Implicit-Bias Remedies: Treating Discriminatory Bias as a Public-Health Problem.

Accumulated findings from studies in which implicit-bias measures correlate with discriminatory judgment and behavior have led many social scientists to conclude that implicit biases play a causal role in racial and other discrimination. In turn, that belief has promoted and sustained two lines of work to develop remedies: (a) individual treatment interventions expected to weaken or eradicate implicit biases and (b) group-administered training programs to overcome biases generally, including implicit biases. Our review of research on these two types of sought remedies finds that they lack established methods that durably diminish implicit biases and have not reproducibly reduced discriminatory consequences of implicit (or other) biases. That disappointing conclusion prompted our turn to strategies based on methods that have been successful in the domain of public health. Preventive measures are designed to disable the path from implicit biases to discriminatory outcomes. Disparity-finding methods aim to discover disparities that sometimes have obvious fixes, or that at least suggest where responsibility should reside for developing a fix. Disparity-finding methods have the advantage of being useful in remediation not only for implicit biases but also systemic biases. For both of these categories of bias, causes of discriminatory outcomes are understood as residing in large part outside the conscious awareness of individual actors. We conclude with recommendations to guide organizations that wish to deal with biases for which they have not yet found solutions.

Best research practices for using the Implicit Association Test.

Interest in unintended discrimination that can result from implicit attitudes and stereotypes (implicit biases) has stimulated many research investigations. Much of this research has used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure association strengths that are presumed to underlie implicit biases. It had been more than a decade since the last published treatment of recommended best practices for research using IAT measures. After an initial draft by the first author, and continuing through three subsequent drafts, the 22 authors and 14 commenters contributed extensively to refining the selection and description of recommendation-worthy research practices. Individual judgments of agreement or disagreement were provided by 29 of the 36 authors and commenters. Of the 21 recommended practices for conducting research with IAT measures presented in this article, all but two were endorsed by 90% or more of those who felt knowledgeable enough to express agreement or disagreement; only 4% of the totality of judgments expressed disagreement. For two practices that were retained despite more than two judgments of disagreement (four for one, five for the other), the bases for those disagreements are described in presenting the recommendations. The article additionally provides recommendations for how to report procedures of IAT measures in empirical articles.

Meta-Analytic Use of Balanced Identity Theory to Validate the Implicit Association Test.

This meta-analysis evaluated theoretical predictions from balanced identity theory (BIT) and evaluated the validity of zero points of Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report measures used to test these predictions. Twenty-one researchers contributed individual subject data from 36 experiments (total N = 12,773) that used both explicit and implicit measures of the social-cognitive constructs. The meta-analysis confirmed predictions of BIT's balance-congruity principle and simultaneously validated interpretation of the IAT's zero point as indicating absence of preference between two attitude objects. Statistical power afforded by the sample size enabled the first confirmations of balance-congruity predictions with self-report measures. Beyond these empirical results, the meta-analysis introduced a within-study statistical test of the balance-congruity principle, finding that it had greater efficiency than the previous best method. The meta-analysis's full data set has been publicly archived to enable further studies of interrelations among attitudes, stereotypes, and identities.

Early implicit-explicit discrepancies in self-esteem as correlates of childhood depressive symptoms.

This longitudinal study examined early social-cognitive markers that might be associated with the emergence of childhood depression and anxiety. At 5 years of age, 137 children completed an implicit self-esteem measure. At 9 years of age, the same children completed measures of implicit self-esteem, explicit self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Two novel findings emerged. First, higher implicit self-esteem at age 5 than explicit self-esteem at age 9 (implicit > explicit discrepancy) was associated with depressive symptoms at age 9, but not with symptoms of anxiety. Second, this cross-age implicit > explicit discrepancy was associated with depressive symptoms more strongly than was the same implicit > explicit discrepancy measured concurrently at age 9. The overall pattern suggests that the appearance of depressive symptoms in children is associated with discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-esteem and not just lower levels of implicit self-esteem or lower levels of explicit self-esteem taken alone. It is the direction and discrepancy across time that is particularly informative, such that discrepancies between early implicit representations and later explicit reports of self-worth reflect a developmental pathway associated with elevated risk for depressive symptoms. Taken altogether, this study illustrates the benefits of combining work in developmental, child-clinical, and social psychology to provide a more complete view of the developing child. We believe that combining implicit and explicit measures of self-esteem across developmental time points can be used to examine early markers of depression in children at younger ages than typically possible with explicit measures alone.

Implicit Social Cognition.

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.

Relationship between the Implicit Association Test and intergroup behavior: A meta-analysis.

Using data from 217 research reports (N = 36,071, compared to 3,471 and 5,433 in previous meta-analyses), this meta-analysis investigated the conceptual and methodological conditions under which Implicit Association Tests (IATs) measuring attitudes, stereotypes, and identity correlate with criterion measures of intergroup behavior. We found significant implicit-criterion correlations (ICCs) and explicit-criterion correlations (ECCs), with unique contributions of implicit (ß = .14) and explicit measures (ß = .11) revealed by structural equation modeling. ICCs were found to be highly heterogeneous, making moderator analyses necessary. Basic study features or conceptual variables did not account for any heterogeneity: Unlike explicit measures, implicit measures predicted for all target groups and types of behavior, and implicit, but not explicit, measures were equally associated with behaviors varying in controllability and conscious awareness. However, ICCs differed greatly by methodological features: Studies with a declared focus on ICCs, standard IATs rather than variants, high-polarity attributes, behaviors measured in a relative (two categories present) rather than absolute manner (single category present), and high implicit-criterion correspondence (k = 13) produced a mean ICC of r = .37. Studies scoring low on these variables (k = 6) produced an ICC of r = .02. Examination of methodological properties-a novelty of this meta-analysis-revealed that most studies were vastly underpowered and analytic strategies regularly ignored measurement error. Recommendations, along with online applications for calculating statistical power and internal consistency are provided to improve future studies on the implicit-criterion relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Unconscious conditioning: Demonstration of existence and difference from conscious conditioning.

Unpronounceable strings of 4 consonants (conditioned stimuli: CSs) were consistently followed by familiar words belonging to 1 of 2 opposed semantic categories (unconditioned stimuli: USs). Conditioning, in the form of greater accuracy in rapidly classifying USs into their categories, was found when visually imperceptible (to most subjects) CSs occupied ≥58 ms of a 75-ms CS-US interval. When clearly visible CSs were presented in a 375 ms CS-US interval, conditioning was strongly correlated with measures of contingency awareness, and did not occur in the absence of that awareness. These experiments delineated 2 forms of conditioning: Unconscious conditioning occurred with a brief CS-US interval, with an effectively masked conditioned stimulus (CS), and with no reportable knowledge of the contingent CS-US relation. Conscious conditioning occurred with a substantially longer CS-US interval, a perceptible CS, and with subjects' reportable knowledge of the contingent CS-US relation. (PsycINFO Database Record

The implicit revolution: Reconceiving the relation between conscious and unconscious.

In the 1970s, memory researchers converged on interesting phenomena observed in Korsakoff-syndrome amnesic patients. These patients' performances on difficult tasks were reliably improved by practice sessions from which they could recall nothing. Related findings of indirect memory effects in college students triggered wide attention to phenomena that, in 1985, were first identified as implicit memory. Within a decade, the indirect measurement methods of implicit memory research had spread to social psychologists' studies of attitudes and stereotypes. After another two decades, the methods and findings of this developing revolution have revised understanding of how past learning, operating in ways that bypass conscious awareness, nevertheless shapes conscious judgment and perception. This revolution in psychological thinking is on the cusp of reconceiving the relation between unconscious and conscious mental process. Further, it demands researchers' careful attention to justification for many self-report measures that are now routinely treated as face-valid. (PsycINFO Database Record

Earl Busby Hunt (1933-2016).

Presents an obituary for Earl Busby Hunt-known to family, friends, and colleagues as Buz-who died at home in Bellevue, Washington, on April 12, 2016. Buz specialized in artificial intelligence (AI) and had a main focus in cognitive psychology. In fact he was editor of Cognitive Psychology from 1974-1987. Buz's honors include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Intelligence Research (2009) and the Cattell Award from the Association for Psychological Science (2011) for lifetime contributions. (PsycINFO Database Record

Implicit Racial Bias in Medical School Admissions.

PROBLEM: Implicit white race preference has been associated with discrimination in the education, criminal justice, and health care systems and could impede the entry of African Americans into the medical profession, where they and other minorities remain underrepresented. Little is known about implicit racial bias in medical school admissions committees. APPROACH: To measure implicit racial bias, all 140 members of the Ohio State University College of Medicine (OSUCOM) admissions committee took the black-white implicit association test (IAT) prior to the 2012-2013 cycle. Results were collated by gender and student versus faculty status. To record their impressions of the impact of the IAT on the admissions process, members took a survey at the end of the cycle, which 100 (71%) completed. OUTCOMES: All groups (men, women, students, faculty) displayed significant levels of implicit white preference; men (d = 0.697) and faculty (d = 0.820) had the largest bias measures (P < .001). Most survey respondents (67%) thought the IAT might be helpful in reducing bias, 48% were conscious of their individual results when interviewing candidates in the next cycle, and 21% reported knowledge of their IAT results impacted their admissions decisions in the subsequent cycle. The class that matriculated following the IAT exercise was the most diverse in OSUCOM's history at that time. NEXT STEPS: Future directions include preceding and following the IAT with more robust reflection and education on unconscious bias. The authors join others in calling for an examination of bias at all levels of academic medicine.

Statistically small effects of the Implicit Association Test can have societally large effects.

Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, and Banaji (2009; GPUB hereafter) reported an average predictive validity correlation of r̄ = .236 for Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures involving Black-White racial attitudes and stereotypes. Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Jaccard, and Tetlock (2013; OMBJT) reported a lower aggregate figure for correlations involving IAT measures (r̄ = .148). The difference between the estimates of the 2 reviews was due mostly to their use of different policies for including effect sizes. GPUB limited their study to findings that assessed theoretically expected attitude-behavior and stereotype-judgment correlations along with others that the authors expected to show positive correlations. OMBJT included a substantial minority of correlations for which there was no theoretical expectation of a predictive relationship. Regardless of inclusion policy, both meta-analyses estimated aggregate correlational effect sizes that were large enough to explain discriminatory impacts that are societally significant either because they can affect many people simultaneously or because they can repeatedly affect single persons.

Understanding and using the brief Implicit Association Test: recommended scoring procedures.

A brief version of the Implicit Association Test (BIAT) has been introduced. The present research identified analytical best practices for overall psychometric performance of the BIAT. In 7 studies and multiple replications, we investigated analytic practices with several evaluation criteria: sensitivity to detecting known effects and group differences, internal consistency, relations with implicit measures of the same topic, relations with explicit measures of the same topic and other criterion variables, and resistance to an extraneous influence of average response time. The data transformation algorithms D outperformed other approaches. This replicates and extends the strong prior performance of D compared to conventional analytic techniques. We conclude with recommended analytic practices for standard use of the BIAT.

With malice toward none and charity for some: ingroup favoritism enables discrimination.

Dramatic forms of discrimination, such as lynching, property destruction, and hate crimes, are widely understood to be consequences of prejudicial hostility. This article focuses on what has heretofore been only an infrequent countertheme in scientific work on discrimination-that favoritism toward ingroups can be responsible for much discrimination. We extend this counterthesis to the strong conclusion that ingroup favoritism is plausibly more significant as a basis for discrimination in contemporary American society than is outgroup-directed hostility. This conclusion has implications for theory, research methods, and practical remedies.

Overweight people have low levels of implicit weight bias, but overweight nations have high levels of implicit weight bias.

Although a greater degree of personal obesity is associated with weaker negativity toward overweight people on both explicit (i.e., self-report) and implicit (i.e., indirect behavioral) measures, overweight people still prefer thin people on average. We investigated whether the national and cultural context - particularly the national prevalence of obesity - predicts attitudes toward overweight people independent of personal identity and weight status. Data were collected from a total sample of 338,121 citizens from 71 nations in 22 different languages on the Project Implicit website (https://implicit.harvard.edu/) between May 2006 and October 2010. We investigated the relationship of the explicit and implicit weight bias with the obesity both at the individual (i.e., across individuals) and national (i.e., across nations) level. Explicit weight bias was assessed with self-reported preference between overweight and thin people; implicit weight bias was measured with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The national estimates of explicit and implicit weight bias were obtained by averaging the individual scores for each nation. Obesity at the individual level was defined as Body Mass Index (BMI) scores, whereas obesity at the national level was defined as three national weight indicators (national BMI, national percentage of overweight and underweight people) obtained from publicly available databases. Across individuals, greater degree of obesity was associated with weaker implicit negativity toward overweight people compared to thin people. Across nations, in contrast, a greater degree of national obesity was associated with stronger implicit negativity toward overweight people compared to thin people. This result indicates a different relationship between obesity and implicit weight bias at the individual and national levels.

I drink therefore I am: validating alcohol-related implicit association tests.

There is an imperative to predict hazardous drinking among college students. Implicit measures have been useful in predicting unique variance in drinking and alcohol-related problems. However, they have been developed to test different theories of drinking and have rarely been directly compared with one another. Thus, their comparative utility is unclear. The current study examined five alcohol-related variants of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in a sample of 300 undergraduates and sought to establish their predictive validity. Results indicated that the Drinking Identity IAT, which measured associations of "drinker" with "me," was the most consistent predictor of alcohol consumption, alcohol problems, and alcohol cravings. It also had the highest internal consistency and test-retest reliability scores. The results for the Alcohol Excitement and Alcohol Approach IATs were also promising, but their psychometric properties were less consistent. Although the two IATs were positively correlated with all of the drinking outcome variables, they did not consistently predict unique variance in those variables after controlling for explicit measures. They also had relatively lower internal consistencies and test-retest reliabilities. Ultimately, results suggested that implicit drinking identity may be a useful tool for predicting alcohol consumption, problems, and cravings and a potential target for prevention and intervention efforts.

The associations of clinicians' implicit attitudes about race with medical visit communication and patient ratings of interpersonal care.

OBJECTIVES: We examined the associations of clinicians' implicit attitudes about race with visit communication and patient ratings of care. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study of 40 primary care clinicians and 269 patients in urban community-based practices, we measured clinicians' implicit general race bias and race and compliance stereotyping with 2 implicit association tests and related them to audiotape measures of visit communication and patient ratings. RESULTS: Among Black patients, general race bias was associated with more clinician verbal dominance, lower patient positive affect, and poorer ratings of interpersonal care; race and compliance stereotyping was associated with longer visits, slower speech, less patient centeredness, and poorer ratings of interpersonal care. Among White patients, bias was associated with more verbal dominance and better ratings of interpersonal care; race and compliance stereotyping was associated with less verbal dominance, shorter visits, faster speech, more patient centeredness, higher clinician positive affect, and lower ratings of some aspects of interpersonal care. CONCLUSIONS: Clinician implicit race bias and race and compliance stereotyping are associated with markers of poor visit communication and poor ratings of care, particularly among Black patients.

The influence of implicit bias on treatment recommendations for 4 common pediatric conditions: pain, urinary tract infection, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and asthma.

OBJECTIVES: We examined the association between pediatricians' attitudes about race and treatment recommendations by patients' race. METHODS: We conducted an online survey of academic pediatricians (n = 86). We used 3 Implicit Association Tests to measure implicit attitudes and stereotypes about race. Dependent variables were recommendations for pain management, urinary tract infections, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and asthma, measured by case vignettes. We used correlational analysis to assess associations among measures and hierarchical multiple regression to measure the interactive effect of the attitude measures and patients' race on treatment recommendations. RESULTS: Pediatricians' implicit (unconscious) attitudes and stereotypes were associated with treatment recommendations. The association between unconscious bias and patient's race was statistically significant for prescribing a narcotic medication for pain following surgery. As pediatricians' implicit pro-White bias increased, prescribing narcotic medication decreased for African American patients but not for the White patients. Self-reported attitudes about race were associated with some treatment recommendations. CONCLUSIONS: Pediatricians' implicit attitudes about race affect pain management. There is a need to better understand the influence of physicians' unconscious beliefs about race on pain and other areas of care.

There Is Nothing So Theoretical as a Good Method.

This article documents two facts that are provocative in juxtaposition. First: There is multidecade durability of theory controversies in psychology, demonstrated here in the subdisciplines of cognitive and social psychology. Second: There is a much greater frequency of Nobel science awards for contributions to method than for contributions to theory, shown here in an analysis of the last two decades of Nobel awards in physics, chemistry, and medicine. The available documentation of Nobel awards reveals two forms of method-theory synergy: (a) existing theories were often essential in enabling development of awarded methods, and (b) award-receiving methods often generated previously inconceivable data, which in turn inspired previously inconceivable theories. It is easy to find illustrations of these same synergies also in psychology. Perhaps greater recognition of the value of method in advancing theory can help to achieve resolutions of psychology's persistent theory controversies.