We all like to think that we fully understand any prejudices that we have, and most people will try and combat them. Because unconscious bias operates on such a subconscious level, we are unlikely to even recognise that it is happening. Most people will have had a situation where, upon meeting someone new, they immediately feel they won’t like them. This is a perfectly normal reaction, even if it isn’t one that we find very comfortable to deal with.
The best way we can try and limit the influence of unconscious bias is to understand what our inbuilt biases may be. But, how do you understand something so sub-conscious?
In 1998, scientists from three of America’s largest Universities launched Project Implicit. The project was set up by Tony Greenwald (University of Washington), Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia).They designed an online Implicit Association Test, or IAT, to try to investigate deeper into people’s subconscious biases. Their website states:
“Project Implicit is a non-profit organization and international collaboration between researchers who are interested in implicit social cognition – thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control. The goal of the organization is to educate the public about hidden biases and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the Internet.”