The shame of implicit racial bias

ABSTRACT

This study provides support for the theory that individual shame prevents individuals from recognizing their implicit racial biases. Participants across two studies in multiple conditions took the Race IAT, received feedback about their implicit racial bias, and then completed the Shame IAT. We created various conditions either to attribute their implicit racial bias to the self or to create an alternative explanation. The results demonstrated that when individuals attributed their implicit racial bias to themselves vs. an alternative attribution, they subsequently expressed higher levels of interpersonal shame, through increased associations between self-referential and shameful words. The need for positive self-esteem or the avoidance of a negative emotion such as shame may lead participants to avoid examining their own implicit racial biases.

KEYWORDS:

• Racism
• racial bias
• implicit attitudes
• cognitive dissonance
• shame

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.3886/E147981V1.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.3886/E147981V1.

Notes

1. All participants in the Academic Prolific participant pool reside in either the United States or the UK. A two-way ANOVA with condition and country of residence both as between-participants factors was completed comparing the US and UK samples as a validity check. In Study 1, country of residence (US/UK) didn’t qualify the effect, F(1, 108) = 2.04, p =.16, η_p² = .02. All data is available upon request.

2. A two-way ANOVA was completed, between US and UK samples as a validity check. In Study 2, country of residence didn’t qualify any of the results either, F(3, 195) = 1.04, p = .38, η_p² = .02.

3. Two participants did not report age.

4. In estimating Cohen’s d, the value of the contrast served as the numerator. Following one suggestion of D. C. Howell (2010), the denominator we used was the square root of the mean square error from the corresponding ANOVA reported above.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Francis Stevens

Dr. Stevens graduated with a Ph.D. in psychology from Tennessee State University and completed post-doctoral training at the W.G. (Bill) Hefner VA Medical Center in Salisbury, NC. His research focuses on the anterior cingulate cortex, a unique region of the brain located between the prefrontal cortex and limbic system brain areas. Dr. Stevens works as a psychologist in private practice in Worcester, MA. For more information visit www.drfrancisstevens.com.

Edwin Shriver

Dr. Shriver is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Emmanuel College in Boston, MA. psychology. Dr. Shriver earned a Ph.D. in social psychology from Miami University (Ohio). His research centers around emotional and behavioral responses to negative racial bias feedback on the implicit association test (IAT), and social cognitive models of the cross-race identification bias-that is, a tendency for greater difficulty recognizing faces of races other than one's own. He teaches courses in general psychology and social psychology.