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Does Unconscious Racism Exist?Author(s): Lincoln QuillianReviewed work(s):Source: Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Mar., 2008), pp. 6-11Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20141814 .

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Social Psychology Quarterly2008, Vol. 71, No. 1,6-11

Introduction to Unconscious Racism DebateTROVDUSTERNew YorkUniversity

Atfirst glance, a debate about whether there can be unconscious racism appears to be anarcane academic exercise of little consequence, a modern-day equivalent to queries aboutangels ' terpsichorean capacities on pinheads.But with a second look, this is an important debate with some sharply contested policy implications. In legal circles, adversaries are trying to either challenge and dump?orbuttress?the "disparate impact" doctrine. The stakes are high. The fundamental anddomain assumption of those who emphasize the importance of keeping a focus on disparateimpact is that intentionality need have little or even nothing to do with outcome?thatwhether one intends to discriminate or not, if the impact of the action is sufficiently different on different groups, the government needs to step in and redress grievances and injustices caused by that action. The corollary has equally important policy consequences, assome surely have noticed in the gradual and continued erosion of affirmative action overthe last twenty-five years by a supreme court that increasingly insists on "a smoking gun "of intentionality. The Equal Justice Society is trying to use a version of the unconsciousracism argument to chip away at the reliance on theframe of conscious intentionality.For the social science audience of these two articles, I suggest that the basic issueis not whether the researchers can establish empirical unconscious racism, but whetherthere is evidence (even if unconscious racism could be established) of how this influencesour actions. Readers will have to assess the translation from thought to action, often basedon lab experiments (as Tetlock and Mitchell point out), and then make the link as towherethese actions are most relevant to real world circumstances (e.g. doctors' differential treatment of heart disease by race).To disentangle the presumed link between attitudes and behavior, we can go backmore than half a century to a classic study of how even consciously and explicitly expressedracial prejudice can be a poor predictor of discriminatory behavior. (Chinese customerswere served politely in restaurants where theproprietors had previously claimed theywouldnot be welcomed). Perhaps we should leave behind this whole arena of whether currenthigh-tech experiments with images and pictures and brain scans reveal (or don't reveal)unconscious racism and instead re-emphasize themethodological and empirical problem ofgetting from the hypothetical assertion that it can influence behavior to the evidence of if,or how itdoes.

Does Unconscious Racism xist?*LINCOLNUILURNNorthwesternUniversity

This essay argues for the existence of a form of unconscious racism. Research on implicitprejudice provides good evidence that most persons have deeply held negative associationswith minority groups that can lead to subtle discrimination without conscious awareness.The evidencefor implicit ttitudesisbriefly eviewed.Criticismsof the implicit rejudiceliterature aisedbyArkes ndTetlock(2004) are discussed, butfound tobe inconsistent ithseveral findings of prejudice research.

From childhood we are inundated withimages that convey racial inequality inAmerican society. The images originatefrom themedia and our personal observations,

*Address correspondence to Lincoln Quillian,Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, 1810Chicago Avenue, Evanston, IL 60208; l-quillian@northwestern.edu.

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DO S UNCONSCIOUSRCISM XIST? 7and both represent actual inequality and constructa view of that inequality that includesstereotypical distortions. From these imageswe learn thatAfrican Americans and Latinosare more often impoverished, in trouble withthe law, and in positions of lower authoritythanwhites. While not all images are negativeor stereotype-consistent,the overall effect is tolinkAfrican Americans and Latinos with predominately negative social characteristics.

Contradicting these images,we also learna principled narrative regarding the irrelevance of race: we are told publicly that raceshould notmatter, thatwe should judge individuals by thecontentof their character ratherthan the color of their skin. This message corresponds to the view ofAmerica as a land ofopportunity and is celebrated incommemorations of theCivil Rights Movement. Reflecting thisprinciple, on survey questionnaires alarge majority of Americans express supportfor equal treatment regardless of race(Schuman et al. 1997).What are the effectsof these contradictory images and ideals on our actions?Supposing we limit ourselves topersons whorenounce open prejudice and accept theprinciple of colorblindness. Are thereways inwhich the negative representations of members of minority groups influence thoughtsand actions despite well-intentioned effortstothe contrary?How are the social positions ofdifferent racial groups understood by percenters of differentraces?Might unconsciousbias help to explain the consistent high levelsof discrimination in housing and labormarkets revealed in sociological and economicaudit studies?

Although notwell-known tomost sociologists, an influential literature inpsychologyon implicitprejudice sheds lighton several ofthese questions. This literaturehas shown thateven those who espouse the ideal of colorblindness tend toassociate whites withmostlypositive traits and African Americans andLatinos withmostly negative traits.Moreover,this literature shows that these deep associations can affectour thoughts and actions without conscious awareness, creating unconscious racial bias in decisions and action. Tobe sure, the explicit attitudes long studied in

sociology by survey researchers, ethnographers, and others (e.g., Schuman et al. 1997;Blee 2002) are also importantcauses of discrimination. Rather than replacing explicitattitudes, implicit attitudes form a secondlevel of attitudes thatbecome manifest incertain behaviors and contexts (Banaji, Nosek,and Greenwald 2004). While my focus in thisessay is on race, research has also demonstrated the existence of implicit attitudes forotherattitudeobjects, including gender, social class,and age.For these nearly unconscious negativeassociations with minority racial groups thepsychology literatureuses the terms implicitprejudice (and implicit cognition, implicitassociations, and implicit stereotypes).Implicit is a termfrommemory research referring tomemories from past socialization orexperiences that affect current thought andbehavior without conscious awareness.Implicit attitudes are difficult to accessthrough introspection,but theyare notwhollyunconscious either: with directed introspection their impact can be somewhat controlled(Kawakami et al. 2000). For recent reviews ofthe implicit prejudice literature, see Quillian(2006) on race or Fazio and Olson (2003) onimplicit attitudes in general. For this essay, Itake unconscious racism to be identical toimplicit prejudice.Itmay seem impossible to study prejudices of which we are unaware. The solution tothis problem has come by adapting experi

mental techniques from studies ofmemory tothe studyof prejudice. While severalmethodsto assess implicit attitudes are used in theempirical literature, I discuss only the twomost used methods: rapid priming and theimplicit association test (IAT).In priming, each respondent's thoughtprocess is first"primed" either towarda targetgroup or toward a contrast group before performinga task.The primes, for instance, couldbe thewords "black" and "white," or imagesof black andwhite faces. In implicitprejudiceexperiments, theprime is flashed too quicklyfor the respondent to consciously read or recognize theprime. The subject is thenasked toperform an evaluation task, such as interpreting the behavior of a race-unspecified target

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8 SOCIAL SYCHOLOGYURRTC-RLYfigure acting in an ambiguously threatening

way. This procedure produces a consistentresult: subjects who have been primed withthe black prime tend toview the actions of therace-unspecified targetfigure as more hostileand threatening than subjects primed with thewhite prime (see Devine 1989;Wittenbrink,Judd,and Park 1997). The implicit stereotypeof blacks as hostile and threatening is activated by the implicit prime, affecting judgmentof the figure's behavior without consciousawareness that the implicit stereotype hasbeen activated.

In the implicit association test, subjectsare tested as to the speed atwhich they canassociate pairs of concepts in response to atask (see Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz1998; Fazio and Olson 2003; Lane et al.2007). Empirically, when the task pairs concepts related to "white" with "good" and"black" with "bad," the largemajority ofwhitesubjects (and a significantminority of blacksubjects) are able to faster andmore accurately associate related conceptual pairs thanwhen the task pairs concepts related to"white" with "bad" and "black" with "good."The difference reflects the strong associationof whites with positive traitsand blacks withnegative traits in the minds of most whites(and some blacks). Subjects can consciouslyoverride these implicit prejudices in theirresponses, but to do so requires time andeffort. The IAT is often administered on acomputer and is available online athttp://www.implicit.harvard.edu (ProjectImplicit 2008). Taking the test is one of thebest ways to get an intuitive idea of the concept andmeasurement of implicit attitudes.The majority view in psychology is thatthese experiments show that the largemajorityofwhites and some nonwhites hold negativeimplicit associations towardminority groups.As demonstrated by thepriming experimentsand other evidence Iwill discuss below, theseassociations can affect thought and actionwithout conscious awareness. Studies find lowcorrelation between scores on the IAT andexplicit beliefs aboutmembers of targetracialgroups measured by attitude questionnaires,supporting the view they represent a distinctlevel of attitude.

While the implicit prejudice interpretation of the priming and IAT measures isaccepted bymost psychologists, this interpretation has engendered some controversy.Arecent essay byArkes and Tetlock (2004) criticizes the implicit prejudice interpretationofthe IAT and the very idea of implicit prejudice. In the remainder of thisessay, I summarize the twomain arguments theymake, aswell as the evidence that leadsme toultimately reject their interpretations.One of Arkes and Tetlock's arguments isthat implicit attitudemeasures capture sociallyknown stereotypes that individuals do notnecessarily believe. Almost all Americans areaware of theprevalent stereotypesof themajorracial groups (Devine and Elliott 1995).Arkesand Tetlock (2004:262) suggest that results ofimplicit attitude tests merely reflect thisknowledge; theyclaim, "If I am aware of thecultural stereotype, I have all the cognitivesoftware that I need tomanifest prejudice onthe IAT." Because these stereotypes are notconsciously believed, theyargue these testsdonot demonstrate prejudice or racism.Arkes and Tetlock are right that implicitassociations are learned from the broader culture. Rather than debating whether implicitattitudes represent truebeliefs, a betterway toaddress the appropriateness of the termprejudice or racism is to address the question Iraised at thebeginning of this essay: can individuals who explicitly tryto act inrace-neutralways but hold negative implicit attitudestowardminorities do so? Or do these implicitattitudes tend to cause discriminatory actionin some situations,despite conscious disavowal of racial bias? If implicit attitudes can beshown to independently cause some discrimination, thenmoral condemnation is appropriate, as is the label of prejudice or racism.Several experiments link implicit associations and certain types of discriminatorybehavior. Implicit prejudice has been correlated with negative nonverbal behaviors suggestingunfriendliness in interactionswith targets,such as facial expressions thatare less friendly and lack of eye contact (McConnell andLiebold 2001; Dovidio, Kawakami, andGaertner 2002). Lane et al. (2007) provide arecent review of a large number of studies

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DO S UNCONSCIOUSACISMXIST? 9linking implicitattitudesmeasured on the IATwith behaviors reported on questionnaires orobserved inpsychology labs. In general, studies suggest that implicit prejudice is oftenmanifest in subtle behaviors in interactionthatare difficult for respondents to consciouslycontrol, such as nonverbal cues to affect andlexical errors in speech. Behaviors morestrongly controlled by conscious thought,notably speech content, are more stronglylinked to explicit racial attitudes. Yet thesesubtle or quick behaviors are important inmany situations and cannot be dismissed:Dovidio et al. (2002), for instance, show thatnonverbal behaviors more strongly correlatetoperceptions offriendliness by an interactionpartner than do verbal statements.The most importantquestion for understanding the significance of implicit attituderesearch is the effect that implicit attitudeshave on major inequality-relevant decisionssuch as to hire, to rent,or to promote. Fieldaudit studies using quasi-experimental methods involving testers have produced strongevidence of high rates of discrimination inlabor, housing, and retail markets (Ayres2001; Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Pager2003; Turner et al. 2002). Little research hasinvestigated theconnection between outcomesin real-world settings and implicit prejudice,but evidence from laboratory and vignettestudies suggests implicit prejudice is likely tobe one cause of discrimination in significantdecisions and behaviors. Laboratory studiesshowing discrimination in subtle behaviors ininteraction suggest that implicit prejudice isnegatively related to comfort in interactionwith minority candidates, for instance,whichmay then affectdecisions (e.g. hiring) by subtly affecting opinions toward candidates ininteractions relevant to important decisions(e.g. hiring interviews).A recent study that isa step toward considering implicit attitudes inmore realistic settings is a studyof doctors byGreen et al. (forthcoming).They find an association between anti-black bias measured onthe IAT and recommendations of less aggressive treatmentfor heart disease in vignettespresentedwith portraits of black patients thanin vignettes with portraits of white patients.While more research isneeded, currentexper

imental results provide ample reason to suspect that implicitattitudes are a source of significant discrimination in consequential realworld decisions.Arkes and Tetlock's other criticism is thatimplicit prejudice is capturing a social processbywhich individuals use group characteristicsto draw conclusions about individuals in theface of uncertainty.Their model is essentiallythe same as one referred to in the economicsliteratureas statistical discrimination (Aignerand Cain 1977). Noting the social reality thatAfrican Americans commit certain crimes athigher rates thanwhites, theyargue thatnegative associations with African Americans inpart just reflect this actual association. Theyclaim 1977:268):

Using currentcognitive tandards oridentifyingimplicit prejudice in social psychology,wewould be required to label realisticBayesianinformation processors as prejudiced in all butthe most homogeneously egalitarian societiesthat have succeeded in eradicating all differencesof evaluative significance among identifiablegroups.Arkes and Tetlock argue implicit prejudice reflectsreal differences inaverage behaviors across racial groups, justifying negative

implicitassociations and racial discriminationin some situations.Arkes and Tetlock's second argument

applies as well to discrimination based inexplicit rather than implicit attitudes. Note,though, that statistical discrimination is basedon a logic inwhich we judge unfamiliar individuals by the average characteristics of theirracial group?a form of guilt by associationmany find ethically unacceptable, even if statistical discrimination does on averageincrease accuracy of estimates.In fact,Arkes and Tetlock have no evidence to show that something like statisticaldiscrimination can explain implicit prejudice;theymerely suggest itas a possible explanation of negative implicit association withmembers of minority groups. Yet statisticaldiscrimination requires a strongerassumptionthan a vague correspondence between actualbehavioral differences in the real world.Instead, it requires that individuals perceive

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10 SOCIAL SYCHOLOGYURRT6RLYcorrectlyboth thedirections and roughmagnitudes of association between group membership and social characteristics (this iswhat isrequired to act as a "realistic Bayesian information processor"). In the case of crime, forinstance, individuals need toperceive at leastroughly correctlyhow much more likely theyare to be victimized by a black than a whiteoffender, then they need to incorporate thisinformation intodecisions such as whether ornot to cross the streetwhen a black strangerapproaches.In two papers I have writtenwith DevahPager, we have examined the accuracy of theperceived association between race and crime(Quillian and Pager 2001, 2007). We considerthe role of neighborhood racial composition,economic level, and other characteristics informing impressions of area crime rates andvictimization rates; we contrast this to howthese characteristics are associated with actualneighborhood crime rates and victimizationrates.We find systematic biases: in people'sminds, crime rates are more stronglyand lessconditionally linked to neighborhood racialcomposition than they actually are. Ratherthan finding that the associations betweenrace and crime thatArkes and Tetlock arguemay represent theaccurate basis foractions ofa "realistic Bayesian informationprocessor,"we find that these associations tend tobe systematically exaggerated,more consistentwithamodel of distorted stereotypes.

Finally, the presence of substantial racedifferences in implicit prejudice levels isinconsistentwith both ofArkes and Tetlock'salternative interpretationsof implicit associations. If implicit associations are simply capturingactually existing statistical associationsbetween racial group membership and any"differences of evaluative significance," thenwe should find that these same associationsshould be present among individualswho arewhite, African American, or any other race.Similarly, if these associations merely represent knowledge (but not belief) of a widelyknown social stereotype, thenwe should findroughly similar rates of knowledge acrossracial groups (or perhaps even higher knowledge formembers of the targetgroup of thestereotype). Yet in fact, studies find that

implicit associations favoring whites overAfrican Americans aremuch more often present among whites thanAfrican Americans(Noseck, Banaji, and Greenwald 2002).Implicit attitude research has shown thatdeep negative associations forma hidden levelof preferences in theminds ofmany personsdirected against stigmatized racial groups.While further research is needed to betterestablish the significance of implicitprejudiceformajor forms of discrimination, the currentliterature s sufficienttodemonstrate thewidespread existence of associations accuratelydescribed as unconscious racism.

R FR NCSAigner, DJ and G. Cain. 1977. "The Statistical Theoryof Discrimination inLabor Markets." Industrial

and Labor Relations Review 30:175-87Arkes, Hal R. and Philip E. Tetlock. 2004. "Attributions of Implicit Prejudice, or "Would JesseJackson 'Fail' the Implicit Association Test?"

Psychological Inquiry 24:257-278.Ayres, Ian. 2001. Pervasive Prejudice? Unconven

tional Evidence of Race and Gender Discrimination. Chicago, IL: The University of ChicagoPress.Banaji, Mahzarin, Brian A. Nosek, and Anthony G.Greenwald. 2004. "No place for Nostalgia inScience: A Response to Arkes and Tetlock."

Psychological Inquiry 15:279-310.Bertrand, M. and S. Mullainathan. 2004. "Are Emilyand Greg More Employable than Lakisha andJamal? A Field Experiment on Labor MarketDiscrimination." American Economic Review

94:991-1013.Blee, Katherine. 2002. Inside Organized Racism:Women in theHate Movement. Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press.Devine, Patricia. 1989. "Stereotypes and Prejudice:Their Automatic and Controlled Components."Journal of Personality and Social Psychology56:5-18.Devine, Patricia and Andrew Elliot. 1995. "Are RacialStereotypesReally Fading? The Princeton

Trilogy Revisited." Personality and SocialPsychology Bulletin 21:1139-1142.

Dovidio, John E, Kerry Kawakami, and Samuel L.Gaertner. 2002. "Implicit and Explicit Prejudiceand Interracial Interaction." Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology 82:62-68.

Fazio, R. and M. Olson. 2003. "Implicit Measures inSocial Cognition Research: theirMeaning andUse." Annual Review of Psychology 54:297-327.Green, Alexander, Dana Carney, Daniel Pallin, Long

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DO S UNCONSCIOUSACISMXIST? 11Ngo, Kristal Raymond, Lisa Lezzoni, andNahzarin Banaji. Forthcoming. "Implicit Biasamong Physicians and its Prediction ofThrombolysis Decisions for Black and WhitePatients." Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Greenwald, Anthony G., Debbie E. McGhee, andJordan L.K. Schwartz. 1998. "MeasuringIndividual Differences in Implicit Cognition:The Implicit Association Test." Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology 74:14641480.

Kawakami, Kerry, John Dovidio, Jasper Moll, SanderHermsen, and Abby Russin. 2000. "Just Say No(to Stereotyping): Effects of Training in the

Negation of Stereotypie Association onStereotype Activation." Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology 78: 871-888.

Lane, Kristin, Mahzarin Banaji, Brian Nosek, andAnthony Greenwald. 2007. "Understanding andUsing the Implicit Association Test: IV" Pp.59-101 in Implicit Measures ofAttitude, editedby Bernd Wittenbrink and Norbert Schwarz.New York: The Guilford Press.

McConnell, Allen and Jill Liebold. 2001. "Relationsamong the Implicit Association Test, Discriminatory Behavior, and Explicit Measures ofRacial Attitudes." Journal of ExperimentalSocial Psychology 37: 435-442.

Noseck, Brian, Mahzarin Banaji, and Anthony D.Greenwald. 2002. "Harvesting ImplicitAttitudes and Beliefs from a DemonstrationWeb Site." Group Dynamics 6:101-115.

Pager, Devah. 2003. "The Mark of a Criminal

Record." American Journal of Sociology 108:937-75.Project Implicit. Demonstration Web Site. Available at

http://www.implicit.harvard.edu. Accessed Jan16, 2008.

Quillian, Lincoln. 2006. "New Approaches toUnderstanding Racial Prejudice andDiscrimination." Annual Review of Sociology32: 299-328.

Quillian, Lincoln and Devah Pager. 2001. "BlackNeighbors, Higher Crime? The Role of RacialStereotypes in Evaluations of NeighborhoodCrime." American Journal of Sociology 107:717-67.

Quillian, Lincoln and Devah Pager. 2007. "EstimatingRisk: Stereotype Amplification and thePerceived Risk of Criminal Victimization."Paper presented at the Institute for Research onPoverty Conference, Madison, WI, June.

Schuman, Howard, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo,and Maria Krysan. 1997. Racial Attitudes inAmerica: Trends and Interpretations. RevisedEdition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Turner, Margery A., Stephen L. Ross, George C.Galster, and JohnYinger. 2002. Discriminationin Metropolitan Housing Markets: NationalResults from Phase I HDS 2000. WashingtonD.C.: Urban Institute.

Wittenbrink, Bernd, Charles M. Judd, and BernadettePark. 1997. "Evidence for Racial Prejudice atthe Implicit Level and Its Relationship withQuestionnaire Measures." Journal ofPersonality nd Social Psychology 72: 262-274.

Lincoln Quillian is associate professor of sociology andfellow of the nstitutefor Policy Research atNorthwestern University. His research focuses on racial inequality and the effects of social contextssuch as neighborhoods, schools, and peers on individual life chances. Among his recent publicationsare "NewApproaches toUnderstandingRacial Prejudice andDiscrimination" published in the 006Annual Review of Sociology and "Walking theTalk? What Employers Say VersusWhat they o"(withDevah Pager) published in 2005 inAmerican Sociological Review. He received his PhD in1997fromHarvard University.