Implicit Association T heory (IAT) and the measurement of prejudice

1. Implicit Association Theory (IAT) and the measurement of prejudice Wendy Lord. Hogrefe. Oxford. UK

2. IMPLICIT ASSOCIATION is the unconscious attachment of an emotional attitude or belief to something (object, experience, type of animal or social category) • IAT tests claim to tap into emotional attitudes by measuring mental processes that are unconscious and over which we have no control

3. Three Key Questions! • Can IAT metrics really tap into biased attitudes? • Can they predict links between biased attitudes and discriminatory behaviour? • What are the ethical issues? • Pete Jones PhD

4. “ Bias isn’t accurately accessible through the thinking brain. To measure bias we must bypass conscious thought.” Pete Jones 2008

5. The Power of the unconscious • Our brains can consciously process around 45 bits of information per second (a few words) • We unconsciously process over 10 million bits per second, meaning the unconscious is 200,000 times more powerful than the conscious • Our conscious brains take at least 300ms to begin to process an image • fMRI shows us that unconsciously, we process a facial image within 80ms, before the conscious brain has even registered the image • The unconscious can tell us things the person doesn’t yet know about themselves or which they are unable to articulate or which they don’t want us to know. Future • The unconscious scares us, and scares psychologists and using it to measure prejudice scares us even more

6. Structure of Session • The nature of prejudicial attitudes • Using IAT to measure prejudice: status and issues • Overcoming the issues • Facilitating attitude change

7. Racist!

8. Gay Men Family Others Media Experiences How associations are formed Stangor (2000) “this process of affirming our values and those who share them leads us to the very brink of prejudice”

9. Prejudiced Attitudes • Normal outcome of our socialisation with other people • We all have prejudices • Necessary for us to live our lives • Arise from the ‘love prejudice’ Gordon Allport, (1954). ‘The Nature of Prejudice’ Stangor (2000) “this process of affirming our values and those who share them leads us to the very brink of prejudice” Demonstration Stangor (2000) “An antipathy based upon a faulty or inflexible generalisation. It may be felt or expressed.” Future

10. Media

11. Attitude Behaviour Thoughts Feelings ‘Exploring the neural correlates with social stereotyping’. Quadflieg at el (2009) JCN Attitudes Discrimination What you do How you feel What you think Left: learning by instruction Right: learning by experience Stereotyping Prejudice

12. Micro-behaviours Discriminatory behaviour can be very subtle – we may not even be aware of it (just as we are not always aware of our biased attitudes): • Less eye contact • Cutting conversations short • Less small talk

13. The Politics of Prejudice • It is unacceptable to express prejudice • People don’t want to admit to it • People may not even be aware they have biased attitudes or are behaving in a discriminatory way • “Society and organisations have unwittingly driven prejudice underground by making it less acceptable. ” Pete Jones

14. IAT Metrics ... “...reflect the [emotional attitude] by virtue of processes which are uncontrolled, unintentional, purely stimulus driven, autonomous, unconscious, efficient and fast” De Houwer & Moors in Wittenbrink and Schwarz (2007) Future

15. Measuring the emotional response Demonstration Tesla 1.5 Whole Body Scanner with a standard head coil Future

17. Arbitrary metrics; what do the scores actually mean? RACIST! Blanton and Jaccard, (2005,2008) • Anti-locution • Jokes • Criticism • Abuse • Attacks • Extermination Demonstration I Guess I'm A Racist · XXXX recently read a post about hidden racial bias. I took the test she referenced and I fell into the group that has a "strong preference for white people." I was a little surprised. ...

18. Benchmarking Implicitly against behaviour stage 1: Q data • 28 overtly intolerant beliefs, feelings and behaviours (literature and far right wing web-sites); 28 statements from MR research; 28 distractor items • 4 point Likert scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) • Factor analysis: 8 factors (Q items reduced to 45) • Key target was Factor 1: overt intolerance • Multiple regression with various scoring algorithms • Implicitly raw scores and Factor 1: r=.45 (N=1065)

19. Identifying the risk of discriminatory behaviour • Correlation not enough • Pete Jones wanted each Implicitly score band to predict the risk of discriminatory behaviour • Cross tabulated Q-data and Implicitly scores

20. Cross tabulating Implicitly scores with Q-data • Identified trigger point that distinguishes low scores: less than half of Q-data items endorsed at high end (score of less than 25 on Factor 1 of questionnaire) • Manipulated score boundaries for low, mid, elevated and high implicitly scores to maximise prediction of trigger score activation • Given correlation between Q-data and Implicitly scores- number of hits should increase in each score band • Predicting discriminatory behaviour from Implicitly is expressed as level of risk

21. Final Cross-tabulation between Implicitly scores and Q-data

22. Benchmarking • Risk • Anti-locution • Jokes • Criticism • Abuse • Discrimination Demonstration Future

23. Benchmarking against behaviour: stage 2 London Probationary Service: so far… • 14 out of 15 people convicted of racially motivated offences scored in high score range • The 15th who did not has since been identified as having been wrongly convicted • Study is continuing

24. Ethical Issues The right to measure unconscious processes Feedback Facilitating change Demonstration Future

25. Prejudice Reduction Interventions: what works? Prejudice is quick to develop, resistant to change and defends itself against change • Prejudice ‘re-fences’ people and experiences • Prejudice affects memory for events People need different interventions; ‘different strokes for different folks’ Future

26. Prejudice Reduction Interventions: what works? • Lots of use of undergraduates in labs and under ‘false’ conditions • Paluk, 2008: ‘little access to the strongly prejudiced’ • Paluk, 2008: ‘lack of hard theory driven diversity interventions’ • Paluk and Green (2009) Prejudice Reduction: What Works? We don’t know!!!!

27. “If we learn to be prejudiced, we can unlearn it. We can break the thinking habit” Trish Devine • Pettigrew and Tropp (2000) Allport’s Contact Hypothesis • Multiple categorisation (2 – 5+) • FacialCategorisation (Tarr 2009)

28. Essential attitudes in prejudice coaching Not inevitable Not justifiable • Recognise that prejudice is normal and not a disease • Recognise that we may not be able to change but might be able to manage • Recognise where unintentional behaviour is coming from, and the situations where it is likely to occur • Recognise where the motivation to change comes from Awareness Effort Practice

29. An opportunity for our profession • There is an opportunity for psychologists to contribute in this area • Hogrefe is looking to recruit a working party of psychologists to develop evidenced based interventions to facilitate attitude change in this area • First Step: find out more…

31. Invitation On 25th June, to mark the launch of the Implicitly test, Hogrefe UK is hosting a seminar on diversity issues: Keynote Speakers: Binna Kandola and Pete Jones Venue: Mayfair Conference Centre. Central London Learn more about diversity issues in the workplace Learn more about the Implicitlytest Network with like-minded professionals Get involved in the development of coaching methods to develop attitude change in this area Enjoy a great lunch