Evidence Based Implicit Bias Implications for Physicians and Healthcare Professionals
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havior, the device revealed that they be- gan to look at and track the African Amer- ican children. Further, their eyes tracked the African American boys more than the other children. The teachers did not have any conscious idea of their viewing be- havior. ADULT RESEARCH Within the racial history of America, the complexion of African American people has always been a complex dynamic. The One Drop Rule, in practice and then in law, has existed since Africans were forc- ibly brought to this country. Interracial relationships, both forced and voluntary, resulted in bi-racial children and adults. Essentially, any African ancestry (“one drop of African American blood”) clas- sified an individual as African American (O’Connell et al., 2020). In addition, light- er-skinned African Americans were some- times viewed as slightly higher in status than darker-skinned African Americans. Darker-skinned African Americans often had fewer employment opportunities and were treated more harshly. Although the deliberate disparate treatment of light-skinned and darker-skinned African Americans has significantly diminished, unconscious bias related to the complex- ion of people still exists in many sectors of American society. Hiring and promotions of African Americans can sometimes be significantly influenced by implicit racial bias related to complexion (Grant, 2020; Louie & Wilkes, 2018). In one experiment, subjects were sent to one of two rooms. In one room subjects saw the subliminal presentation of the word “ignorant” on a screen, followed by the subliminal pre- sentation of the face of an African Ameri- can male. In the other room, subjects saw the subliminal presentation of the word “educated” and the subliminal presenta-
tion of the face of the same man. In the next phase of the experiment, subjects in both rooms saw seven variations of the same man’s face: three images were light- er-skinned versions, three images were darker-skinned versions, and one image was identical to the first subliminal pre - sentation. From the seven photographs, subjects were asked to select the version that was identical to the subliminal pre- sentation. Researchers found that subjects primed with the word “ignorant” select- ed a darker-skinned version of the man, while those primed with the word “edu- cated” selected a lighter-skinned version (Ben-Zeev et al., 2014). Judgments about the worth or intellect of the African Amer- ican man appeared to be unconsciously influenced by his complexion. Although not reported in the research, subjects would probably deny making judgments based on complexion. It should be noted that in recent generations, discrimination based on skin tone appears to be dimin- ishing (Branigan et al., 2019). Excessive and biased focus on African American youth’s behavior in schools con- tributes to the disparate suspension rate for African American versus White stu- dents in primary and secondary schools (Erickson & Pearson, 2021). This does not appear to be the result of conscious dis- crimination. It appears that similar behav- ior is judged differently when occurring by an African American versus a White stu- dent. Blake and colleagues went a step further and examined race, complexion, and suspension rates. They found that Af- rican American teenage girls with darker complexions were suspended at a higher rate than those with lighter complexions (Blake et al., 2017). Again, unconscious bias seems to be a major factor.
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