral limits of discomfort. I argue that discomfort advocates risk overrating the moral potential of discomfort if they underestimate the extent to which context shapes the interpretation of affect and simple, raw feelings.
K1 Affect
K1 Distress
K1 Emotions
K1 implicit bias
K1 Responsibility for bias
K1 Structural discrimination
DO 10.1007/s10677-020-10064-5