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Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Restricted Thesis: Campus only access
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Dr. Kristjen B. Lundberg
Abstract
The United States is becoming increasingly diverse, and with this diversity comes more racial ethnic groups for individuals to conceptualize. Despite this growth of racial minority categories, the majority of psychological literature focuses primarily on only two racial groups: Black and White. The goal of this study is to investigate a potential tool for measuring implicit bias against people of color more broadly to accommodate the need to measure changing racial dynamics within the United States. Implicit biases measured by the Skin Tone Implicit Association Test and the Race Implicit Association task, available by the were compared within tests by participants racial ethnic group. Results show similar patterns of bias across both tests in which White participants had the strongest preference for White and Light Skinned (compared to Black or Dark skinned) while Black or African Americans had the lowest Light Skin preference and were the only group to have an average no preference on the Race IAT but have an average negative score (indicating an overall stronger preference for Black compared to White. All other racial groups showed a slight preference for both White and Light Skinned. The Skin Tone IAT appeared more adept at measuring colorism than bias against people of color and additional research need to be done to address a valid measure of bias against people of color as a racial categorization.
Recommended Citation
Klein, Neelamberi, "Race vs. Skin Tone IAT: Comparing Measures of Implicit Racial Bias by Racial Ethnic Group" (2020). Honors Theses. 1483.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses/1483