Implicit Bias

Implicit bias, also called implicit stereotype, is the unconscious attribution of particular qualities to a member of a social group, formed through learned associations between a quality and a social category such as race or gender. The psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald first defined the term in 1995, describing unconscious associations that can influence behavior even when they contradict a person's consciously held beliefs. Because an implicit bias can be activated by the surrounding environment and can operate before a person consciously endorses or even notices it, it is distinguished from an explicit stereotype, which a person consciously holds and could in principle state outright. Banaji and Greenwald also developed the Implicit Association Test, the primary tool used to measure implicit bias, which gauges how quickly a person associates members of a social group with positive or negative attributes in order to reveal hidden associations that a direct questionnaire might not.