‘I'm happy to own my implicit biases’: Public encounters with the implicit association test

Abstract

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 towards racialized others, eliciting accounts that took the form of psychomoral 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.

Fostering Empathy, Implicit Bias Mitigation, and Compassionate Behavior in a Medical Humanities Course

“…Our methods resemble a pedagogy of discomfort [13,14], and our results mirror the transformative learning model of Sukhera and associates to be published soon [38]. In this model, a disorienting experience, such as service learning and discovery of an unconscious bias, leads to self-examination and critical reflection, as performed by our prospective medical students.…”

“…Implicit bias remains a nearly intractable problem in the US [14,32,33] and elsewhere [34,35]. Healthcare professionals hold negative attitudes toward people of color and discriminate against them.…”

“…For these reasons, we investigated whether increases in students' RC are associated with improved cognitive empathy scores. We also wondered whether an increased emphasis on understanding the nature of implicit bias in our Medical Humanities course, and the resultant pedagogy of discomfort [13,14], would cause students to accept the possibility that unconscious bias might affect some of their clinical decisions or behaviors as healthcare professionals. In our prior study, students reported bias mitigation in their written reflections on service learning, so that bias needed to become explicit rather than remain implicit [8].…”

Impact of a Pandemic and Remote Learning on Team Development and Elements of Compassion in Prospective Medical Students Taking a Medical Humanities Course

“…Our approach is similar to a “pedagogy of discomfort” [ 41 , 42 ], and our data reflect Sukhera and associates’ “transformative learning model” [ 43 ]. They found that a disorienting experience, such as a pandemic, unanticipated remote learning, service-learning, or new awareness of implicit bias, causes critical reflection, as we observed in our students.…”

Attitudes and Tourists’ Sustainable Behavior: An Overview of the Literature and Discussion of Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues

“…Kim 2011; D. Kim and Chen 2011; Yang, He, and Gu 2012; for a recent discussion of the implications of the use of this method, see Yen, Durrheim, and Tafarodi 2018).…”