The Link Between Implicit Bias and Statistical Evidence of Organizational and Institutional Racism

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 14. Meanings and Measures of Racism

Abstract

Evidence that racialized groups such as African Americans experience inequities at the societal level in the U.S. is ubiquitous. Yet, despite the statistical evidence to the contrary, the majority of European Americans in the U.S. seem not to believe that racism exists. The discrepancy between the perceptions of African Americans, many of whom report that they experience discrimination on a daily basis, and European Americans, who discount these reports, can be explained by the fact that even relatively small effect sizes are “large enough to explain discriminatory impacts that are societally significant either because they can affect many people simultaneously or because they can repeatedly affect single persons (Greenwald, Banaji & Nosek (2014, p. 531). This paper reviews evidence from social psychology and social neuroscience on the existence of implicit biases, and shows how implicit bias at the individual level affects organizational and institutional discrimination, thus contributing to structural inequities in the United States.

Author

• Kay Young McChesney, University of Illinois Springfield