The Bias of Crowds: How Implicit Bias Bridges Personal and Systemic Prejudice

As public awareness of implicit bias has grown in recent years, studies have raised important new questions about the nature of implicit bias effects. First, implicit biases are widespread and robust on average, yet are unstable across a few weeks. Second, young children display implicit biases indistinguishable from those of adults, which suggests to many that implicit biases are learned early. Yet, if implicit biases are unstable over weeks, how can they be stable for decades? Third, meta-analyses suggest that individual differences in implicit bias are associated weakly, although significantly, with individual differences in behavioral outcomes. Yet, studies of aggregate levels of implicit bias (i.e., countries, states, counties) are strongly associated with aggregate levels of disparities and discrimination. These puzzles are difficult to reconcile with traditional views, which treat implicit bias as an early-learned attitude that drives discrimination among individuals who are high in bias. We propose an alternative view of implicit bias, rooted in concept accessibility. Concept accessibility can, in principle, vary both chronically and situationally. The empirical evidence, however, suggests that most of the systematic variance in implicit bias is situational. Akin to the “wisdom of crowds” effect, implicit bias may emerge as the aggregate effect of individual fluctuations in concept accessibility that are ephemeral and context-dependent. This bias of crowds theory treats implicit bias tests as measures of situations more than persons. We show how the theory can resolve the puzzles posed and generate new insights into how and why implicit bias propagates inequalities.     

Using the Implicit Association Test to Assess Children's Implicit Attitudes toward Smoking

The development and psychometric properties of an Implicit Association Test (IAT) measuring implicit attitude toward smoking among fifth grade children were described. The IAT with "sweets" as the contrast category resulted in higher correlations with explicit attitudes than did the IAT with "healthy foods" as the contrast category. Children with family members who smoked (versus non-smoking) and children who were high in sensation seeking (versus low) had a significantly more favorable implicit attitude toward smoking. Further, implicit attitudes became less favorable after engaging in tobacco prevention activities targeting risk perceptions of addiction. Results support the reliability and validity of this version of the IAT and illustrate its usefulness in assessing young children's implicit attitude toward smoking.     

Why You Can't Kick the Bucket as You Slowly Die: Verbs in Idiom Comprehension

Idiomatic phrases differ in their degree of analyzability. Some idioms are highly decomposable with their parts independently contributing to their overall figurative meaning (e.g. pop the question) while other idioms are nondecomposable with parts that do not contribute to their idiomatic meaning (e.g. kick the bucket). Nonetheless, even the parts of nondecomposable idioms might have a role in determining what they specifically mean. For example, the verb kick, in kick the bucket implies a quickness or suddenness to the death such that kick the bucket means to die suddenly rather than to die slowly. We report the findings of three experiments showing, in different ways, how the action of the verb contributes to the overall figurative meaning for some nondecomposable idioms. Together, these studies suggest that even nondecomposable idioms are not truly frozen as, at least, part of their overall figurative meanings are shaped by the particular verbs used in these phrases.     

You Can't Get There from Here: Identifying Process Routes to Replication

All too often the reports of our community research and action are presented in an ahistorical and decontextualized fashion focused more on the content of what was done than on the process of how the work was done and why. The story of the university-community partnership and the family literacy intervention that was developed illustrates the importance of several key process variables in project development and implementation. More specifically, the role of the social-ecological context, prehistory, personality, self-correction, and unexpected serendipitous events are discussed. If, as community psychologists, we are serious about conducting our work in the most efficient and effective manner possible, if we truly wish to make our work available for replication, and if we seek to develop standards of "best practice" that are meaningful, our communication regarding process must shift from the anecdotal to a position of central importance.     

Understanding Implicit Bias: Putting the Criticism into Perspective

What is the status of research on implicit bias? In light of meta-analyses revealing ostensibly low average correlations between implicit measures and behavior, as well as various other psychometric concerns, criticism has become ubiquitous. We argue that while there are significant challenges and ample room for improvement, research on the causes, psychological properties, and behavioral effects of implicit bias continues to deserve a role in the sciences of the mind as well as in efforts to understand, and ultimately combat, discrimination and inequality.     

You Can't Get Away with Murder That Easily: A Response to Timothy Mulgan

Abstract

Some works of literature are compromised because their authors get the facts wrong. In other works deviations from the facts don’t seem to matter, and authors quite legitimately make things up. This paper gives an account of the various ways in which matters of fact can make a difference to the aesthetic value of works of literature. It concludes by showing how this account can be applied in determining when a concern with matters of fact is an important part of literary criticism and when it is merely pedantic.     

You Can't Lose What you Ain't Never Had: A Reply to Marquis on Abortion

Philosophical Studies -     

评价单一态度对象的内隐社会认知测验方法

命中联系作业（GNAT）、外部情感西蒙作业（EAST）、单类内隐联想测验（SC-IAT）和单靶内隐联想测验（ST-IAT）是测验内隐社会认知的4种新方法,是内隐联想测验（IAT）的继承与发展,都可以用来评定对单一态度对象的联想强度。文章通过实例分别对这4种内隐社会认知测验方法的设计程序、信度以及适用性和局限性进行了分析,并在比较的基础上进行了评价和展望     

Measuring Anhedonia in Adolescents: A Psychometric Analysis

Anhedonia—the reduced capacity to experience pleasure—is a trait implicated in mental and physical health. Yet, psychometric data on anhedonia measures in adolescents are absent. We conducted an in-depth psychometric analysis of the Snaith–Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS; Snaith et al., 1995 Snaith, R. P., Hamilton, M., Morley, S., Humayan, A., Hargreaves, D., & Trigwell, P. (1995). A scale for the assessment of hedonic tone: The Snaith–Hamilton Pleasure Scale. British Journal of Psychiatry, 167, 99–103. doi:10.1192/bjp.167.1.99[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar])—a self-report measure of anticipated pleasure response to 14 pleasant experiences—in adolescents. Adolescents (N = 585, M age = 14.5) completed the SHAPS and other paper-and-pencil surveys. Item response theory models were used to evaluate the psychometric performance of each SHAPS item. Correlations of the SHAPS with other personality and psychopathology measures were calculated to evaluate construct validity. Results showed that (a) certain items (e.g., reported pleasure from basic experiences like “seeing smiling faces” or “smelling flowers”) provided more information about latent anhedonia than others; and (b) SHAPS scales exhibited construct-consistent convergent and discriminant validity (i.e., stronger correlations with low positive affect constructs, weaker correlations with negative affect). Reporting diminished pleasure from basic pleasant experiences accurately indicates adolescent anhedonia, which is important for future scale development and understanding the phenomenology of anhedonia in teens. These data support using the SHAPS for assessing anhedonia in epidemiological research and school-based universal prevention programming in general adolescent populations.     

Correction to: A New Social Picture Task to Assess Interpretation Bias Related to Social Fears in Adolescents

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology -     

When a Psychometric Advance Falls in the Forest

Borsboom (2006) attacks psychologists for failing to incorporate psychometric advances in their work, discusses factors that contribute to this regrettable situation, and offers suggestions for ameliorating it. This commentary applauds Borsboom for calling the field to task on this issue and notes additional problems in the field regarding measurement that he could add to his critique. It also chastises Borsboom for occasionally being unnecessarily perjorative in his critique, noting that negative rhetoric is unlikely to make converts of offenders. Finally, it exhorts psychometricians to make their work more accessible and points to Borsboom, Mellenbergh, and Van Heerden (2003) as an excellent example of how this can be done. I wish to thank Frank Schmidt for his help in preparing this paper. Requests for reprints should be sent to la-clark@uiowa.edu.     

Measuring task-switching ability in the Implicit Association Test

Recently, the role of method-specific variance in the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was examined (McFarland & Crouch, 2002; Mierke & Klauer, 2003). This article presents a new content-unspecific control task for the assessment of task-switching ability within the IAT methodology. Study 1 showed that this task exhibited good internal consistency and stability. Studies 2-4 examined method-specific variance in the IAT and showed that the control task is significantly associated with conventionally scored IAT effects of the IAT-Anxiety. Using the D measures proposed by Greenwald, Nosek, and Banaji (2003), the amount of method-specific variance in the IAT-Anxiety could be reduced. Possible directions for future research are outlined.     

A Paradigm to Assess Implicit Attitudes towards God: The Positive/Negative God Associations Task

Psychological research on the relationship between spirituality/religion and mental health has grown considerably over the past several decades and now constitutes a sizable body of scholarship. Among dimensions of S/R, positive beliefs about God have been significantly related to better mental health outcomes, and conversely negative beliefs about God are generally associated with more distress. However, prior research on this topic has relied heavily upon self-report Likert-type scales, which are vulnerable to self-report biases and measure only explicit cognitive processes. In this study, we developed and validated an implicit social cognition task, the Positive/Negative God Go/No-go Association Task (PNG-GNAT), for use in psychological research on spirituality and religion (S/R). Preliminary evidence in a large sample (N = 381) suggests that the PNG-GNAT demonstrates internal consistency, test–retest and split-half reliability, and concurrent evidence of validity. Further, our results suggest that PNG-GNAT scores represent different underlying dimensions of S/R than explicit self-report measures, and incrementally predict mental health above and beyond self-report assessment. The PNG-GNAT appears to be an effective tool for measuring implicit positive/negative beliefs about God.

     

Attitude,Inference, Association: On the Propositional Structure of Implicit Bias

The overwhelming majority of those who theorize about implicit biases posit that these biases are caused by some sort of association. However, what exactly this claim amounts to is rarely specified. In this paper, I distinguish between different understandings of association, and I argue that the crucial senses of association for elucidating implicit bias are the cognitive structure and mental process senses. A hypothesis is subsequently derived: if associations really underpin implicit biases, then implicit biases should be modulated by counterconditioning or extinction but should not be modulated by rational argumentation or logical interventions. This hypothesis is false; implicit biases are not predicated on any associative structures or associative processes but instead arise because of unconscious propositionally structured beliefs. I conclude by discussing how the case study of implicit bias illuminates problems with popular dual‐process models of cognitive architecture.