What is implicit bias?

Though explicit individual acts of racism are socially unacceptable, implicit biases, specifically biases pertaining to race, can affect behaviors and actions in the real world that can ultimately contribute to the cycle of systemic racism. As defined by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, implicit biases are “the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions and decisions in an unconscious manner,” meaning people can act on prejudices that they unknowingly possess. It is generally believed that every person develops implicit biases over the course of their lives due to the culmination of media consumption, personal experiences, culture, and upbringing that leads the brain to associate certain people/groups/objects with specific ideas.

For example, let’s say we lived in a society in which the villains in movies tended to wear orange clothing while the protagonists wear green clothing. Therefore, people in this society would associate orange with negative connotations and green with positive connotations. As a result, they might be unconsciously more inclined to buy green products over orange products and have more negative feelings toward people wearing orange clothing in comparison to people wearing green clothing.

In the US, people have developed bias against darker skin tones as a result of historical racism and mass white representation in the media, public offices, and other positions of power. As a result, people living in the US have grown to develop anti-black implicit biases based on culture and media consumption even if they believe in anti-racist ideologies. For example, a study in 2015 found that doctors, regardless of race, exhibited more positive attitudes toward whites and negative attitudes towards people of color.

Another study demonstrated that an action can be perceived as more violent when committed by a Black person in comparison to a white person, demonstrating the implicit association between Black people and violence. Similarly, a study using a shooter game showed that both civilians and police officers were more likely to shoot an armed Black person over an armed white, Hispanic or Asian person. They also were quicker to shoot an unarmed Black person than an unarmed white, Hispanic or Asian person. These examples demonstrate our need to recognize and regulate implicit biases to prevent the continuation of systemic racism. While these implicit biases may seem minute, a person’s implicit biases can cause them to discriminate against others, and individual actions can perpetuate systemic racism.