The Importance Of Implicit Biases

Implicit bias is unconscious preferences or attitudes towards or against certain groups of people. Due to the fact that implicit bias is an unconscious process, it is difficult to determine what implicit biases people hold. Project implicit is a program dedicated to evaluating these implicit biases. The way that this group attempts to assess hidden biases that people hold is through something called the implicit association test or IAT. Test takers are put through a few tests where a word or picture is shown on the screen and they must press either “e” or “i” to sort the word into one of two categories. By tasking the person with completing this as fast as possible so that they are not thinking about their responses, it is assumed that they will pick the “easier” response more quickly than another response, which will therefore show how they subconsciously feel about, or towards, a specific group of people. The test gives a rating of how much bias a person has towards or against a group of people with the labels slight, moderate, or strong. By having the subconscious take over the decision-making responsibilities, the implicit bias of a person can be seen. Biases that

I found it interesting that while the tests may sometimes be accurate, they were not consistent enough to be used in professional situations and were only to be used for educational purposes. As the tests are essentially based on reaction time, if there are distractions that may rob the test taker of their attention, the results can easily be swayed. I took multiple tests that consisted of the gender-career IAT, black-white IAT, and fat-thin IAT. My reason for taking the gender and race IATs is that those two were required and took the weight IAT because I was curious as to what the test would say my preference was. I fully expected to recieve exactly, or close to, the results that the IATs gave