Implicit Racism Measures\u27 Continuity with Real World Behavior

In the social sciences, implicit measures have been developed to detect individual biases toward groups or stereotyped members of a given society. Implicit measures are especially important when admitting to biases that may place the individual in a culturally poor light. However, debate is ongoing about the real-world application of implicit measures. Validating these measures is especially important given that overt racism has decreased dramatically in the United States over the last 100 years, but institutional and covert racism remain prevalent. The current study examined whether real-world (observable) behavioral differences occur when participants interact with white or African American experimenters and whether those real-world interactions correspond with behavior observed on implicit bias measures. Participants met with either a white or African American experimenter who instructed them to hand over their cell phone. This interaction was recorded and coded to determine individual time to hand over phone. Preliminary data analysis (n=8) indicated that the time to relinquish personal property (cell phone) to an African American experimenter (mean=8.499s) was almost double that of participants interacting with a white experimenter (mean=4.384s). This preliminary finding suggests that real-world behaviors may, in fact, reveal differences in how individuals respond to members of negative stereotyped groups. Processing of correspondence with implicit measures is ongoing and such results may be particularly important for further validating implicit measures