Article

Implicit Bias as Automatic Behavior

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.

... Third, counter to the idea that surprise reactions in response to feedback about one's biases on indirect measures indicate unawareness (Banaji, 2011;Krickel, 2018;Ratliff & Smith, 2022), such surprise reactions can be explained as the product of statistical distortions in the calculation of numeric measurement scores (Wolsiefer et al., 2017) and arbitrary conventions in the verbal description of these scores (Gawronski et al., 2022b). These issues undermine interpretations of surprise reactions to bias feedback as evidence for unawareness, reconciling the apparent conflict with findings that people are highly accurate in predicting their biases on indirect measures (e.g., Hahn et al., 2014;Hahn & Gawronski, 2019;Morris & Kurdi, 2023;Rahmani Azad et al., 2023). ...
... If indirect measures do not capture unconscious bias, what do they measure? Despite disagreements on specific details, there is growing consensus that indirect measures capture biased behavior that is expressed without intention (De Houwer & Boddez, 2022;Gawronski et al., 2022b;Melnikoff & Kurdi, 2022;Ratliff & Smith, 2022; see also De Houwer, 2019). Yet, unintentional bias is not the same as unconscious bias, because people may be aware that their behavior toward a target is biased by the target's social group membership even when they do not intend to behave in a biased manner (Gawronski et al., 2022b). ...
Chapter
Full-text available
References to implicit bias are abundant in initiatives to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Common claims about implicit bias are that it is widespread (Greenwald et al., 2022) and pervasive (Nosek et al., 2007); that everyone has it (Staats, 2016); and that it is a major obstacle to DEI in virtually all aspects of life, including organizations (Jost et al., 2009), the legal system (Levinson & Smith, 2012), education (Staats, 2016), and medical care (Hall et al., 2015). But what exactly is implicit bias, and how does it matter for DEI? A closer look at the literature reveals that there is no straightforward answer to these questions, because (1) the term implicit bias has been used with different meanings and (2) the conclusions suggested by the available evidence differ depending on the meaning of the term. To provide a basis for informed discussions about implicit bias and its significance for DEI, the current chapter discusses two dominant ideas of what constitutes implicit bias, relevant empirical evidence, and the implications of this evidence for DEI. In the first part, I discuss (1) the idea that people can behave in a biased manner without being aware that their behavior is biased, (2) two potential mechanisms that may lead to biased behavior without awareness, and (3) the significance of these mechanisms for DEI. In the second part, I discuss (1) the idea that implicit bias is what is being measured by indirect measures of bias, (2) why bias on indirect measures is different from unconscious bias, (3) what is currently known about the relation between bias on indirect measures and discriminatory behavior, (4) recent accounts that treat bias on indirect measures as an indicator of systemic (rather than individual) bias, and (5) the implications of the available evidence for DEI. In the final section, I provide an integrative discussion of (1) what we know about implicit bias, (2) important questions that still need to be addressed, and (3) implications of the available evidence for initiatives to increase DEI. I conclude with a list of recommendations for researchers, practitioners, and educators.
... The AAB refers to the instinctive tendency to move toward positive stimuli and away from negative ones, often guided by perceived emotional valence, like pleasure or threat. In contrast, AIB involves unconscious associations or stereotypes toward groups or categories (e.g., race, gender) that shape perception and behavior without conscious awareness [42][43][44]. While the AAB arises in the immediate physical or emotional responses to stimuli, the implicit bias operates through ingrained attitudes that subtly influence decisions and judgments. ...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Approach and avoidance bias (AAB) describes automatic behavioral tendencies to react toward environmental stimuli regarding their emotional valence. Traditional setups have provided evidence but often lack ecological validity. The study of the AAB in naturalistic contexts has recently increased, revealing significant methodological challenges. This systematic review evaluates the use of virtual reality (VR) and real-world setups to study the AAB, summarizing methodological innovations and challenges. Methods: We systematically reviewed peer-reviewed articles employing VR and real-world setups to investigate the AAB. We analyzed experimental designs, stimuli, response metrics, and technical aspects to assess their alignment with research objectives and identify limitations. Results: This review included 14 studies revealing diverse methodologies, stimulus types, and novel behavioral responses, highlighting significant variability in design strategies and methodological coherence. Several studies used traditional reaction time measures yet varied in their application of VR technology and participant interaction paradigms. Some studies showed discrepancies between simulated and natural bodily actions, while others showcased more integrated approaches that preserved their integrity. Only a minority of studies included control conditions or acquired (neuro)physiological data. Conclusions: VR offers a potential ecological setup for studying the AAB, enabling dynamic and immersive interactions. Our results underscore the importance of establishing a coherent framework for investigating the AAB tendencies using VR. Addressing the foundational challenges of developing baseline principles that guide VR-based designs to study the AAB within naturalistic contexts is essential for advancing the AAB research and application. This will ultimately contribute to more reliable and reproducible experimental paradigms and develop effective interventions that help individuals recognize and change their biases, fostering more balanced behaviors.
... Our conclusions regarding unconsciousness are similarly difficult to reject considering evidence indicating that people can predict the outcomes of implicit measures 162 . Echoing our conclusion on this point, prominent implicit social cognition researchers have toned down their earlier claims that implicit measures capture mental contents that respondents are not aware of 87,88 , and a consensus seems to be emerging that intentionality is a more relevant automaticity feature instead 163,164 . ...
Article
Self-report measures directly ask respondents to report their mental content such as thoughts and feelings. By contrast, implicit measures aim to assess thoughts and feelings via performance indicators (for example, response times, error rates and response frequencies) under conditions that favor automatic processing. Implicit measures are now widely used within psychological science and beyond because they are assumed to be superior to self-reports in various regards. In this Perspective, we argue that, despite the enthusiasm for implicit measures, self-reports are most often the better measurement option. First, the use of implicit measures is often based on mistaken assumptions about unique disadvantages of self-reports. Second, self-reports have advantageous characteristics that are currently unmatched in implicit measures. We call for a more sophisticated use of self-reports and for caution when using implicit measures in basic and applied research.
... The IAT taps rapid associations that people have between social categories (e.g., gender, age, race) and other attributes (e.g., academic subjects, careers, personal traits). These associations do not require introspection, deliberation, or verbal expression (Greenwald & Lai, 2020;Schmader et al., 2022) and are often referred to as uncontrolled or "automatic" (De Houwer & Boddez, 2022;Ratliff & Smith, 2022). Implicit associations are theorized to be based on statistical patterns in the environment that are often picked up by people without ready introspective access or conscious awareness (Gawronski et al., 2022;Payne et al., 2019) and yet contribute to a person's internal working model of the social world. ...
Article
Full-text available
Based on data for N = 2,756 children (1,410 girls; Mage = 8.10 years) from 16 data sets spanning five nations, this study investigated relations between national gender disparities and children’s beliefs about gender and academic subjects. One national-level gender disparity involved inequalities in socioeconomic standing favoring adult males over females (U.N. Human Development Index). The other involved national-level gaps in standardized math achievement, favoring boys over girls (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study Grade 4). Three novel findings emerged. First, girls’ results from a Child Implicit Association Test showed that implicit associations linking boys with math and girls with reading were positively related to both national male advantages in socioeconomic standing and national boy advantages in Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Second, these relations were obtained for implicit but not explicit measures of children’s beliefs linking gender and academic subjects. Third, implicit associations linking gender to academic subjects increased significantly as a function of children’s age. We propose a psychological account of why national gender disparities are likely to influence children’s developing implicit associations about gender and academic subjects, especially for girls.
... The Race IAT was scored using the D 1 algorithm (Greenwald et al., 2003). In both studies, after participants completed the IAT, they were presented with one of seven types of feedback suggesting a slight, moderate, strong, or no automatic preference for one group over the other (see Ratliff & Smith, 2022, for more on feedback). To facilitate our statistical approach, we collapsed feedback into three categories indicating a pro-White preference, a pro-Black preference, or no preference. ...
Article
Full-text available
People who are more defensive about their feedback on the Race-Attitudes Implicit Association Test (IAT) are less willing to engage in anti-bias behaviors. Extending on this work, we statistically clarified defensiveness constructs to predict willingness to engage in anti-bias behaviors among people who received pro-White versus no-bias IAT feedback. We replicated the finding that U.S. Americans are generally defensive toward pro-White IAT feedback, and that more defensiveness predicts less willingness to engage in anti-bias behaviors. However, people who believed their pro-White IAT feedback was an inaccurate reflection of their “true attitudes” were more willing to engage in anti-bias behaviors compared with people who received no-bias IAT feedback. These results better illuminate the defensiveness construct suggesting that receiving self-threatening feedback about bias may motivate people’s willingness to engage in anti-bias behaviors in different ways depending on how people respond to that feedback.
... a consensus appears to be building that the conceptual focus of implicitness is more usefully organized around intentionality rather than awareness which, arguably, was the pri-mary focus for the first two decades of research using the IAT (see De Houwer & Boddez, 2022;Dovidio & Kunst, 2022;Krajbich, 2022;Melnikoff & Kurdi, 2022;Olson & Gill, 2022;K. A. Ratliff & Smith, 2022). Although GSR-DDM does make substantial progress in quantifying conceptualsimilarity and its role on IATs, it does not speak fully to the "implicit" (e.g., automatic, unconscious, unintentional) nature of the IAT (Corneille & Hütter, 2020;Gawronski et al., 2022). Traditionally, thresholds (θ) have been thought of as processes that are u ...
Article
Full-text available
The Implicit Association Test (IAT), like many behavioral measures, seeks to quantify meaningful individual differences in cognitive processes that are difficult to assess with approaches like self-reports. However, much like other behavioral measures, many IATs appear to show low test-retest reliability and typical scoring methods fail to quantify all of the decision-making processes that generate the overt task performance. Here, we develop a new modeling approach for IATs based on the geometric similarity representation (GSR) model. This model leverages both response times and accuracy on IATs to make inferences about representational similarity between the stimuli and categories. The model disentangles processes related to response caution , stimulus encoding, similarities between concepts and categories, and response processes unrelated to the choice itself. This approach to analyzing IAT data illustrates that the unrelia-bility in IATs is almost entirely attributable to the methods used to analyze data from the task: GSR model parameters show test-retest reliability around .80-.90, on par with reliable self-report measures. Furthermore, we demonstrate how model parameters result in greater validity compared to the IAT D-score, Quad model, and simple diffusion model contrasts, predicting outcomes related to intergroup contact and motivation. Finally, we present a simple point-and-click software tool for fitting the model, which uses a pre-trained neural network to estimate best-fit parameters of the GSR model. This approach allows easy and instantaneous fitting of IAT data with minimal demands on coding or technical expertise on the part of the user, making the new model accessible and effective.
Chapter
The concept of implicit bias – the idea that the unconscious mind might hold and use negative evaluations of social groups that cannot be documented via explicit measures of prejudice – is a hot topic in the social and behavioral sciences. It has also become a part of popular culture, while interventions to reduce implicit bias have been introduced in police forces, educational settings, and workplaces. Yet researchers still have much to understand about this phenomenon. Bringing together a diverse range of scholars to represent a broad spectrum of views, this handbook documents the current state of knowledge and proposes directions for future research in the field of implicit bias measurement. It is essential reading for those who wish to alleviate bias, discrimination, and inter-group conflict, including academics in psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, as well as government agencies, non-governmental organizations, corporations, judges, lawyers, and activists.
Article
Providing people with feedback about their intergroup biases is a central part of many diversity training and other bias‐education efforts. Although this practice may increase self‐awareness, people sometimes respond negatively to learning about their own biases. In the present review, we provide a framework for understanding when feedback about intergroup bias should lead to behavior change intentions, and when it can work against that goal. Specifically, we suggest that feedback about performance on measures of bias (e.g., the Implicit Association Test) will cause psychological discomfort to the extent that feedback about intergroup bias is: (1) discrepant from self‐reported attitudes, and (2) more personally or socially unacceptable than self‐reported attitudes. We then suggest two possible routes stemming from that psychological discomfort: If people accept personal responsibility for feedback, they will respond to psychological discomfort with compunction and direct efforts toward behavior and attitude change. By contrast, if people reject personal responsibility for feedback, they will respond defensively, derogating the feedback and trying to prove that the results are inaccurate. We use responses to feedback about implicit bias as a test case to demonstrate our model and discuss the current state of the literature on responding to IAT feedback. We also discuss interventions that can move people from defensiveness to compunction and open our metaphorical “file drawer” to discuss lessons learned.
Article
Endorsement of the thin beauty ideal increases risk for future body dissatisfaction and eating disorders among women. Visual-based media is theorized to be a central pathway through which the thin ideal is internalized. This internalization process results in formation of automatic pro-thin and anti-fat attitudes. However, it is often difficult to separate the contribution of visual-based media and other forms of communication in the creation of such attitudes. Using a novel auditory implicit association test, we show that women with congenital blindness with no previous exposure to body shapes develop automatic pro-thin and anti-fat attitudes to the same extent as sighted women. This result was replicated in studies conducted in two countries involving a combined total of 62 women with blindness and 80 sighted women. Results suggest that internalization of the thin ideal can occur without visual exposure to images of the thin beauty ideal or visual exposure to one's own body.
Article
Full-text available
There is a critical disconnect between scientific knowledge about the nature of bias and how this knowledge gets translated into organizational debiasing efforts. Conceptual confusion around what implicit bias is contributes to misunderstanding. Bridging these gaps is the key to understanding when and why antibias interventions will succeed or fail. Notably, there are multiple distinct pathways to biased behavior, each of which requires different types of interventions. To bridge the gap between public understanding and psychological research, we introduce a visual typology of bias that summarizes the process by which group-relevant cognitions are expressed as biased behavior. Our typology spotlights cognitive, motivational, and situational variables that affect the expression and inhibition of biases while aiming to reduce the ambiguity of what constitutes implicit bias. We also address how norms modulate how biases unfold and are perceived by targets. Using this typology as a framework, we identify theoretically distinct entry points for antibias interventions. A key insight is that changing associations, increasing motivation, raising awareness, and changing norms are distinct goals that require different types of interventions targeting individual, interpersonal, and institutional structures. We close with recommendations for antibias training grounded in the science of prejudice and stereotyping.
Article
Full-text available
The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is used in many areas of psychological science based on the assumption that it not only taps into attitudes and biases but does so without a person’s awareness. Across eight preregistered studies (N = 1603) plus meta-analyses we reexamined the ‘implicitness’ of AMP effects, and in particular, the idea that people are unaware of the prime’s influence on their evaluations. Results indicated that AMP effects and their predictive validity are primarily moderated by a subset of influence aware trials (within individuals), and high rates of influence awareness (between individuals). Interestingly, an individual’s influence awareness rate on one AMP predicted how they performed on an earlier AMP, even when the two assessed different attitude domains. Taken together, our results suggest that AMP effects are not implicit in the way that has been claimed, a finding that has implications for the procedure, past findings, and theory. All materials and data are available at osf.io/gv7cm.
Article
Full-text available
Research demonstrates that IATs are fakeable. Several indices [either slowing down or speeding up, and increasing errors or reducing errors in congruent and incongruent blocks; Combined Task Slowing (CTS); Ratio 150-10000] have been developed to detect faking. Findings on these are inconclusive but previous studies have used small samples suggesting they were statistically underpowered. Further, the results’ stability, the unique predictivity of indices, the advantage of combining indices, and the dependency of how faking success is computed have still to be examined. Therefore, we reanalyzed a large data set (N = 750) of fakers and non-fakers who completed an extraversion IAT. Results showed faking strategies depend on the direction of faking. It was possible to detect faking of low scores due to slowing down on the congruent block, and somewhat less with CTS – both strategies led to faking success. In contrast, the strategy of increasing errors on the congruent block was observed, but not successful in altering the IAT effect in the desired direction. Fakers of high scores could be detected due to slowing down on the incongruent block, increasing errors on the incongruent block, and with CTS – all three strategies led to faking success. The results proved stable in subsamples and generally across different computations of faking success. Using regression analyses and machine learning, increasing errors had the strongest impact on the classification. Apparently, fakers use various goal-dependent strategies and not all are successful. To detect faking, we recommend combining indices depending on the context (and examining convergence).
Article
Full-text available
For more than twenty-five years implicit measures have shaped research, theorizing, and intervention in psychological science. During this period, the development and deployment of implicit measures have been predicated on a number of theoretical, methodological, and applied assumptions. Yet these assumptions are frequently violated and rarely met. As a result, the merit of research using implicit measures has increasingly been cast into doubt. In this paper, we argue that future implicit measure research could benefit from adherence to four guidelines based on a functional approach wherein performance on implicit measures is described and analyzed as behavior emitted under specific conditions and captured in a specific measurement context. We unpack this approach and highlight recent work illustrating both its theoretical and practical value.
Article
Full-text available
Implicit evaluations are often assumed to reflect "unconscious attitudes". We review data from our lab to conclude that the truth of this statement depends on how one defines "unconscious". A trait definition of unconscious according to which implicit evaluations reflect cognitions that are introspectively inaccessible at all times appears to be inaccurate. However, when unconscious is defined as a state in which cognitions can be in at specific times, some data suggest that the cognitions reflected on implicit evaluations may sometimes unfold without direct awareness in that people seem to rarely pay attention to them. Additionally, people appear to be miscalibrated in their reports in that they construe even conscious biases in self-serving ways. This analysis suggests that implicit evaluations do not reflect unconscious cognitions per se, but awareness-independent cognitions that are often preconscious and miscalibrated. Discussion centers on the meaning of this analysis for theory and application.
Article
Full-text available
This article provides a comprehensive review of divergent conceptualizations of the "implicit" construct that have emerged in attitude research over the past two decades. In doing so, our goal is to raise awareness of the harmful consequences of conceptual ambiguities associated with this terminology. We identify three main conceptualizations of the "implicitness" construct: The procedural conceptualization (implicit as indirect), the functional conceptualization (implicit as automatic), and the mental theory conceptualization (implicit as associative), as well as two hybrid conceptualizations (implicit as indirect and automatic, implicit as driven by affective gut reactions). We discuss critical limitations associated with each conceptualization and explain that confusion also arises from their coexistence. We recommend discontinuing the usage of the "implicit" terminology in attitude research and research inspired by it. We offer terminological alternatives aimed at increasing both the precision of theorization and the practical value of future research.
Article
Full-text available
Implicit bias is often viewed as a hidden force inside people that makes them perform inappropriate actions. This perspective can induce resistance against the idea that people are implicitly biased and complicates research on implicit bias. I put forward an alternative perspective that views implicit bias as a behavioral phenomenon. more specifically, it is seen as behavior that is automatically influenced by cues indicative of the social group to which others belong. This behavioral perspective is less likely to evoke resistance because implicit bias is seen as something that people do rather than possess and because it clearly separates the behavioral phenomenon from its normative implications. Moreover, performance on experimental tasks such as the Implicit Association Test is seen an instance of implicitly biased behavior rather than a proxy of hidden mental biases. Because these tasks allow for experimental control, they provide ideal tools for studying the automatic impact of social cues on behavior, for predicting other instances of biased behavior, and for educating people about implicitly biased behavior. The behavioral perspective not only changes the way we think about implicit bias but also shifts the aims of research on implicit bias and reveals links with other behavioral approaches such as network modeling.
Article
Full-text available
Prejudice against social groups is a universal societal problem. This research investigated the role of psychological essentialist beliefs in predicting individual variation in prejudice levels in two large national samples. Study 1 (N = 583) showed that people with stronger essentialist beliefs had higher levels of implicit and explicit prejudice against African Americans. Study 2 (N = 3110) examined a mechanism by which people higher in essentialism form stronger intergroup attitudes using an experimental attitude induction. We demonstrated that essentialism facilitates explicit and, to some extent, implicit prejudice formation toward a novel group after brief exposure to positively or negatively valenced information about individuals belonging to that group. Our findings illustrate the importance of integrating individual difference and social cognitive approaches to understanding prejudice formation and maintenance.
Article
Full-text available
We investigated whether learning that one is biased predicts defensive reactions to feedback on Implicit Association Tests (IATs; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwarz, 1998). In an archival data set (Study 1, N = 219,426) and in an online experiment (Study 2, N = 1,225), people responded most defensively to feedback when: (a) their implicit and explicit attitudes were more discrepant than congruent, (b) their implicit attitudes aligned more with societal bias than did their explicit attitudes (e.g., a preference for Straight People relative to Gay People), and (c) they were majority group members (e.g., White participants in a race-relevant task) rather than minority group members. Next, in an online experiment (Study 3, N = 418), we demonstrated that receiving feedback indicating one is biased causes greater defensiveness. In turn, greater defensiveness, predicts lower intentions to engage in egalitarian behavior.
Article
Full-text available
Many people who endorse gender equality do not personally identify as feminists. The present research offers a novel explanation for this disconnect by examining people’s attitudes toward feminist prototypes—the central, representative feminist that comes to mind when they think of feminists as a group. Results from two samples support the hypothesis that both implicit and explicit attitudes toward feminist prototypes predict unique variance in feminist identity beyond gender-equality attitudes. Results from a second study show feminist identity to mediate between implicit prototypes and self-reported willingness to engage in feminist behaviors. Lastly, a third study shows feminist identity to mediate between implicit prototypes and actual feminist behavior. This is the first study to specifically examine the role of implicit attitudes and prototype favorability in understanding feminist identity and behavior, and the results suggest that promoting positive prototypes of feminists may be an effective route to encouraging feminist identity.
Article
Full-text available
Three preregistered studies investigated people’s judgments of whether someone with implicit racial bias is obligated to change their bias and to avoid discrimination based on that bias. Two studies showed that hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies—Belief in a Just World, Social Dominance Orientation, and political conservatism—predict lower obligation judgments. One study showed that hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies predicted greater protection of a potential discriminator; in another, they also predicted lower protection of a person who may be discriminated against. Lastly, one study showed that greater obligation judgments predicted greater blame of a person who discriminated based on implicit bias. Taken together, these four studies address how people’s ideologies relate to their obligation judgments for implicit racial bias and how those obligation judgments are related to blame for discrimination resulting from implicit racial bias.
Article
Full-text available
This research investigated judgements of moral responsibility for attitude-based discrimination, testing whether a wrongdoer's mental states - awareness and foresight - are central determinants of culpability. Participants read about and judged a target person who was described as consciously egalitarian, but harbouring negative attitudes that lead him to treat African Americans unfairly. Two studies showed that participants ascribed greater moral responsibility for discrimination when the target was aware of having negative attitudes than when he was unaware. Surprisingly, moral judgements were equally harsh towards a target who was explicitly aware that his bias could influence his behaviour as a target who was not. To explain this result, a second study showed that the path from awareness to moral responsibility was mediated by perceptions that the target had an obligation to foresee his discriminatory behaviour, but not by perceptions of the target's actual foresight. These results suggest that bias awareness influences moral judgements of those who engage in attitude-based discrimination because it obligates them to foresee harmful consequences. The current findings demonstrate that moral judges consider not just descriptive facts, but also normative standards regarding a wrongdoer's mental states. © 2015 The British Psychological Society.
Article
Full-text available
The present study used archival data to examine how White, Black, and biracial Black/White people respond to implicit attitude feedback suggesting that they harbor racial bias that does not align with their self-reported attitudes. The results suggested that people are generally defensive in response to feedback indicating that their implicit attitudes differ from their explicit attitudes. Among monoracial White and Black individuals, this effect was particularly strong when they learned that they were implicitly more pro-White than they indicated explicitly. By contrast, biracial Black/White individuals were defensive about large discrepancies in either direction (e.g., more pro-Black or more pro-White implicit attitudes). These results pinpoint one distinct difference between monoracial and biracial populations, and pave the way for future research to further explore how monoracial majority, minority, and biracial populations compare in other types of attitudes and responses to personal feedback.
Article
Full-text available
We introduce a theory of blame in five parts. Part 1 addresses what blame is: a unique moral judgment that is both cognitive and social, regulates social behavior, fundamentally relies on social cognition, and requires warrant. Using these properties, we distinguish blame from such phenomena as anger, event evaluation, and wrongness judgments. Part 2 offers the heart of the theory: the Path Model of Blame, which identifies the conceptual structure in which blame judgments are embedded and the information processing that generates such judgments. After reviewing evidence for the Path Model, we contrast it with alternative models of blame and moral judgment (Part 3) and use it to account for a number of challenging findings in the literature (Part 4). Part 5 moves from blame as a cognitive judgment to blame as a social act. We situate social blame in the larger family of moral criticism, highlight its communicative nature, and discuss the darker sides of moral criticism. Finally, we show how the Path Model of Blame can bring order to numerous tools of blame management, including denial, justification, and excuse.
Article
Full-text available
Research on implicit attitudes has raised questions about how well people know their own attitudes. Most research on this question has focused on the correspondence between measures of implicit attitudes and measures of explicit attitudes, with low correspondence interpreted as showing that people have little awareness of their implicit attitudes. We took a different approach and directly asked participants to predict their results on upcoming Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures of implicit attitudes toward 5 social groups. We found that participants were surprisingly accurate in their predictions. Across 4 studies, predictions were accurate regardless of whether implicit attitudes were described as true attitudes or culturally learned associations (Studies 1 and 2), regardless of whether predictions were made as specific response patterns (Study 1) or as conceptual responses (Studies 2-4), and regardless of how much experience or explanation participants received before making their predictions (Study 4). Study 3 further suggested that participants' predictions reflected unique insight into their own implicit responses, beyond intuitions about how people in general might respond. Prediction accuracy occurred despite generally low correspondence between implicit and explicit measures of attitudes, as found in prior research. Altogether, the research findings cast doubt on the belief that attitudes or evaluations measured by the IAT necessarily reflect unconscious attitudes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Article
Full-text available
Participants were given the opportunity to gain insight into their implicit racial biases by completing the Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). We examined participants' detection of their implicit racial biases, and their interpretation of and reactions to such biases. Further, we examined the potential moderating role of proneness to prejudice-related discrepancies. Results revealed strong implicit racial biases that were moderately related to explicit prejudice but unrelated to proneness to discrepancies. The majority of participants detected this bias, and they felt guilty about it to the extent that they attributed the bias to race-related factors. Participants with smaller discrepancies were more prone to misattribute their IAT bias to nonracial factors and not feeling guilty. These latter findings suggest that people who typically experience success at avoiding prejudiced responses might, paradoxically, be least likely to detect subtle racial biases when they do occur.
Article
Full-text available
A recent study of the affect misattribution procedure (AMP) found that participants who retrospectively reported that they intentionally rated the primes showed larger effect sizes and higher reliability. The study concluded that the AMP's validity depends on intentionally rating the primes. We evaluated this conclusion in three experiments. First, larger effect sizes and higher reliability were associated with (incoherent) retrospective reports of both (a) intentionally rating the primes and (b) being unintentionally influenced by the primes. A second experiment manipulated intentions to rate the primes versus targets and found that this manipulation produced systematically different effects. Experiment 3 found that giving participants an option to "pass" when they felt they were influenced by primes did not reduce priming. Experimental manipulations, rather than retrospective self-reports, suggested that participants make post hoc confabulations to explain their responses. There was no evidence that validity in the AMP depends on intentionally rating primes.
Article
Full-text available
Reviews evidence which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Ss are sometimes (a) unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, (b) unaware of the existence of the response, and (c) unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes. (86 ref)
Article
Full-text available
In the affective misattribution procedure (AMP), pairs of prime and target stimuli appear rapidly in succession. Attitudes toward the prime influence the evaluation of the target despite instructions to avoid this influence. Because this priming effect presumably happens without people's knowledge, the AMP is used to study automatic evaluation. Participants in four studies performed the AMP and reported their perception of the priming effect. The authors found that the priming reflected reliable and valid attitudes toward the primes mostly among participants who reported that the priming occurred and that they intentionally rated the primes instead of the targets. The authors conclude that the AMP hardly captures attitude effects that escape people's knowledge. The AMP's good psychometric qualities as an attitude measure rely mainly on a small subset of participants who believe that they intentionally caused the attitude effect.
Article
Full-text available
An implicit association test (IAT) measures differential association of 2 target concepts with an attribute. The 2 concepts appear in a 2-choice task (2-choice task (e.g., flower vs. insect names), and the attribute in a 2nd task (e.g., pleasant vs. unpleasant words for an evaluation attribute). When instructions oblige highly associated categories (e.g., flower + pleasant) to share a response key, performance is faster than when less associated categories (e.g., insect & pleasant) share a key. This performance difference implicitly measures differential association of the 2 concepts with the attribute. In 3 experiments, the IAT was sensitive to (a) near-universal evaluative differences (e.g., flower vs. insect), (b) expected individual differences in evaluative associations (Japanese + pleasant vs. Korean + pleasant for Japanese vs. Korean subjects), and (c) consciously disavowed evaluative differences (Black + pleasant vs. White + pleasant for self-described unprejudiced White subjects).
Article
Full-text available
Misattributions people make about their own affective reactions can be used to measure attitudes implicitly. Combining the logic of projective tests with advances in priming research, the affect misattribution procedure (AMP) was sensitive to normatively favorable and unfavorable evaluations (Experiments 1-4), and the misattribution effect was strong at both fast and slow presentation rates (Experiments 3 and 4). Providing further evidence of validity, the AMP was strongly related to individual differences in self-reported political attitudes and voting intentions (Experiment 5). In the socially sensitive domain of racial attitudes, the AMP showed in-group bias for Black and White participants. AMP performance correlated with explicit racial attitudes, a relationship that was moderated by motivations to control prejudice (Experiment 6). Across studies, the task was unaffected by direct warnings to avoid bias. Advantages of the AMP include large effect sizes, high reliability, ease of use, and resistance to correction attempts.
Article
Full-text available
Several theoretical views of automaticity are discussed. Most of these suggest that automaticity should be diagnosed by looking at the presence of features such as unintentional, uncontrolled/uncontrollable, goal independent, autonomous, purely stimulus driven, unconscious, efficient, and fast. Contemporary views further suggest that these features should be investigated separately. The authors examine whether features of automaticity can be disentangled on a conceptual level, because only then is the separate investigation of them worth the effort. They conclude that the conceptual analysis of features is to a large extent feasible. Not all researchers agree with this position, however. The authors show that assumptions of overlap among features are determined by the other researchers' views of automaticity and by the models they endorse for information processing in general.
Article
In the last 20 years, research on implicit social cognition has established that social judgments and behavior are guided by attitudes and stereotypes of which the actor may lack awareness. Research using the methods of implicit social cognition has produced the concept of implicit bias, which has generated wide attention not only in social, clinical, and developmental psychology, but also in disciplines outside of psychology, including business, law, criminal justice, medicine, education, and political science. Although this rapidly growing body of research offers prospects of useful societal applications, the theory needed to confidently guide those applications remains insufficiently developed. This article describes the methods that have been developed, the findings that have been obtained, and the theoretical questions that remain to be answered. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 71 is January 4, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Article
Implicit bias has garnered considerable public attention, with a number of behaviors (e.g., police shootings) attributed to it. Here, we present the results of 4 studies and an internal meta-analysis that examine how people reason about discrimination based on whether it was attributed to the implicit or explicit attitudes of the perpetrators. Participants' perceptions of perpetrator accountability, support for punishment, level of concern about the bias, and support for various efforts to reduce it (e.g., education) were assessed. Taken together, the results suggest that perpetrators of discrimination are held less accountable and often seen as less worthy of punishment when their behavior is attributed to implicit rather than to explicit bias. Moreover, at least under some circumstances, people express less concern about, and are less likely to support efforts to combat, implicit compared with explicit bias. Implications for efforts to communicate the science of implicit bias without undermining accountability for the discrimination it engenders are discussed.
Article
Mental state reasoning has been theorized as a core feature of how we navigate our social worlds, and as especially vital to moral reasoning. Judgments of moral wrong-doing and punish-worthiness often hinge upon evaluations of the perpetrator's mental states. In two studies, we examine how differences in cultural conceptions about how one should think about others' minds influence the relative importance of intent vs. outcome in moral judgments. We recruit participation from three societies, differing in emphasis on mental state reasoning: Indigenous iTaukei Fijians from Yasawa Island (Yasawans) who normatively avoid mental state inference in favor of focus on relationships and consequences of actions; Indo-Fijians who normatively emphasize relationships but do not avoid mental state inference; and North Americans who emphasize individual autonomy and interpreting others' behaviors as the direct result of mental states. In study 1, Yasawan participants placed more emphasis on outcome than Indo-Fijians or North Americans by judging accidents more harshly than failed attempts. Study 2 tested whether underlying differences in the salience of mental states drives study 1 effects by inducing Yasawan and North American participants to think about thoughts vs. actions before making moral judgments. When induced to think about thoughts, Yasawan participants shifted to judge failed attempts more harshly than accidents. Results suggest that culturally-transmitted concepts about how to interpret the social world shape patterns of moral judgments, possibly via mental state inference.
Article
A robust body of literature on the better-than-average effect suggests that people believe that they are better than the average others across a variety of domains. In two studies, we examined whether these better-than-average beliefs occur for bias related to stereotyping and prejudice. Moreover, we investigated the hypothesis that better-than-average beliefs will predict defensive responding to feedback indicating personal bias (e.g., preferences for majority groups, societally endorsed stereotypes). Specifically, we examined defensive responses to implicit attitude feedback. Study 1 examined this prediction using archival analysis of two large, online samples of participants completing a Weight-related Implicit Association Test (IAT). Study 2 conceptually replicated Study 1 using nine different, randomly assigned IATs and additional measures of defensiveness. In both studies, people generally believed that they were less biased than others. Moreover, people responded defensively to feedback indicating they were biased. This effect was moderated by better-than-average beliefs such that feedback indicating societally consistent bias was related to defensiveness most (and sometimes only) when people believed they were better than average initially. This work represents the first foray into examining the possible moderating role of social-comparative beliefs in predicting responses to implicit attitude feedback and spurs several important avenues for future research.
Article
Attitude transfer is the phenomenon whereby attitudes toward group members generalize automatically to new individuals in the same group. Although robust at the implicit level, people consciously adjust this guilt-by-association thinking when reporting explicit attitudes (Ranganath & Nosek, 200818. Ranganath , K. A. , & Nosek , B. A. ( 2008 ). Implicit attitude generalization occurs immediately; Explicit attitude generalization takes time . Psychological Science , 19 , 249 – 254 . doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02076.x [CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®]View all references). We tested whether people could control implicit attitude transfer if given proper motivation and instruction. We attempted to induce intentional control over attitude transfer using a variety of established methods, but in 8 studies, implicit attitudes formed and transferred to new group members. We conclude that implicit attitude transfer is a robust automatic phenomenon that is not disrupted by intentional control.
Article
In recent years as public opinion polls have shown a decline in racist responses, white Americans have strongly resisted school desegregation and affirmative action programs. Hence, there has been a debate over the extent to which racism has really declined. The theory of modern racism addresses these issues, distinguishing between old-fashioned racial beliefs recognized by everyone as racism and a new set of beliefs arising from the conflicts of the civil rights movement. The theory proposes that antiblack feeling remains high and has been displaced from the socially undesirable old-fashioned beliefs onto the new beliefs where the racism is not recognized. Three experiments were performed; results showed that, regardless of context, the old-fashioned items were perceived as more likely to reveal prejudice. The results are discussed in terms of their significance for opinion polling and continuing racial conflict in America.
Article
In an initial experiment, the behavior of one person had a stronger influence on implicit evaluations of another person from the same group when (a) the attitude was negative rather than positive and (b) the people were outgroup members rather than ingroup members. Explicitly, participants resisted these attitude transfer effects. In a second experiment, negative information formed less negative explicit attitudes when the target was Black than when the target was White, and participants were more vigilant not to transfer that negative attitude to a new Black person. Implicit attitudes, however, transferred to both Black and White targets. Positive information formed stronger positive explicit attitudes when the target was Black than when the target was White, and that evaluation transferred to another Black person both implicitly and explicitly. Even when deliberately resisting outgroup negativity in attitude formation and transfer, people appear unable to avoid it implicitly.
Article
What are the factors that influence everyday attributions of cause and blame? The current studies focus on sequences of events that lead to adverse outcomes, and examine people's cause and blame ratings for key events in these sequences. Experiment 1 manipulated the intentional status of candidate causes and their location in a causal chain. Participants rated intentional actions as more causal, and more blameworthy, than unintentional actions or physical events. There was also an overall effect of location, with later events assigned higher ratings than earlier events. Experiment 2 manipulated both intentionality and foreseeability. The preference for intentional actions was replicated, and there was a strong influence of foreseeability: actions were rated as more causal and more blameworthy when they were highly foreseeable. These findings are interpreted within two prominent theories of blame, [Shaver, K. G. (1985). The attribution of blame: Causality, responsibility, and blameworthiness. New York: Springer-Verlag] and [Alicke, M. D. (2000). Culpable control and the psychology of blame. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 556-574]. Overall, it is argued that the data are more consistent with Alicke's model of culpable control.
Article
We propose that social attitudes, and in particular implicit prejudice, bias people's perceptions of the facial emotion displayed by others. To test this hypothesis, we employed a facial emotion change-detection task in which European American participants detected the offset (Study 1) or onset (Study 2) of facial anger in both Black and White targets. Higher implicit (but not explicit) prejudice was associated with a greater readiness to perceive anger in Black faces, but neither explicit nor implicit prejudice predicted anger perceptions regarding similar White faces. This pattern indicates that European Americans high in implicit racial prejudice are biased to perceive threatening affect in Black but not White faces, suggesting that the deleterious effects of stereotypes may take hold extremely early in social interaction.
Article
Distinct automatic and controlled processes are presumed to influence social evaluation. Most empirical approaches examine automatic processes using indirect methods, and controlled processes using direct methods. We distinguished processes from measurement methods to test whether a process distinction is more useful than a measurement distinction for taxonomies of attitudes. Results from two studies suggest that automatic components of attitudes can be measured directly. Direct measures of automatic attitudes were reports of gut reactions (Study 1) and behavioral performance in a speeded self-report task (Study 2). Confirmatory factor analyses comparing two-factor models revealed better fits when self-reports of gut reactions and speeded self-reports shared a factor with automatic measures versus sharing a factor with controlled self-report measures. Thus, distinguishing attitudes by the processes they are presumed to measure (automatic vs. controlled) is more meaningful than distinguishing based on the directness of measurement.
The Cambridge handbook of implicit bias and racism
  • R H Fazio
  • J A Granados Samayoa
  • S T Boggs
  • J Ladanyi