Unacknowledged attitudes external to a person’s awareness which nonetheless have measurable effects on people’s response times to stimuli.

Example: A version of an Implicit Attitudes Test (IAT) has participants make the split-second decision whether to “shoot” intruders in a video game based on whether or not they are holding a gun; many people exhibit an implicit bias toward blacks, manifested as faster and more frequent decisions to “shoot” when the intruder pictured is a black man.

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 19 Jan 2009