Facing Our Racial Biases Via the Implicit Association Test

Teaching of Psychology, 2014

Social psychology instructors from five distinct state universities in California examined the effect of incorporating the implicit association test (IAT) in a teaching module on students’ perceived knowledge of implicit biases and motivation to control prejudice. Students ( N = 258) completed a knowledge survey on prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination and a motivation to control prejudice scale before (Time 1) and after (Time 2) a teaching module on implicit and explicit prejudice that included taking the IAT. Results showed that students’ perceived knowledge of implicit biases increased after completing the teaching module. In addition, the more students displayed an implicit bias against African Americans (relative to European Americans), the more they reported mastering course material about implicit biases and the more they indicated being internally motivated to control prejudice (at Time 2). These findings suggest that using the IAT as a teaching tool might be a benefici...

Social Psychology of Education, 2013

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Social psychology instructors from five distinct state universities in California examined the effect of incorporating the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in a teaching module on students’ perceived knowledge of implicit biases and motivation to control prejudice. Students (N = 258) completed a knowledge survey on prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination and a motivation to control prejudice scale before (Time 1) and after (Time 2) a teaching module on implicit and explicit prejudice that included taking the IAT. Results showed that students’ perceived knowledge of implicit biases increased after completing the teaching module. In addition, the more students displayed an implicit bias against African Americans (relative to European Americans), the more they reported mastering course material about implicit biases and the more they indicated being internally motivated to control prejudice (at Time 2). These findings suggest that using the IAT as a teaching tool might be a beneficial learning experience, in particular for individuals who display relatively pronounced implicit biases.

Teaching Sociology, 2013

Researchers have demonstrated that unconscious prejudices around characteristics such as race, gender, and class are common, even among people who avow themselves unbiased. The authors present a method for teaching about implicit racial bias using online Implicit Association Tests. The authors do not claim that their method rids students of biases. Instead, the authors show that this approach helps students recognize that they and many other people may hold implicit biases that can affect perceptions and actions and realize that prejudice is not reducible to overt bigotry. The authors also show that the exercise helped some students recognize that talking about race and challenging unconscious associations are better methods of combating prejudice than simply pretending not to notice race. Qualitative and quantitative data reveal that the approach described here was effective in building students' understanding of unconscious prejudice.

British Journal of Social Psychology, 2018

The implicit association test (IAT) and concept of implicit bias have significantly influenced the scientific, institutional, and public discourse on racial prejudice. In spite of this, there has been little investigation of how ordinary people make sense of the IAT and the bias it claims to measure. This article examines the public understanding of this research through a discourse analysis of reactions to the IAT and implicit bias in the news media. It demonstrates the ways in which readers interpreted, related to, and negotiated the claims of IAT science in relation to socially shared and historically embedded concerns and identities. IAT science was discredited in accounts that evoked discourses about the marginality of academic preoccupations, and helped to position test-takers as targets of an oppressive political correctness and psychologists as liberally biased. Alternatively, the IAT was understood to have revealed widely and deeply held biases toward racialized others, eliciting accounts that took the form of psycho-moral confessionals. Such admissions of bias helped to constitute moral identities for readers that were firmly positioned against racial bias. Our findings are discussed in terms of their implications for using the IAT in prejudice reduction interventions, and communicating to the public about implicit bias.

Research regarding the attitudinal antecedents of racially discriminating behavior is of particular importance as racial diversity in the United States continues to increase along with instances of intergroup violence and tension in the news. In a two-part experiment we examined racial attitudes as they relate to manipulations in environmental cues and subsequent behaviors. Specifically, we examined whether a subtle environmental manipulation in the form of viewing a positive and negative stereotypical interaction between minority race members in a two minute video segment was associated with a decrease in attitudinal racial bias measured using the Implicit Association Test and differences in subtle discrimination assessed via two subtle discriminatory behavior assessment techniques; a hypothetical budget cut questionnaire and the Lost Email Technique. Participants (N = 69) were recruited from the undergraduate population at the University of Rhode Island and randomized into the positive and negative video conditions. Trained research assistants welcomed participants into the laboratory and directed them to a computer on which to view the video. After viewing the respective videos, participants completed the Implicit Association Test (IAT), three self-report measures designed to obscure the purpose of the study, and a demographics questionnaire all on the same computer. The research assistants then acquired the participants' preferred email addresses, informed them the second half of the study would be sent via email, and introduced participants to the budget cut questionnaire disguised as a departmental requirement for researchers. Twenty-four hours later, the research assistants emailed a link to the second IAT from a pre specified Gmail account. The research assistants paired this email with the lost email sent from a URI.etal email address. This email was addressed (incorrectly) to either a common White or Black name informing the intended recipient that they had been awarded a prestigious scholarship to which they applied. Of interest was the response rate between the emails compared between positive and negative video groups and perceived White and Black recipient names. A series of one tailed t-tests and a logistic regression tested three hypotheses: 1) that the positive video would decrease racial bias on the IAT, 2) that the decrease in bias would remain 24-48 hours as measured by a second IAT, and 3) that the positive video would be related to a decrease in discriminatory behavior. Results revealed that the positive video condition (M = .4320, SD = .4105) significantly differed from the negative video condition (M = .6134, SD = .3533) on the first IAT, t (57) = 1.80, p = .0385, d = .4736. One tailed t-tests did not reveal significant differences between the positive and negative video group on the second IAT 24-48 hours later and on proposed budget cuts on our first behavioral measure. The logistic regression did not reveal a significant interaction effect between video condition, email race, and response rate. However, the logistic regression revealed a main effect that trended toward significance such that the email was more likely returned to the sender when it was addressed to a White name (51%) compared to a Black name (29%), β =-.33, p <.07, d = .69. Implications for educational purposes in a school setting are discussed. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to my advisor, Dr. Mark D. Wood. Without his understanding and empathy, this work would have been incalculably more difficult. His mentorship is unmatched. Thank you to the Thesis Committee, Dr.'s Paul Bueno de Mesquita and Donna Schwartz Barcott. Their time reviewing this information and serving on the committee is valued and appreciated. Thank you to Defense Chair, Dr. William Krieger. Thank you to the hard working research assistants: Sara and Kristen. Thank you to the University of Rhode Island, Department of Psychology and the URI Graduate School for their assistance completing this degree and for the opportunity to earn this degree. Thank you to my mother, Bonnie, my father, Stephen, and my brother, Brian, for their unwavering support. And last, but not least, thank you to my wonderful partner, Katie, who has patiently encouraged and supported me throughout this long and difficult process. v

Implicit prejudice, and in particular, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), are paradigmatic examples of psychological concepts and research methods that have recently enjoyed great publicity and accessibility. However, little is known about the possible reflexive consequences of this popularization for the public understanding of prejudice, and by implication, for the formulation of social policy aimed at the reduction of prejudice and racism. Specifically, how does the public interpret and contextualize the claims of the IAT and implicit prejudice? With what social and political preoccupations does this operationalization of implicit prejudice resonate? Furthermore, how do members of the public experience and interpret the IAT as both a scientific instrument and as a bearer of psychological truth? In answer to these questions, this dissertation comprises a report of two empirical studies of public encounters with the IAT and the concepts of implicit prejudice. The first of these focused on popular responses to IAT research in the New York Times. Employing a discourse analytic approach to reader comments, it identified the social and psychological concerns against which the public makes sense of the IAT. In responding to the IAT, readers drew on skeptical and confessional discourses to position themselves reflexively in relation to its claims. I argue that these discourses constitute a space within which strong injunctions to self-scrutiny, impartiality and objectivity are established as moral-psychological ideals. Building on these findings, the second study examined the IAT as a discursive practice through a focus on the lived experience of taking the test. Recruited participants took the IAT, and were subsequently interviewed to elicit moment-by-moment accounts of this process. Hermeneutic-phenomenological analysis of these accounts revealed thematic concerns that both resonated with and augmented those in the analysis of public discourse. In particular, the IAT was experienced as a vivid demonstration of the operationalization of "implicit bias". I argue that the test embodies and communicates this paradigm to test-takers, and therefore functions as a psychological pedagogical tool. The dissertation closes by discussing the implications of these analyses for public understandings of, and responses to, prejudice.

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 2020

This article argues for a critical intervention in the popular discourse surrounding the analysis of implicit race bias as an anti-racism strategy. Also called unconscious race bias, implicit race bias provides a corporate-friendly lens for understanding the functions and operations of racism at the individual level. Based primarily in social psychology, the study of implicit race bias relies on the assumption that our unconscious negative and positive associations with people of different races are formed through various processes of socialization and can correspond with and impact our conscious race-based interactions. Recognizing the danger of popular understandings of race which neither consider nor account for race beyond the level of the individual, this article calls for the use of critical race theory (CRT) and critical pedagogy as tools to disrupt, interrogate, and deepen implicit race bias approaches. By bringing attention to questions of race power and inequity at the institutional, structural, and systemic levels as a precursor for taking up race at the individual level, I offer that CRT and critical pedagogy are indeed necessary for those looking to critically engage teaching and learning con

Racial evaluations have received considerable attention by researchers of implicit cognition, especially with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT measures associative biases in a relativistic manner, whereby attitudes toward a given racial category are compared to attitudes toward another. The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) is a new behavior analytic measure of cognition that may provide a less relativistic and more specific measure of cognitive repertoires. The current study utilized a race IRAP to assess evaluative biases among a balanced sample of Black and White undergraduates. The race IRAP was administered twice in a row in conjunction with a collection of self-report measures of racial attitudes. Results for reliability and convergent validity were generally supportive. Furthermore, observed biases appeared to reflect positive in-group biases rather than derogatory attitudes toward the out-group, an effect that would not be apparent with a similarly configured race IAT. Future research may benefit from consideration of the evaluative content of the IRAP as well as the racial demographics for both the participants and the experimenters.

Teaching of Psychology, 2013

People are reluctant to admit they harbor implicit biases. Students (N ¼ 68) from four social psychology courses completed an assignment designed to raise awareness about implicit biases. After completing an Implicit Association Test (IAT), students answered six essay questions, read two articles on the IAT, and answered five additional essay questions. Before the readings, students showed uncertainty about the IAT's ability to measure their implicit attitudes. The main reason students gave in support of or against the IAT's validity was the congruency between their implicit and explicit attitudes. After the readings, more students agreed that the IAT measured prejudice. This assignment was a useful tool in raising students' awareness about their unconscious biases and teaching them about implicit attitudes.