Reducing implicit racial preferences: III. A process-level examination of changes in implicit preferences.

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Intervention Science

Background:

• Implicit bias change was traditionally viewed as altering learned associations.
• Emerging research suggests implicit bias change can also involve modifying control processes that regulate association expression.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the process-level effects of 17 distinct implicit bias-reduction interventions.
• To determine which underlying psychological processes (associations vs. control) are affected by different intervention types.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of data from over 20,000 participants completing various interventions or a control condition.
• Utilized the Quadruple process model on race Implicit Association Test (IAT) responses to differentiate process effects.
• Meta-analysis of intervention parameter estimates categorized by intervention features.

Main Results:

• Interventions using counterstereotypic exemplars or bias override strategies affected both associations and control processes.
• Evaluative conditioning interventions influenced only control processes.
• Interventions focusing on egalitarian values, perspective-taking, or emotion showed no reliable effects on examined processes.
• When associations were affected, reductions were more common in positive White associations than negative Black associations.

Conclusions:

• Implicit bias interventions can differentially impact associative and control processes.
• Findings extend dual-process models by demonstrating intervention effects on response biases.
• Connects specific intervention characteristics to changes in the underlying mechanisms of implicit bias.