Age Invariance in Implicit Bias: Alternative Perspectives and Their Implications for the Development of Implicit Cognition

Current theories of social cognition assume that implicit bias is influenced by early socialization experiences. To the extent that implicit biases reflect traces of past experiences, they should form slowly over time and grow with repeated experience. However, most research examining implicit bias in children indicates that levels of bias do not vary across age groups (i.e., age invariance). This article reviews the dominant theoretical interpretation of age invariance in implicit bias and considers alternative interpretations for these findings in light of several methodological and theoretical limitations. Specifically, the available evidence cannot distinguish between the effects of cohort versus development, category versus exemplar, attitude activation versus application, ingroup versus outgroup evaluation, or attitude-versus control-oriented processes. When considered from a developmental perspective, these issues suggest plausible alternative interpretations of age invariance, with important implications for understanding the mechanisms underlying the formation of implicit cognition and theories of implicit cognition.

The role of causal structure in implicit cognition

Distinguishing between mere association and causation is crucial for successful interactions with the environment: Only causal, but not merely associated, stimuli allow humans to produce rewards and avoid punishments by intervening on causal systems. Accordingly, prior research has demonstrated that explicit (controlled) cognition represents causal relationships above and beyond mere association; however, it is unclear whether this difference is also reflected by implicit (automatic) cognition. In the present studies, participants (total N = 2570) observed causal events during which two stimuli were equally associated with positive or negative outcomes but only one of them was causally responsible for these outcomes. Across 5 paradigms, differences in causal status were consistently reflected not only by explicit measures of evaluation (Likert scales; Cohen’s d = .27, BF10 > 10^37) but also by their implicit counterparts (Implicit Association Tests; Cohen’s d = .22, BF10 > 10^24). This result emerged in both within-participant and between-participant designs and irrespective of whether exposure to the causal events was preceded by detailed verbal instructions or not. Moreover, the effect was sensitive to the valence of the outcome, with causal responsibility for positive events resulting in stronger positive evaluations and causal responsibility for negative events in stronger negative evaluations than mere association with such events. Overall, contrary to most dual-process accounts, these findings suggest that implicit cognition can encode causal relationships and thereby contribute to adaptive decision making.

Methods for Studying the Contextual Nature of Implicit Cognition

This chapter begins with the contention that many key theoretical questions in the sociology of culture depend on our understanding of the interaction of culture at the individual level and forms of culture that exist external to individuals. A central assumption of this argument is that processes of implicit cognition, an aspect of how culture is stored at the individual level, depend on the social, physical, and cultural environmental of an individual. The chapter reviews findings and methods from multiple fields that can inform the study of the relationship between individual level implicit cognition and environmental context. It examines this relationship in terms of how context informs both the acquisition and the activation of implicit cognition at the individual level. Drawing on studies of implicit cognition measures in real-world settings, and laboratory and survey experiments, it discusses how these methods can be used to examine outstanding questions in the sociology of culture.

Implicit Cognition and Psychopathology: Looking Back and Looking Forward

Implicit cognitive processing is theorized to have a central role in many forms of psychopathology. In the current review, we focus on implicit associations, by which we mean evaluative representations in memory that are difficult to control and do not require conscious reflection to influence affect, cognition, or behavior. We consider definitional and measurement challenges before examining recent empirical evidence for these associations in anxiety, obsessive–compulsive, posttraumatic stress, depressive, and alcohol use disorders. This examination is framed by a brief review of the ways that prominent models of psychopathology represent biased implicit processing of disorder-relevant information. We consider to what extent models reflect more traditional automatic/implicit versus strategic/explicit dual-process perspectives or reflect more recent dynamical systems perspectives in which mental representations are iteratively reprocessed, evolving continuously. Finally, we consider the future research needed to better understand the interactive and temporal dynamics of implicit cognition in psychopathology.

The Psychology of Implicit Intergroup Bias and the Prospect of Change

Modern democracies must contend with the challenge of providing opportunity and fair treatment to a diverse citizenry. Discoveries from the mind sciences have revealed, however, that these values are compromised in a variety of ways. In this chapter, we focus on the biases in decisions about individuals that emanate from information about their social categories (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, age, sexuality, religion, nationality). Because everyday decisions often emerge without conscious, deliberative thought, i.e., are implicit in nature, the question of how to conceive change at the individual and societal level is fraught with scientific, practical, and moral challenges. In this chapter, we review some research on implicit social cognition to show the mental processes that thwart even basic aspirations of democratic societies. We focus on evidence concerning the malleability of implicit cognition at the level of the individual mind. Specifically, we ask what is known about changing implicit attitudes and stereotypes in the moment. Given a lifetime of learning, is change in mental states even possible? If so, do some interventions work better than others? Next, we focus on what might be done when individuals cannot be counted on to shift implicit cognition in the direction of neutrality. In such cases, are there external efforts that can be employed to assure equal opportunity and fairness in everyday decisions? The discussion is oriented toward providing the best assessment we have for understanding the constraints on thinking that jeopardize equal opportunity and fairness, and to consider the evidence to date on the possibility for change.