What is implicit bias?
Implicit bias, popularized by psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, is the result of natural patterns the human brains forms that provides humans with an evolutionary and social advantage, but also a root of unconscious bias that many are unaware they have (Banaji and Greenwad, 2013, p. 13).
How is it tested?
There are several ways to test for and measure implicit bias, but the most popular and well known way is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT is a computer test designed by Banaji and Greenwald that measures associations between attitudes and positive or negative responses, taking reaction time into account when measuring how bias unconsciously alters people’s mind (Levinson & Smith, 2012, p. 15). To learn more about Project Implicit, which is the site for the IAT, click here to visit the homepage.
The IAT is measured in associations and the association that is important for the criminal justice system is the “black = weapon” association, which has been found to be strong across all racial groups, though white Americans tend to have a stronger association than African Americans (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013, p. 105). This association measures how quickly people can associate being African American with having a weapon, which is relevant as “split second decisions have been shown to be sensitive to race,” namely as they can make a neutral object look like a gun, which has led to several widely-publicized police shootings of African Americans and protests (Kelly, 2008, p. 526). Thus, there is strong evidence that this association is highly present both in the minds of everyday Americans and law enforcement.
To take the race specific IAT (“black .= weapon”) click here.
Does the IAT actually predict if someone will discriminate?
Recently, some articles have been published that have questioned whether or not the IAT is effective in predicting if someone will discriminate. For example, a Wall Street Journal article (found here) raised concerns over the IAT by claiming that it would be “problematic to use it to classify persons as likely to engage in discrimination”, since the IAT has only been tested in a lab and not in real world settings (Mac Donald, 2017). Despite the concerns being raised, other studies have found strong results that support the IAT’s effectiveness in measuring discrimination. Namely, one study that looked at over one-hundred IAT studies across multiple versions of the test (race, gender, etc) found that the effectiveness of the test in predicting discrimination varied by each individual test, but for the race (“black = weapon”) association, the IAT was “more accurate than explicit measures in predicting behaviors, judgments, and physiological responses” (Levinson & Smith, 2012, p. 21). Based on these results, the hypothesis that the IAT is a good measure of uncovering implicit bias is further supported.
To learn more about implicit biases and the IAT, consider reading Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by the psychologists who designed the IAT, Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald. The information page for the book is here and a link to the book on Amazon is here.