On the influence of implicit race attitudes on explicit trustworthiness judgments: An investigation of the perceivers and targets' race and gender intersection

Abstract

ABSTRACT People judge strangers’ trustworthiness based on their facial appearance, but these judgments are biased. Biases towards Black individuals may stem from implicit pro-White attitudes. However, previous studies have not explored if these effects extend to different members within the same social group, like women instead of men, nor considered the role of the perceiver’s multiple social group memberships. Therefore, we investigated how the perceiver’s and target’s gender influence implicit and explicit biases in trustworthiness judgments of Black and White individuals. Our study included 309 participants, split between Black and White men and women, who completed trustworthiness judgment tasks and the Implicit Association Test (IAT). We found that implicit pro-White attitudes predicted trustworthiness disparities only for White individuals. Interestingly, implicit pro-White attitudes also correlated with explicit pro-men attitudes, but only among male participants. This study underscores the importance of considering multiple social group memberships when studying prejudice in trustworthiness judgments.