Researchers in Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Psychological Sciences recently published a study in Nature Human Behavior, challenging implicit biases that contribute to discrimination and societal inequities.
The study, titled “Challenging the mechanism for the Implicit Association Test,” features insights from:
- Heath A. Demaree, professor of emotional and cognitive processing in the Department of Psychological Sciences;
- Kyle LaFollette (GRS ’23, psychology);
- Doroteja Rubez (GRS ’23, psychology), who earned a graduate certificate in early intervention development; and
- Amit Goldenberg, assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.
About the study
Implicit biases are stereotypes and attitudes that influence decisions and actions, contributing to discrimination and societal inequities. The Implicit Association Test is the most widely used tool for measuring implicit bias, assessing response time in sorting stimuli into labelled categories.
Most interpretations assume that implicit association test performance (D-scores) reflects conflicting associative memories or decision ease. The researchers challenged this assumption by decomposing D-scores into additional cognitive processes that may influence results, particularly response caution—the tendency to trade speed for accuracy.
Using racing diffusion models across 39 topics (N = 115,601), the team found that response caution explained significantly more variance in D-scores beyond decision ease. Response caution also best predicted explicitly reported biases. These findings challenge the traditional interpretation of D-scores as primarily reflecting associative memory activation and highlight the need to consider multiple cognitive processes when assessing implicit biases.
