On the Methodological Difficulty of Identifying Implicit Racial Beliefs and Stereotypes

Moa Bursell,Filip Olsson

doi:10.1177/0003122420969629

Moa Bursell, Filip Olsson

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122420969629

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Abstract

In “Status Characteristics, Implicit Bias, and the Production of Racial Inequality,” Melamed, Munn, Barry, Montgomery, and Okuwobi present an innovative and intriguing study on social influence, status beliefs, and implicit racial bias. To capture status-based expectancies, the authors measure implicit racial status beliefs using an Implicit Association Test (IAT) with words related to high and low status. We identify an important flaw in the study’s analytic approach that severely limits the conclusions that can be drawn based on the study. We argue that the authors neglected to separate the valence of the words included in the racial status IAT with the stereotype content of these words. It is therefore possible that the study’s racial IAT only captures implicit racial evaluations, and not status-based implicit racial beliefs.

Highlights

In “Status Characteristics, Implicit Bias, and the Production of Racial Inequality,” Melamed, Munn, Barry, Montgomery, and Okuwobi present an innovative and intriguing study on social influence, status beliefs, and implicit racial bias
In Melamed, Munn, Barry, Montgomery, and Okuwobi’s (2019) innovative and intriguing “Status Characteristics, Implicit Bias, and the Production of Racial Inequality,” they derive hypotheses from status characteristics theory (SCT) to explain how racial inequality is reproduced via status-based expectations in interracial interactions
We may expect a positive score for White respondents, and a lower or negative score for Black respondents, even if none of the groups have implicit racial status beliefs, because of the valence of the words included in the racial status Implicit Association Test (IAT) (Kurdi et al 2019)

Summary

Introduction

In “Status Characteristics, Implicit Bias, and the Production of Racial Inequality,” Melamed, Munn, Barry, Montgomery, and Okuwobi present an innovative and intriguing study on social influence, status beliefs, and implicit racial bias. We may expect a positive score for White respondents, and a lower or negative score for Black respondents, even if none of the groups have implicit racial status beliefs, because of the valence of the words included in the racial status IAT (Kurdi et al 2019).

Results

Conclusion