‘I love women’: an explicit explanation of implicit bias test results

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in implicit bias. Driving this concern is the thesis, apparently established by tests such as the IAT, that people who hold egalitarian explicit attitudes and beliefs are often influenced by implicit mental processes that operate independently from, and are...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Synthese (Dordrecht) 2021-12, Vol.199 (5-6), p.13861-13882
Main Authors: Reis-Dennis, Samuel, Yao, Vida
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Belief & doubt
Bias
Cognition
Dissertations & theses
Education
Egalitarianism
Emotions
Epistemology
Influence
Logic
Metaphysics
Original Research
Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Science
Prejudice
Psychology
Racism
Sexism
Social psychology
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Summary:Recent years have seen a surge of interest in implicit bias. Driving this concern is the thesis, apparently established by tests such as the IAT, that people who hold egalitarian explicit attitudes and beliefs are often influenced by implicit mental processes that operate independently from, and are largely insensitive to, their explicit attitudes. We argue that implicit bias testing in social and empirical psychology does not, and without a fundamental shift in focus could not, establish this startling thesis. We suggest that implicit bias research has been conducted in light of inadequate theories of racism and sexism. As a result, such testing has not sufficiently controlled for subjects’ prejudiced explicit beliefs and emotions, and has not ruled out the possibility that explicit prejudice best explains test subjects’ discriminatory associations and behavior.
ISSN:0039-7857
1573-0964
DOI:10.1007/s11229-021-03401-3