Go test yourself!

Have you ever wondered why, when so many people claim not to hold discriminatory attitudes there still is evidence of bias in so many aspects of life? One possibility is that people are liars, that they say what they know is "PC" while believing strongly the opposite. Another is that although people can consciously and strongly believe they hold no biases (e.g. racism, sexism, heterosexism/homophobia), they hold implicit negative attitudes.

Want to test your implicit biases? You can do a demo or register as a participant here. More on the project and implicit biases is available on the project's information site.

(From "About Project Implicit")
Project Implicit
Findings observed in seven years of operation of the Project Implicit web site
* Implicit biases are pervasive. They appear as statistically "large" effects that are often shown by majorities of samples of Americans. Over 80% of web respondents show implicit negativity toward the elderly compared to the young; 75-80% of self-identified Whites and Asians show an implicit preference for racial White relative to Black.

* People are often unaware of their implicit biases. Ordinary people, including the researchers who direct this project, are found to harbor negative associations in relation to various social groups (i.e., implicit biases) even while honestly (the researchers believe) reporting that they regard themselves as lacking these biases.

* Implicit biases predict behavior. From simple acts of friendliness and inclusion to more consequential acts such as the evaluation of work quality, those who are higher in implicit bias have been shown to display greater discrimination. The published scientific evidence is rapidly accumulating. Over 200 published scientific investigations have made use of one or another version of the IAT.

* People differ in levels of implicit bias. Implicit biases vary from person to person - for example as a function of the person’s group memberships, the dominance of a person’s membership group in society, consciously held attitudes, and the level of bias existing in the immediate environment. This last observation makes clear that implicit attitudes are modified by experience.


Some news stories on implicit bias and its real world effects:
See No Bias (By Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, January 23, 2005)
Tests of ER trainees find signs of race bias in care (Stephen Smith, The Boston Globe, July 20, 2007)