The Lost E-Mail Technique: Use of an Implicit Measure to Assess Discriminatory Attitudes Toward Two Minority Groups in Israel

The effectiveness of the "lost e-mail technique" (LET) as an unobtrusive attitude measure was successfully demonstrated in 2 studies. In Study 1, we found that Israeli students were more likely to reply to a similar other than to a minority group member (an Israeli-Arab or an immigrant from the former Soviet Union). In Study 2, LET was administered to professors and administrators, and its effectiveness was compared to a more traditional self-report measure. Although professors showed less discrimination on the self-report measure than did administrators, they were nevertheless discriminative in their responses to lost e-mails. These results suggest that professors are not necessarily less prejudiced, but probably are better able to detect attitude probes and more motivated to appear unbiased.