scholarly journals Toward a comprehensive understanding of executive cognitive function in implicit racial bias.

2015 ◽  
Vol 108 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany A. Ito ◽  
Naomi P. Friedman ◽  
Bruce D. Bartholow ◽  
Joshua Correll ◽  
Chris Loersch ◽  
...  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 1748-1756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle van Ryn ◽  
Rachel Hardeman ◽  
Sean M. Phelan ◽  
Diana J. Burgess PhD ◽  
John F. Dovidio ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Willem Hendrik Gravett

The centrality of race to our history and the substantial racial inequalities that continue to pervade society ensure that "race" remains an extraordinarily salient and meaningful social category.  Explicit racial prejudice, however, is only part of the problem.  Equally important - and likely more pervasive - is the phenomenon of implicit racial prejudice: the cognitive processes whereby, despite even our best intentions, the human mind automatically classifies information in racial categories and against disfavoured social groups. Empirical research shows convincingly that these biases against socially disfavoured groups are (i) pervasive; (ii) often diverge from consciously reported attitudes and beliefs; and (iii) influence consequential behaviour towards the subjects of these biases. The existence of implicit racial prejudices poses a challenge to legal theory and practice. From the standpoint of a legal system that seeks to forbid differential treatment based upon race or other protected traits, if people are in fact treated differently, and worse, because of their race or other protected trait, then the fundamental principle of anti-discrimination has been violated. It hardly matters that the source of the differential treatment is implicit rather than conscious bias. This article investigates the relevance of this research to the law by means of an empirical account of how implicit racial bias could affect the criminal trial trajectory in the areas of policing, prosecutorial discretion and judicial decision-making.  It is the author's hypothesis that this mostly American research also applies to South Africa. The empirical evidence of implicit biases in every country tested shows that people are systematically implicitly biased in favour of socially privileged groups. Even after 1994 South Africa – similar to the US – continues to be characterised by a pronounced social hierarchy in which Whites overwhelmingly have the highest social status. The author argues that the law should normatively take cognizance of this issue.  After all, the mere fact that we may not be aware of, much less consciously intend, race-contingent behaviour does not magically erase the harm. The article concludes by addressing the question of the appropriate response of the law and legal role players to the problem of implicit racial bias.


2022 ◽  
Vol 226 (1) ◽  
pp. S296
Author(s):  
Thammatat Vorawandthanachai ◽  
Calvin E. Lambert ◽  
David Flomenbaum ◽  
Francine Hughes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobiasz Trawinski ◽  
Araz Aslanian ◽  
Olivia S. Cheung

Previous research has established a possible link between recognition performance, individuation experience, and implicit racial bias of other-race faces. However, it remains unclear how implicit racial bias might influence other-race face processing in observers with relatively extensive experience with the other race. Here we examined how recognition of other-race faces might be modulated by observers’ implicit racial bias, in addition to the effects of experience and face recognition ability. Caucasian participants in a culturally diverse city completed a memory task for Asian and Caucasian faces, an implicit association test, an experience questionnaire towards Asians and Caucasians, and a face recognition ability test. Overall, participants showed significantly better recognition performance for other- than own-race faces. More importantly, recognition performance for other-race faces was positively predicted by increased face recognition ability, experience with Asians, and negatively predicted by increased positive bias towards Asians, which was modulated by an interaction between face recognition ability and implicit bias, with the effect of implicit bias observed predominantly in observers with high face recognition ability. Moreover, significant differences were observed among the positions of the first two fixations when participants learned the other-race faces, with the first fixation modulated by the effect of experience and the second fixation modulated by the interaction between implicit bias and face recognition ability. Taken together, these findings suggest the complexity in understanding the perceptual and socio-cognitive influences on the other-race effect, and that observers with high face recognition ability may more likely evaluate racial features involuntarily when recognizing other-race faces.


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