Rating Professors Online by Pamela Leong

Author:Pamela Leong
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030359362
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

5.2 Embodied Biases, Implicit Racial Biases, and Evaluations

Implicit racial biases may shape student evaluations of teaching, even if only unconsciously. According to Quillian (2006), an implicit attitude is “an attitude that can be activated without conscious awareness and, when so triggered, influences judgments and actions” (p. 314). A central idea in the studies that focus on implicit biases is that past associations toward certain racial groups (i.e., stereotypical beliefs of that racial group) exist in the evaluator’s mind and therefore influence future judgments and actions. These associations are triggered automatically by the presence or even mere mention of the target group (Quillian 2006:315).

Implicit prejudice (or implicit bias) refers to biases based on memories derived from “past socialization or experiences that affect current thought or behavior without conscious awareness” (Quillian 2008:7). Sometimes referred to as “unconscious bias” or “unconscious racism,” Quillian (2008) maintains that people with deeply held negative views of racial minorities may discriminate against racial minorities even if they are not consciously aware they are doing so. In other words, perpetrators of racial discrimination may not be fully cognizant that their implicit beliefs about race influence their judgments and actions (Ibid.:323).

A wide body of literature has documented the presence of implicit racial bias. Stepanikova (2012), for instance, found that implicit racial biases against black patients among family physicians and general internists led to a lower likelihood of referrals to specialists when physicians were under high time pressure. Implicit racial bias also has been noted in the American criminal justice system, with black offenders treated especially harshly (Tonry 2010). Racial biases occur in still other domains of life, including in hiring and on the job.

The literatures suggest that implicit racial biases shape decisions in ways that seriously disadvantage racial minorities. For black Americans, the effects seem to be especially pronounced. As Tonry (2010) maintained, “Almost everyone—[b]lack Americans included—is influenced by subconscious negative associations of black people with crime and criminality[,]” among other negative associations. While there are different terms to describe these social influences—from “colorism,” “cultural bias,” “implicit bias,” to name a few—they all lead to the same outcome: Americans—and especially white Americans—are predisposed to associate blackness in highly negative terms (Tonry 2010:281; Quillian 2008), leading to actual discrimination ranging from subtle to very severe treatment of black subjects.

The scholarship that interrogates racial biases tends to focus on areas outside of institutions of higher learning. There is abundant evidence, for instance, that document the prevalence of racial biases in hiring (Pager et al. 2009), the workplace (Light et al. 2011), health care (Stepanikova 2012), and the legal system (Richardson and Goff 2013; Levinson 2007), to name a few areas. These studies all reveal racial biases in evaluations and, consequently, in the treatment of nonwhite individuals. In all of these examples, high-status social groups (i.e., whites) are more likely to receive more favorable evaluations about their competence, credibility, and even demeanor and disposition. In contrast, members of low-status groups (i.e., nonwhites) are more likely to be subject to negative racial stereotypes concerning competency, credibility, behavior, and even personality and style traits.

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