Implicit Bias , Context , and Character

Early research on implicit attitudes and implicit biases emphasized the “directness” of the link between apparent triggers of those attitudes and behavior. For example, Bargh and colleagues argued that there is a direct link between the perception of cues relevant to one’s implicit attitudes and behavior; they write (1996, 231): “social behavior is often triggered automatically on the mere presence of relevant situational features.” The implication of this view is that merely being in the presence of a member of a socially stigmatized group may be sufficient to activate implicit biases and to cause one to act in biased ways. In a related vein, in her seminal paper, Devine (1989) argued that scores on measures of implicit bias reflect mere knowledge of cultural stereotypes. She showed that both egalitarians and non-egalitarians associate Blacks with negative stereotypes, and suggested that there is a direct relationship between merely having cultural knowledge of stereotypes and behaving in biased ways.