Implicit Biases: Are They Real?

By LaKetia W. Carrell, M.Ed., LPC

I took an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure my implicit bias.

After reading about the test, I did not believe it could measure implicit bias. I liked the design, and the instructions were simple. I was intrigued by the IAT but unsure how it could measure implicit bias. I took the racial and light-skinned dark-skinned IAT.

Surprisingly, my conscious beliefs matched my implicit biases. I was relieved that I did not discover that I subconsciously disliked a group of people. After reflecting for a moment, I believe a significant source of my implicit biases is related to favorable life experiences. Interestingly, it is life experiences that determine implicit biases. With that in mind, implicit biases can be transient if a person is open to changing biases. However, if individuals maintain implicit biases, meaning they are not implicit but conscious, then biases will remain the same.

  The benefits of taking the IATs were that they made me aware of my subconscious associations and encouraged me to think about why I had those subconscious associations.

Implicit bias is dangerous, especially in medical treatment. When doctors have implicit bias, they undertreat patients and avoid looking at, touching, and listening to them. Serious mistakes can happen, such as giving patients faulty diagnoses, dangerous treatments, and unnecessary surgeries. Patients experience an increased distrust of doctors and the healthcare system. As a result, patients avoid treatment, do not adhere to treatment protocols, and drop out of treatment, resulting in fragmented treatment. The disease process could exacerbate and possibly lead to disability or early mortality.

In mental health, therapists acting on implicit biases minimize patients' problems and unnecessarily challenge patients' experiences due to their subconscious beliefs about patients; as a result, the therapist's implicit bias will interfere with the therapeutic alliance and may cause the patient to avoid therapy.

Sometimes, it is appropriate to use race and ethnicity to diagnose and prevent conditions, if possible, such as Tay Sachs disease in Jewish people and sickle cell anemia in Black people. It is helpful to consider religion and sexual orientation for medical treatment not only to diagnose but also to identify support systems that are available to patients. A religious belief may, at times, mimic a mental health condition. For example, a patient may speak about "talking to the Holy Spirit," or they may say "the Holy Spirit spoke to them." These conversations may seem foreign to non-Christian providers and misdiagnosed as auditory hallucinations. It is essential to understand why race, religion, sexual preference, or any other factor is a consideration in treatment.

The IAT is simple enough and free to use. It is a good practice for anyone to take the tests and learn more about themselves to prevent damage to others and optimize the help they provide for others.  https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html