Understanding implicit bias (UIB): Experimental evaluation of an online bias education program.

Can people learn about implicit bias through an online course? We developed a brief (∼30 min) online educational program called Understanding Implicit Bias (UIB) consisting of four modules: (a) what is implicit bias? (b) the Implicit Association Test, (c) implicit bias and behavior, and (d) what can you do? In Experiment 1, we randomly assigned 6,729 college students across three separate samples to complete dependent measures before (control group) or after (intervention group) the UIB program. In Experiment 2, we randomly assigned 389 college students to complete the UIB program (intervention group) or two TED talks (control group) before dependent measures. Compared to control groups, the intervention groups had significantly higher objective knowledge about bias (ds = 0.39, 1.49) and subjective knowledge about bias (ds = 1.43, 2.61), awareness of bias (ds = 0.10, 0.54), and behavioral intentions to reduce bias (ds = 0.19, 0.84). These differences were again observed at a 2-week follow-up. These results suggest that brief online education about bias can affect knowledge and awareness of bias, as well as intentions to change behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Do physicians' implicit views of African Americans affect clinical decision making?

BACKGROUND: Total knee replacement (TKR) is a cost-effective treatment option for severe osteoarthritis (OA). While prevalence of OA is higher among blacks than whites, TKR rates are lower among blacks. Physicians' implicit preferences might explain racial differences in TKR recommendation. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the magnitude of implicit racial bias predicts physician recommendation of TKR for black and white patients with OA and to assess the effectiveness of a web-based instrument as an intervention to decrease the effect of implicit racial bias on physician recommendation of TKR. METHODS: In this web-based study, 543 family and internal medicine physicians were given a scenario describing either a black or white patient with severe OA refractory to medical treatment. Questionnaires evaluating the likelihood of recommending TKR, perceived medical cooperativeness, and measures of implicit racial bias were administered. The main outcome measures included TKR recommendation, implicit racial preference, and medical cooperativeness stereotypes measured with implicit association tests. RESULTS: Subjects displayed a strong implicit preference for whites over blacks (P < .0001) and associated "medically cooperative" with whites over blacks (P < .0001). Physicians reported significantly greater liking for whites over blacks (P < .0001) and reported believing whites were more medically cooperative than blacks (P < .0001). Participants reported providing similar care for white and black patients (P = .10) but agreed that subconscious biases could influence their treatment decisions (P < .0001). There was no significant difference in the rate of recommendation for TKR when the patient was black (47%) versus white (38%) (P = .439), and neither implicit nor explicit racial biases predicted differential treatment recommendations by race (all P > .06). Although participants were more likely to recommend TKR when completing the implicit association test before the decision, patient race was not significant in the association (P = .960). CONCLUSIONS: Physicians possessed explicit and implicit racial biases, but those biases did not predict treatment recommendations. Clinicians' biases about the medical cooperativeness of blacks versus whites, however, may have influenced treatment decisions.

Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions.

Many methods for reducing implicit prejudice have been identified, but little is known about their relative effectiveness. We held a research contest to experimentally compare interventions for reducing the expression of implicit racial prejudice. Teams submitted 17 interventions that were tested an average of 3.70 times each in 4 studies (total N = 17,021), with rules for revising interventions between studies. Eight of 17 interventions were effective at reducing implicit preferences for Whites compared with Blacks, particularly ones that provided experience with counterstereotypical exemplars, used evaluative conditioning methods, and provided strategies to override biases. The other 9 interventions were ineffective, particularly ones that engaged participants with others' perspectives, asked participants to consider egalitarian values, or induced a positive emotion. The most potent interventions were ones that invoked high self-involvement or linked Black people with positivity and White people with negativity. No intervention consistently reduced explicit racial preferences. Furthermore, intervention effectiveness only weakly extended to implicit preferences for Asians and Hispanics.

When ingroups aren't "In": perceived political belief similarity moderates religious ingroup favoritism.

Motivated thinking leads people to perceive similarity between the self and ingroups, but under some conditions, people may recognize that personal beliefs are misaligned with the beliefs of ingroups. In two focal experiments and two replications, we find evidence that perceived belief similarity moderates ingroup favoritism. As part of a charity donation task, participants donated money to a community charity or a religious charity. Compared to non-religious people, Christians favored religious charities, but within Christians, conservative Christians favored religious charities more than liberal Christians did. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the perceived political beliefs of the charity accounted for the differences in ingroup favoritism between liberal and conservative Christians. While reporting little awareness of the influence of ideology, Christian conservatives favored religious charities because they perceived them as conservative and liberal Christians favored the community charity because they perceived it as liberal.

Motivated independence? Implicit party identity predicts political judgments among self-proclaimed Independents.

Reporting an Independent political identity does not guarantee the absence of partisanship. Independents demonstrated considerable variability in relative identification with Republicans versus Democrats as measured by an Implicit Association Test (IAT; M = 0.10, SD = 0.47). To test whether this variation predicted political judgment, participants read a newspaper article describing two competing welfare (Study 1) or special education (Study 2) policies. The authors manipulated which policy was proposed by which party. Among self-proclaimed Independents, those who were implicitly Democratic preferred the liberal welfare plan, and those who were implicitly Republican preferred the conservative welfare plan. Regardless of the policy details, these implicit partisans preferred the policy proposed by "their" party, and this effect occurred more strongly for implicit than explicit plan preference. The authors suggest that implicitly partisan Independents may consciously override some partisan influence when making explicit political judgments, and Independents may identify as such to appear objective even when they are not.

Implicit social cognition: from measures to mechanisms.

Most human cognition occurs outside conscious awareness or conscious control. Some of these implicit processes influence social perception, judgment and action. The past 15 years of research in implicit social cognition can be characterized as the Age of Measurement because of a proliferation of measurement methods and research evidence demonstrating their practical value for predicting human behavior. Implicit measures assess constructs that are distinct, but related, to self-report assessments, and predict variation in behavior that is not accounted for by those explicit measures. The present state of knowledge provides a foundation for the next age of implicit social cognition: clarification of the mechanisms underlying implicit measurement and how the measured constructs influence behavior.

Cumulative and career-stage citation impact of social-personality psychology programs and their members.

Number of citations and the h-index are popular metrics for indexing scientific impact. These, and other existing metrics, are strongly related to scientists' seniority. This article introduces complementary indicators that are unrelated to the number of years since PhD. To illustrate cumulative and career-stage approaches for assessing the scientific impact across a discipline, citations for 611 scientists from 97 U.S. and Canadian social psychology programs are amassed and analyzed. Results provide benchmarks for evaluating impact across the career span in psychology and other disciplines with similar citation patterns. Career-stage indicators provide a very different perspective on individual and program impact than cumulative impact, and may predict emerging scientists and programs. Comparing social groups, Whites and men had higher impact than non-Whites and women, respectively. However, average differences in career stage accounted for most of the difference for both groups.