It’s likely that most of us have heard something about unconscious or implicit bias. This term refers to attitudes or stereotypes that occur largely outside of conscious awareness and control. Therefore, we are largely unaware of them. Studies support the idea that there is a relationship between implicit bias and real-world behavior. This should be of concern to us as Extension staff, because we are obligated to be inclusive and non-discriminatory in our hiring, workplace, and in our programs and activities.
But how do we learn about our implicit biases if we don’t know we have them? Getting familiar with your biases is the first step in moving diversity and inclusion forward. Acknowledging that you actually have biases is where you begin. For many well-meaning people this is problematic because it goes against their image of themselves. The goal is to move from well-meaning to well-doing. It’s hard to do that when your biases present themselves and you are unaware of them. When you are aware of your biases you can do something about them by using your explicit good beliefs to counter them. If we don’t counter our implicit biases they will be predictors of our behaviors.
One widely-used measure of implicit bias is the Implicit Association Test or IAT, which uses psychological measures to get around our unprejudiced self-images. The IAT measures the strength of associations between social groups (such as black and white people) and evaluations (such as good and bad). For instance, when taking a Race IAT, one rapidly sorts images of black and white people and positive and negative words. The main idea is that making a response is easier when items that are more closely related in memory share the same response key. In one part of the test, black faces and negative words share the same response key, while white faces and positive words share a different response key. In another part of the test, white faces and negative words share the same response key, and black faces and positive words share a different response key. The extent to which one is able to do the white + good version of the test more easily than the black + good version reflects an implicit pro-white bias. There are IATs for Gender-Career, Sexuality, Weight, Age, Religion, Disability, Mental Health, among others. More information and various tests can be found at Project Implicit.
Learning about the influence of implicit bias can be important in taking the first steps toward changing behavior and working toward eliminating disparities in our organization, communities and society.
Additional resources for learning about unconscious bias:
Invisible Gorilla Video
Video examples of cognitive biases and perception tests.
The Invisible Gorilla
Book by: Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
Everyday Bias
Book by: Howard Ross
Blindspot
Book by: Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald
