The Go/No Go Association Task as a New Technology for Teaching Anti-Prejudice

Abstract

Implicit measures of association have allowed researchers to study implicit prejudice based on the degree of association between representations of groups that are the target of prejudice and negative versus positive attributes. These implicit prejudice measures show that people find it more difficult to respond to a representation of the group (e.g., photo of an Aboriginal Australian) and a positive attribute (e.g., “HAPPY”) using the same key than to the same representation of the group and a negative attribute (e.g., “SILLY”). Using measures of implicit association as a technology for teaching anti-prejudice is highly useful because it allows people to experience their own implicit biases. Thus, this technology makes prejudice a personally relevant issue (i.e., not something that other people possess) and, consequently, facilitates the engagement with this topic that is so essential to prejudice reduction.