Measuring Implicit Bias
Several methods have been employed to measure implicit racism. Although explicit racism can be measured easily by surveying people's attitudes and beliefs about other races, implicit racism is by its nature more elusive, and requires more subtle strategies for its measurement.
One of the most prevalent ways of assessing implicit racism is through response latency procedures, such as the Implicit Association Task (IAT). In an IAT measuring implicit racism, individuals will be shown images and asked to press the same key for an image of a black person and or a word that indicates something good, and another key for an image of a white person or something bad. These pairs will also be tested in reverse order (one key for a white person or something good, another for a black person or something bad). The greater the disparity in reaction times and accuracy between the different pair groups, the greater implicit racism is measured in that individual.
Other ways of measuring implicit racism include physiological measures (such as tracking people's heart rates), memory tasks and indirect self-report measures. Collectively, these implicit attitude measures provide a strong means of identifying aversive racism. A truly nonprejudiced person will score well on both explicit racism measures and implicit racism measures. An aversive but not overt racist will instead score low on explicit measures, but not on implicit measures.
Read more about this topic: Aversive Racism
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