WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a racist?
- A person who thinks their “race” or ethnic group is better than everyone else’s by virtue of genetic superiority, religion, customs, food, way of life, or beliefs.
- A person who fails to hire an applicant with the best qualifications if that person is from a different ethnic or religious group from the employer’s.
- A person who is part of an institution that requires him or her to systematically target and discriminate against African Americans or other minorities.
- A person of any race, ethnicity, or religion who feels more comfortable with others who are like themselves.
or:
- A person whose score on the Implicit Association Test (IAT) reveals that he or she is unconsciously biased against black people.
Some of the above? All of the above?
Throughout the first decade of this century, surveys repeatedly found that prejudiced attitudes—notably the once-common beliefs that blacks were inferior to whites, women inferior to men, gay men and lesbians inferior to straights—had declined sharply, especially among young people. Surveys, of course, supposedly assess what you think. But what if they assess what you think others think you should think? What if they simply reflect your awareness that it isn’t cool to reveal your actual negative feelings about another group? Self-report data is inherently plagued with this problem. Thus, most social psychologists who study prejudice and discrimination focus on what people do, not what they say they might do. For example, when researchers have sent identical résumés to potential employers, varying only a name that indicates gender, or implies race (a black-sounding name or membership in an African American organization), or mentions religious affiliation, many employers have revealed a bias in whom they choose to call for an interview.1
Of course, whether or not you choose to tell an interviewer that you would never willingly hire a [fill in the target person], you know what you feel about “those people.” But some researchers have set their sights on capturing the prejudices that they believe lurk below awareness, hoping to identify implicit, unconscious negative feelings— not only in people who know they are prejudiced but don’t want to admit it, but also among people who believe they are unprejudiced.
Michael Shermer Examines the Implicit Association Test
Nearly twenty years ago, a team of eminent psychological scientists, including Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, developed the Implicit Association Test, which measures the speed of people’s positive and negative associations to a target group.2 You sit at a console or your computer and are shown a series of faces you must sort as quickly as you can—pressing a left key for a black face, say, and a right key for a white face. Now you have to do the same for a series of positive or negative words—press the left key for positive words (such as triumph, joy, honest) and the right key for negative words (such as devil, maggot, failure). Once you’ve mastered these sorting tasks, the faces and words are combined: Now, as quickly as possible, you must press the left key when you see a black face or a positive word and the right key when you see a white face or a negative word. You are given a rapid set of combinations: black + triumph, black + poison, white + peace, white + hatred. The pairings get harder as you go along. Many people respond more quickly when white faces are paired with positive words and when black faces are paired with negative words. That speed difference is said to be a measure of their implicitly racist attitudes toward African Americans because it’s harder for their unconscious minds to link African Americans with positive words.
When the research first appeared all those years ago, my colleague Carole Wade and I were disinclined to report it in our introductory psychology textbook. It was unclear what those microsecond “associations” meant; it seemed a leap to call it a measure of prejudice; at best it seemed simply to be capturing a familiar cultural association or stereotype, in the same way that people would be quicker to pair bread + butter than bread + avocado. A person of any age might be aware of negative associations between old people and mental decline without being prejudiced against old people in general. One team got an IAT effect by matching target faces with nonsense words and neutral words that had no evaluative connotations at all. They concluded that the IAT does not measure emotional evaluations of the target but rather the salience of the word associated with it—how much it stands out—and negative words attract more attention. When they corrected for these factors, the presumed unconscious prejudice faded away.3
So Carole and I figured that the IAT would travel the route of other hot ideas that cooled off in the face of failed replications or more plausible interpretations. Indeed, had the measure’s originators simply said they had found a modest but interesting association between various groups and words culturally linked with them, that might have been that. Instead, over the years, the success of the IAT grew so rapidly, spilling into the public arena with such an enormous splash, that textbook authors (let alone the public, college administrators, and politicians) could no longer avoid it. To date, more than 17 million people have taken the test online (at “Project Implicit”), and it has also been given to students, business managers, employees, and countless others to identify their alleged prejudices toward blacks, Asians, women, old people, people with disabilities, and other groups. I asked a young friend, one of the least prejudiced and most open-minded humans on the planet, if he knew about the IAT, and he said yes, he’d taken it online. “What in the world for?” I asked. “To see if I have an unconscious bias,” he said.
Carole and I were awakened from our somnambulance by Malcolm Gladwell, who set off our skeptical buzzers on high alert. Gladwell, who is biracial, took the IAT and learned that he was prejudiced against black people. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, he said: “The person in my life [his mother] who I love more than almost anyone else, is black, and here I was taking a test, which said, frankly, I wasn’t too crazy about black people, you know?” A gay activist said she was stunned to learn that “her own mind contained stronger gay = bad associations than gay = good associations.” But the pièce de résistance was that one of the developers of the IAT, Mahzarin Banaji, a woman of color who was born and raised in India, reported that she herself “failed” the racial IAT, revealing antiblack associations that she consciously repudiates.4
Now this is curious. Why jump to indict oneself instead of saying, “Uh oh, maybe something’s wrong with the test?” Banaji and Greenwald might have considered the possibility that they got too enthusiastic too soon, claiming more for their test than it warranted. However, by the time their 2013 book for the public appeared, Blindspot: The Hidden Biases of Good People, they had much invested in the IAT; and, in their admirable zeal to educate people about the persistence of prejudice, they began claiming more and more about the test’s significance and relevance. For their part, many laypeople accepted the IAT’s findings because of the great power attributed to methods that purport to uncover what our brains are doing without our knowledge. How do I know what my unconscious is thinking? By definition, it’s unconscious! Clearly, the test knows more than I do, even if I do love my mother!
If the IAT were being used solely as an instrument to generate discussions of what prejudice is and is not, few would object. Having a “hidden bias” is not, in and of itself, a sign of prejudice; it’s a sign of having a human brain. What social psychologists call the “in-group bias”—a feeling of comfort with, and preference for, people who are like us—is a universal phenomenon, undoubtedly one that evolved to aid human survival by binding us to our groups. But it does not inevitably produce “out-group hostility” or discrimination against those who are unlike us.
Unfortunately, as the IAT’s reputation grew, claims about what this test was revealing began to outstrip the data. The IAT was no longer said to be capturing an “association”; not even merely a “bias”; but a prejudice —especially racism. And not just racism, but discrimination—the willingness to act on that prejudice. The Project Implicit website warns: “When we relax our active efforts to be egalitarian, our implicit biases can lead to discriminatory behavior, so it is critical to be mindful of this possibility if we want to avoid prejudice and discrimination.”
The IAT directs people’s attention to their supposed unconscious feelings, leaving many puzzled and worried that they might be awful racists without knowing it.
And so we come to the crux of the matter: does the IAT really capture unconscious prejudices? Can the test predict whether people will actually behave in a biased or discriminatory way? The evidence is now pretty clear that the answers to both are “no.”5 When people are asked to predict their responses toward different groups on the IAT, they are highly accurate— regardless of whether they were told that implicit attitudes are true prejudices or culturally learned associations. People’s scores aren’t reliable, either; they might score “highly biased” one week and get a different result two weeks later. And as for the IAT’s ability to predict behavior— the ultimate measure of any test’s scientific validity—meta-analyses of hundreds of studies on many thousands of people find that the evidence linking IAT scores with behavior is weak to nonexistent. “The IAT provides little insight into who will discriminate against whom,” wrote Frederick Oswald and his colleagues in a 2013 meta-analysis, and it provides no more information than just asking people if they are biased.6 They concluded that the correlation between people’s IAT scores and their behavior is so small as to be trivial. Greenwald and Banaji countered that statistically small effects can have “societally large effects.”7
In the final analysis, I think what is most problematic about the IAT is that it directs people’s attention to their supposed unconscious feelings, leaving many puzzled and worried that they might be awful racists without knowing it, and without knowing what they are supposed to do about it. It confuses normal cognitive biases with bigotry. And it locates the problem of discrimination in people’s unconscious minds, not in the systemic patterns of racism that deserve our far greater attention and search for remedies.
This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 22.2 (2017).
Buy this issue
In his meticulous investigation of the IAT, Jesse Singal concluded that “after almost 20 years and millions of dollars’ worth of IAT research, the test has a markedly unimpressive track record relative to the attention and acclaim it has garnered. Leading IAT researchers haven’t produced interventions that can reduce racism or blunt its impact. They haven’t told a clear, credible story of how implicit bias, as measured by the IAT, affects the real world. They have flip-flopped on important, baseline questions about what their test is or isn’t measuring. And because the IAT and the study of implicit bias have become so tightly coupled, the test’s weaknesses have caused collateral damage to public and academic understanding of the broader concept itself…[S]crutinizing the IAT and holding it to the same standards as any other psychological instrument isn’t a sign that someone doesn’t take racism seriously: It’s exactly the opposite.”
How ironic that this well-intended effort to illuminate a dark side of our natures now obfuscates the very thing we’re trying to understand. And it’s a story with an all-too-familiar lesson for scientists and other skeptics: we can’t let our wish for a method or a finding to be right block our ability to evaluate it critically, and to change our minds when the evidence dictates. 
About the Author
Dr. Carol Tavris is a social psychologist and coauthor, with Elliot Aronson, of Mistakes were made (but not by ME). Watch the recording of Science Salon # 10 in which Tavris, in a dialogue with Michael Shermer, explores cognitive dissonance and what happens when we make mistakes, cling to outdated attitudes, or mistreat other people.
References
- For example, see: Acquisti, Alessandro, and Fong, Christina M. 2014, October 26. “An Experiment in Hiring Discrimination Via Online Social Networks.” http://bit.ly/2iLIJgc
- One of the first published papers was Greenwald, Anthony G.; McGhee, Debbie E.; and Schwartz, Jordan L. K. 1998. “Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 74, 1464–1480. Mahzarin Banaji and Greenwald went on to write a book for general audiences: Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, 2013, New York: Delacorte.
- Rothermund, Klaus, & Wentura, Dirk. 2004. “Underlying Processes in the Implicit Association Test: Dissociating Salience from Associations.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 133, 139–165.
- In Banaji and Greenwald, 2013, 57. Gladwell also tells this story in his book Blink.
- For three superb reviews of the research, with inter views with the IAT’s proponents and its critics, see: Singal, Jesse. 2017. “Psychology’s Favorite Tool For Measuring Racism Isn’t Up to the Job,” New York magazine, Januar y 11; Bar tlett, Tom. 2017. “Can We Really Measure Implicit Bias? Maybe Not,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 5; and a power ful scholarly and theoretical criticism, Mitchell, Gregor y, and Tetlock, Philip E. 2017. “Popularity as a Poor Proxy for Utility: The Case of Implicit Prejudice,” in Scott Lilienfeld and Irwin D. Waldman, Psychological Science Under Scrutiny, New York: Wiley, pp. 164–195. Tetlock has been a persistent critic of the IAT. See Tetlock and Arkes, Hal, 2004. “Attributions of Implicit Prejudice, or ‘Would Jesse Jackson ‘Fail’ the Implicit Association Test?’” Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 15, 257–278.
- Oswald, Frederick L., Gregor y Mitchell, Har t Blanton, James Jaccard, and Philip E. Tetlock. 2013. “Predicting Ethnic and Racial Discrimination: A Meta-Analysis of IAT Criterion Studies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 105, 171–192.
- Greenwald, Anthony G., Banaji, Mahzarin R., and Nosek, Brian A. 2015. “Statistically Small Effects of the Implicit Association Test Can Have Societally Large Effects.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 108, 553–561.
This article was published on November 1, 2017.
From post 12: “Because of their incontestible affinity for antisocial behavior and violent crime, they are fearsome and intimidating. … If black Americans want to be respected and admired, it’s time for them to act socially responsible, be devoted to the family, respect authority and the law, and get over their fancied perpetual victimization.”
From the post after post 13: “Of course all Blacks are not criminal predators. The vast majority are hard-working, law-abiding, and family oriented, …” — a contradiction. Either American blacks are all dangerous and antisocial, or only a small fraction of them are. In the latter case, it is not justified to stereotype all American blacks as dangerous and antisocial. One does not stereotype all Italian-Americans as Mafia gangsters, for instance.
so i took this test a year or 2 ago. it said i would be sent results but never got them. at the beginning of the test it asked political type questions so it identified who was taking the test. at the end of the test it said i may be slightly racist. my impression was that i didn’t fit there stereotype
black people in the USA are NOT African
the term a-a for black citizens is illogical and ridiculous
ait is just a mechanism to control and degrade
As Ferrel Christensen commented above: “The only thing more absurd than the basic claim for the IAT (even phrenology looks better) is its massive acceptance by presumably educated people.”
Absolutely. It’s been some time since I took the IAT, but it’s always bothered me. Not because of the result (I don’t remember what it was), but because it was immediately obvious that the emperor had no clothes. The order of imagery and structure of the test make it abundantly clear that it was designed to elicit specific outcomes. If the test was addressing a more mundane topic, the flaws would be immediately obvious to most observers. As it is, people are conditioned to set aside critical thought in favor of ideological narratives when the subject is race, especially when those narratives are plastered over with a supposedly “scientific” veneer. I’m especially disappointed that Malcolm Gladwell took this test so seriously.
In a truly objective setting, most upper-level undergraduates tasked with a critical analysis of the test could quickly and easily rip apart its shaky foundations, but because of the authority figures touting it, and because many people in the scientific and regular press wanted to hear and propagate the test’s takeaway message, it’s attained a level of cultural status among academia and the media that is completely unmerited.
A racist, fundamentally, is someone who thinks that one’s race determines the content of one’s mind. In other words, paraphrasing MLK, a racist is someone who thinks the color of one’s skin determines the content of one’s character. That definition of racism tends to be omitted these days because there is an enormous amount of racialist and race-conscious thinking amongst the people – of all colors – who are often most vocal about fighting racism, and who seem unable to recognize that this thinking, whether by black, brown, yellow or red, is every bit as racist as when it comes out of the mouths of whites.
We need to start building the Re-Education camps ASAP.
I got my PhD in Social Psychology at U Mich the same time Dr Tavris did, it is always a small thrill of pride to see a classmate’s name in public discussion of these issues
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The data say, that black people score – with whatever this test measures, – along w white people, as having implicit ( or unconscious) bias so either Black people have the same unconscious biases as white, which is an awkward conclusion, or the test measures some other thing(s)
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I am reminded of Kenneth Clark’s late 1940s early 1950s doll-and-self-image tests, used in Brown 1954, @ fn 11, to support that separate but equal is inherently unequal, yet the data showed, that these little black kids had better self-esteem (measured by color of chosen doll, black, vs, white) in segregated schools
oops
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I recommend a re-do of this test stratified by age, and across cultures, eg black majority countries, and using human polychrome, not just black white
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for now those who see racism everywhere are reduced to sub-second, deca-second mili-second lag times between a contrived visual display
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this location, suggests the other societal areas of racism are no longer so prominent, or ‘racism’ is associated w social pathology, and not skin color
or that Black people have to be educated and weaned, cultural self-hatred is not an arcane or obscure concept or reality
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the test can also be redone, w various ‘priming’ antecedent stimuli, not explained here but well known to the field=
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Mr Gladwell, is biracial, and discusses his ethnic ancestry at length, in Outliers, where he cites exactly to racial (skin color) bias, in his ancestry, anecdotal reports
; “Racist” means those accused of being “racist” are denying another person their civil rights.
This isn’t the case with this latest revamp of accusations of “racist”/”racism”, that are similar to accusations of being a “witch”.
We’re being beaten with a word in an effort to excuse the actions of people who want “racial exceptionalism”, and not racial equality.
We all have a temper, and the civilized among us place impulse control over the egotistical vanity of instant gratification, and don’t resort to burning-down homes, and businesses, drive-by shootings, robbery, looting, sexual assault, mayhem, and mass murder, and if the civilized don’t like it, they’re accused of being “racist”.
“A person of any race, ethnicity, or religion who feels more comfortable with others who are like themselves”
This is nonsense by itself. Of course the great majority of people feel comfortable with people who are “like themselves” in various ways. They form clubs, political parties, etc. where they can take for granted that they will not have to be in conflict with others about many things. It is probably natural – but not desirable – for people to have feelings of “otherness” about people who look different from themselves, or even dress differently. When a person justifies such such feelings as a sign of genetic inferiority in the others then you have a racist.
Of course people are not comfortable with others who practice a religion very different from their own (or lack thereof), and the difference is not directly related to race.
I’m sorry I have to disagree with Ms Tavris. Religion isn’t biological, it exists just in the brain. You can change your religion or abandon all of them but you can not leave your race.
I agree with post 18. Differences of culture and any identification with particular institutionalized ideologies (including religions) are not racial differences.
Nevertheless, the article is much appreciated. Helpful and important.
Currently it’s great time to be a REAL racist because now you can blend in with pseudo racists and claim that you are the racist, just for suggesting such claim.
Actual racism is a disgusting asinine nature of some people, no doubt. But so is a media that is obsessed – when ever possible, to link it to their narrative.
A non-academic share–check out SNL Black Jeopardy skits.
I once was accused of racism because I made a joke about werewolves.
Some people will see racism anywhere. It has become an all-purpose cussword to use against nearly anyone with whom the accuser disagrees about anything.
Prejudice does not necessarily need to be against a person who is different from one’s own self. A person may remind you of somebody whom you have found to be unpleasant or dishonest. Sometimes we must look beyond an unpleasant experience and get to know the person as an individual. We often deal with people by lumping them together.
It may be noted that the terms used to describe people off different colors, religions, or otherwise tend to change over time because it is believed that a different word will not carry the same stigma. It is not the word, but the tone of voice, that makes it painful.
We must remind ourselves that we are all one species and share a common origin. It is all a matter of when our ancestors left Africa and why.
Racism isn’t stereotyping a group, but rather the refusal to change a stereotype when encountering a member of that group who blows that stereotype to hell. For example, two famous characters – Bob Ewell and Huck Finn – who both begin by calling all Negroes “Niggers”. Bob never changes, because he can’t see that Tom Robinson is a moral, responsible man, far superior to Bob. Huck, on the other hand, begins by playing tricks on Jim, but stops and apologizes after realizing that Jim, like Tom, is a loving father and caring person.
Reality is in your perception. Of course all Blacks are not criminal predators. The vast majority are hard-working, law-abiding, and family oriented, but when the nightly TV news bombards viewers with stories of Black-on-Black violence, Ghetto drive-by shootings, convenience store robberies and murders, Antifa and BLM destructive rampages, a STEREOTYPE of Blacks posing imminent danger is formed. A person immediately goes into “self-protection” mode. There is no time to intellectualise perceived impending danger. Stereotypes ring the danger alarm. Adrenalin and Cortisol take over. Even Jesse Jackson confesses that he is relieved to know that the footsteps behind him in the dark of night belong to a white man.
Let’s be honest. Who really gives a damn over the color of one’s skin, texture of one’s hair, shape of one’s eyes, etc.? The sad fact is that Black Americans have a loathsome, despicable stereotype. Because of their incontestible affinity for antisocial behavior and violent crime, they are fearsome and intimidating. A Haitian nurse (having bone-fide African credentials) with whom I was acquainted confided in me that she would never let her young son play or associate with American blacks, because of their reputed bad influence. Most white Americans are color- blind when confronted with blacks of other cultures and nations: Caribbean, Brazilian, Nigerian, Ghanian, etc. If black Americans want to be respected and admired, it’s time for them to act socially responsible, be devoted to the family, respect authority and the law, and get over their fancied perpetual victimization.
well said
I think the world would be a better place if everyone would admit that they have unconscious implicit biases. This is not just about the color of one’s skin but affects almost every aspect of what it means to be human. There is height bias, language bias, educational bias, hair color bias, political party bias, religious bias, weight bias and much more. I believe anyone who is honestly introspective can find these biases in themselves. Racism is just an extreme example of these biases. It does not serve society to claim that these biases don’t exist or can be controlled perfectly. Sure people try to act unbiased and that might be the best we can do but because many of these biases are unconscious they will seep into our daily lives. It is better to be aware of them than to pretend they don’t exist or don’t matter.
I’ve seen the test and it has an implicit flaw.
Since the test is divided into sections, and the results depend on comparing scores between sections, the order of the test sections should be randomized.
As they are not, what the test may be measuring is how your ability to take the test changes over the time of the test, either improving due to experience or fading due to boredom.
It is interesting to see data/statistics how many people who have been tested in “Project Implicit” are identified by the test as racists or not.
I think that everyone is more comfortable with people who are like themselves.
It is a complex issue, and Tavris is right to point out that IAT results have been over-interpreted. But she undersells what we have learned from IAT research. IAT tests are often far more predictive of people’s subtle discriminatory behaviors (which are not as consciously chosen or directed) than any other measures we have. Perhaps Tavris might consider that her own initial “dismissal” of the IAT when it first was introduced has led her to examine the admittedly conflicting evidence on the IAT in a confirmatory manner, and thus more readily accepting the critiques than the evidence in support of the IAT. Food for thought.
“Why jump to indict oneself instead of saying, “Uh oh, maybe something’s wrong with the test?”
the author has testophobia and needs treatment
Dr. S.
Your’s is exactly the wrong conclusion. Test procedures and validity should always be questioned and reconfirmed. If a test can’t be shown to be valid its results are meaningless, useless or harmful. An example is the PSA with a high rate of false positive and negative results.
Very well said!–By a longtime intellectual proponent of good sense. The only thing more absurd than the basic claim for the IAT (even phrenology looks better) is its massive acceptance by presumably educated people–people mesmerized either by anything claiming to be a new scientific breakthrough, or by their own political correctness in being willing to expose prejudice. Of the multitude of possible explanations for the “experiment”‘s results, one of the most parsimonious is still that subjects unconsciously think “This is a hot-button issue–I’d better think a bit before answering”. Idiocy on stilts.
I’m just glad that *somebody* is examining the scientific soundness of these all-too-easily accepted ideas.
This applies in oh so many places. It turns out that I am a racist and sexist. I cannot avoid it. It does not matter what I do, I can be labeled that way.
I refereed a u7 girls soccer match recently. One of the harder things to manage on the field is the varying levels of aggression. There are kids on the field who are so timid they won’t take a step without the approval of someone. There are other kids who are so aggressive, they will not listen to anyone about anything. Every game is a little bit different.
I found myself standing there waiting for a girl to throw the ball in, wondering if my expressions of oversight were sexist. I sometimes have to say “go ahead… ” or I wave them on, or some variation of giving them an order to start. If someone tallies how often I do that with boys versus how often I do it with girls, I am going to be persecuted. It happens a little more often with girls than it does boys.
Except I have to do with with every game. The boys are on the same spectrum. There might be a few more in the too aggressive category. There might be a few less in the not aggressive enough category.
Who the hell am I to judge what the right amount of aggression is? I am just the guy who showed up to ref the game. My son, who also showed up, isn’t worried about the right amount of aggression. He is more worried about the paycheck and getting off the field without having to deal with angry coaches. Yet here I am debating the effect on aggression of not calling people for aggressive behavior that isn’t too aggressive.
Anyone attempting to inspect that with a psychological test probably needs to take a little rest and relax…
The IAT may be appealing to many insofar as it allows them to make a socio-politically correct acquiescence to the charge of being inherently biased while assigning the blame for their perceived racism to their biology.
Call it the Jessica Rabbit defense if you’d like: “I’m not racist, I’m just drawn that way…”
Would seem to me that the real social issue in this day and age is political bigotry. We should all take that test!