1. Predicting Implicit and Explicit Racial Bias from Past Interracial Experience
University of Washington
Department of Psychology Research Festival
May 27, 2015
Michael P. McDonald
Advised by Tony Greenwald

2. Measuring Implicit Racial Attitude
African American OR Pleasant
European American OR Unpleasant
Pleasure
Glorious
Wonderful
Laughter
Joy
Happy
Peace
Love
Agony
Hurt
Awful
Nasty
Terrible
Failure
Evil
Horrible

3. Measuring Implicit Racial Attitude
African American OR Unpleasant
European American OR Pleasant
Agony
Hurt
Awful
Nasty
Terrible
Failure
Evil
Horrible
Pleasure
Glorious
Wonderful
Laughter
Joy
Happy
Peace
Love

4. Scoring IAT Data
Latencies to classify opposing pairs are used to compute a D score
Negative indicates Black preference
Positive indicates White preference
Zero indicates neutral (no preference)

5. Project Implicit Publicly accessible website
Variety of IATs (Age, Race, Gay/Straight)
30,000-50,000 Race IATs per month
Self-selection
Internet access, higher SES, more liberal
Can provide basis for laboratory testable hypotheses

6. Explicit Attitudes: Likert Preference

7. Explicit Attitudes: Thermometer Ratings

8. Demographics

9. Individual Differences on Implicit & Explicit Measures

10. Whites show more implicit than explicit in-group (pro-White) bias
. . . Mean Explicit = +.41
. . . Mean Implicit = +.83

11. Black+Mixed respondents show more explicit Black preference but almost no implicit preference
_ _ Mean Explicit = -.56
_ _ Mean Implicit = +.11

12. Implicit attitude distributions overlap much more than explicit attitude distributions
_ _ Mean (Black)
Mean (White)
_ _ Mean (Black)
Mean (White)

13. Questionnaire View

14. Environment Items
Appropriate descriptions of the neighborhood I lived longest in before age 10 are (select all that apply)
racially diverse
ethnically diverse
minority Black
majority Black
minority White
majority White
Neighborhood I lived longest in from 10 to 18
Teachers I had in elementary and middle school
Classmates in elementary and middle school
Teachers I had in high school
Classmates in high school
Notice that these items lack qualification (strong, close, etc.)

15. Relationship Items I have a parent who is (select all that apply):
Asian
Black
Hispanic
Native American
Pacific Islander
White
close family member of my own generation
close family member younger than my generation
strong childhood friendship
strong post-childhood friendship
romantic relationship
highly admired preschool or elementary school teacher
highly admired middle or high school teacher

16. Processing Multiple Response Data
Items become binary responses
“Parent” becomes Parent_Black, Parent_White, etc.
Combined items were fashioned based on responses:
Parent item = Parent_White – Parent_Black
Repeated with all Relationship & Environment Items

17. Processing IAT Data Inclusion criteria:
No more than 10% of responses < 300ms
No more than 40% error rate
Must be either US citizen or US resident

18. Findings and conclusions

20. Previous interracial experience predicts explicit attitudes better than implicit attitudes

21. Relationship items are more powerful predictors of attitudes, especially in Black+Mixed respondents

22. Familial relationships and friendships are more effective predictors, followed by school relationships

23. Next Steps Collect more data Select and retain most effective items
Examine data from other race & ethnic groups
Archive data on Open Science Framework & make publicly available

24. Acknowledgements With great appreciation for: Tony Greenwald
Frank Kaiyuan Xu
Teri Kerby
Daniel Fredinburg †
The Project Implicit Team