Implicit racial bias across ethnoracial groups in Canada and the United States and Black mental health.

Abstract

Black Canadians and Americans experience disparities in access to quality mental health care and mental health overall. Implicit biases are unconscious, automatically activated attitudes and stereotypes, with the potential to yield racist behaviors. To date, research has focused on health provider bias and resultant consequences in the decision-making/treatment of racialized groups. Little has been done to characterize implicit anti-Black biases within White and non-White members of the general population or examine the relationship between biases and Black people's mental wellness. Black-White Implicit Association Test (BW-IAT; n = 450,185) data were used to detect the presence of implicit biases within 10 ethnoracial groups and compare Bias Scores between Canada and the United States. Mean BW-IAT Bias Scores were also assessed against participant explicit biases using warmth ratings and the Modern Racism Scale (MRS). Finally, state-level BW-IAT scores were used to predict state-based Black American mental health-related mortality using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) data set. Findings indicated: (a) the most ethnoracial groups have anti-Black implicit biases; (b) Canadian and American implicit biases are near identical; (c) explicit and implicit Bias Scores are weakly related, and Canadian and American explicit biases are near identical; and (d) implicit bias predicts poor mental health outcomes for Black Americans, even when controlling for explicit bias and White outcomes. This work underscores the need to dismantle ideologies of White superiority and the resultant oppressive attitudes, stereotypes, and behaviors present in the general population. This work also calls for accessible, province-level, race-based mental health data on underserved groups. Public Significance StatementTo date, few researchers have explored the impact of implicit biases on the health of people of color outside of a medical setting. Fewer still have considered the relationship between implicit biases held by the general population, both White and non-White, and Black peoples' mental health. This study is among the first to focus on the measurable existence of implicit racial biases within ethnoracial groups toward Black persons in the United States and Canada, as well as the possible impacts of implicit biases on the mental health of Black people in America.

Performative shooting exercises do not predict real-world racial bias in police officers.

“…Although there have been some criticisms of the IAT and what it is actually measuring (Payne & Hannay, 2021; Schimmack, 2021), there is growing evidence on the external validity of the IAT to measure implicit bias (Greenwald et al, 2019). When scores are aggregated regionally, the IAT has been found to be a potent predictor of health outcomes (Gran-Ruaz et al, in press). Anti-Black bias as measured by the BW-IAT among White residents predicts heart failure, cancer, stroke, and poor birth outcomes among Black residents, above and beyond the effects of explicit bias (Orchard & Price, 2017; Splan et al, 2021).…”

A call to use psychology for anti-racist jury selection.

“…This is because, owing to pervasive racist social messages, POC may also harbor negative stereotypes and implicit racial biases about other ethnoracial groups or even their own group. For example, research shows that people of East Asian heritage have on average just as much implicit bias toward Black people as non-Hispanic White Americans (Gran-Ruaz et al, 2022), and even Black people can have internalized anti-Black racism (Pyke, 2010). This problem appears to be particularly common among POC who had White parents (Pyke, 2010; Steketee, 2019).…”

Preparing student therapists to work with Black mental health: Attending to the social and institutional organization of “culture” in Canadian counsellor education.

“…This is true for implicit bias as well. In Canada, anti-Black implicit bias was correlated with poor mental health outcomes (Gran-Ruaz et al, 2022). This work underscores the need to dismantle ideologies of White superiority and the resultant oppressive attitudes, stereotypes, and behaviours present in the general population (Gran-Ruaz et al, 2022).…”