This is a teaching case focused on implicit biases intended to spark meaningful discussions about challenges we face in decision-making. The case narrative centers on a young woman, Elsa, who observes a situation she believes is suspicious: a young Black man escorting two White children to his car. In Part A, Elsa debates whether to call the…

Even though society is becoming increasingly more progressive in theory, practice, and policy, educational institutions have been slow to adapt and change. Even with attempts to provide a safe and equitable environment, bias still occurs. Appearance-related forms of discrimination, particularly body weight and attractiveness, have gone unaddressed…

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP, Barnes-Holmes et al. in Psychol Rec 60:527-542, 2010) was utilized as a relatively new tool to measure implicit weight bias in first- and third-year medical students. To date, only two studies (Miller et al. in Acad Med 88:978-982, 2013; Phelan et al. in Med Educ 49:983-992, 2015) have…

Individuals with disabilities comprise the largest minority group in the world, yet they are the most underrepresented minority group in higher education, the job market and entertainment media such as literature. This population is often underrepresented because of the overlapping physical, attitudinal and policy barriers that prevent them from…

Implicit race/ethnic prejudice was assessed using Spanish- and English-language versions of an Implicit Association Test that used Hispanic/Anglo first names and pleasant/unpleasant words as stimuli. This test was administered to a consecutive sample of Mexican American adults residing in the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas of whom about…

Autism involves core impairments in social cognition. Given that social learning underlies the acquisition of stereotypes, it was hypothesized that use of stereotypes would be reduced in autism. Contrary to this prediction, previous studies found the same use of stereotypes in autistic individuals as in controls. Measurement of stereotypes,…

Considering xenophobic attacks against foreigners and ethnic or religious motivated wars, there is a need for educational concepts to extinguish xenophobia. A model describing the cognitive processes involved in Xenophobic cognition was developed. Instructional multimedia material that discussed various forms of alienation was developed and…

Previous research in terror management theory has shown that when individuals are reminded of their mortality, negative evaluations of out-group members increase. This previous research has used a variety of methods to investigate the change in attitudes toward out-group members. These methods generally permit participants time to consciously…

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) is a relatively new measure of implicit cognition that tests cognition as relational behavior instead of an associative activity and thus may provide a more specific measure of cognitive repertoires, including those for social biases, than better known implicit measures such as the Implicit…

Measuring medical and allied health students' attitudes towards older people has been identified as an important research area. The present study compared the use of implicit and explicit attitude measures. Sixty-five undergraduates completed one explicit measure, the Fraboni Scale of Ageism (FSA), (Fraboni, Saltstone, & Hughes, 1990) and one…

This study examined whether automatic stereotypes captured by the implicit association test (IAT) can predict real hiring discrimination against the obese. In an unobtrusive field experiment, job applications were sent to a large number of real job vacancies. The applications were matched on credentials but differed with respect to the applicant's…

In October 2006, a New Hampshire police officer named Michael Briggs was shot to death in an alley. His accused killer, Michael Addison, has been charged with capital murder. It is the state's first death-penalty case in more than 30 years, and it is racially fraught: Addison is African-American, and Briggs was white. New Hampshire has a long list…

Background: Children and adolescents with mental health problems are widely reported to have problems with peer relationships; however, few studies have explored the way in which these children are regarded by their peers. For example, little is known about the nature of peer stigmatisation, and no published research has investigated implicit…

The major goals of the present study were to (a) examine age differences in susceptibility to age stereotypes and (b) test a self-awareness manipulation in counteracting age stereotypes. Young and older adults read two sets of descriptors that only differed in the to-be-ignored age-related information. In the high self-awareness condition,…

Ethnic minority students are at risk for school failure and show a heightened susceptibility to negative teacher expectancy effects. In the present study, whether the prejudiced attitudes of teachers relate to their expectations and the academic achievement of their students is examined. The prejudiced attitudes of 41 elementary school teachers…