Word formation. Major and minor ways of word formation content introduction

CHAPTER II. EDUCATING OURSELVES AND THE COURT 
ON THE TRUE NATURE 
2.1 The Science of Implicit Bias 
The true nature and extent of bias contradicts the traditional views 
of bias as being relatively rare and as being polarized between us (the 
good who are free from all negative bias) and (the bad) those with 
openly bigoted views. Bias is not measured in extremes and the vast 
majority of those who have bias that affect their decision-making are in 
the middle of the scale, not at either end. The true extent of bias 
suggests that far more people suffer from negative views of certain 
groups that we would like to believe including our friends, relatives and 

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coworkers. The true nature and extent of bias can only be understood 
by 
those 
willing 
to 
look 
in 
themirror. 
The true nature of bias consists of wide variety of feelings, attitudes, 
associations, perceptions, stereotypes, judgments, bias, and overt 
prejudice; which in turn can be either be openly stated, hidden, overtly 
conscious, bordering on the edge of awareness or seeping deep from 
within the subconscious. The true nature of bias includes an 
understanding that most people within American society have likely 
derived some degree of negative biases against at least the three main 
protected classes (Race, Gender, Age) and likely have such biases within 
their 
mind 
at 
some 
level 
of 
consciousness.
The standard response to the above paragraph is as follows: ―Well of 
course we all have biases, one cannot escape them. I prefer a certain 
basketball team and I favor my wife’s cooking.‖ That is not what we are 
talking about. History, experience, current studies and social science 
suggest that large numbers of person have negative, i.e. unfavorable 
associations or biases against blacks, women and the aged. Those 
attitudes affect decision-making to the detriment of those groups. 
The ruler represents levels of consciousness and willfulness that exist in 
all of us. The purpose of the scale is to point out that bias involves a 
variety of relatively benign, overtly harmful, conscious and 
subconscious perceptions, not merely two extremes. The scale does not 
represent an opinion of exactly where any of those views of minorities 
fall along the conscious or willfulness scale. There is no need because 
Title VII prohibits adverse employment actions against minorities that is 
motivated 
anywhere 
along 
that 
scale.

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The true extent of bias includes an understanding that most people 
within our society have likely derived some degree of biases against 
protected classes and likely have such biases within their mind at some 
level of consciousness. To put it bluntly, at least regarding the three 
main classically protected groups, i.e. women, non-whites and the aged, 
in a room of 100 people 70 of them will have some degree of negative 
association with that person based on their age, gender or color.
They merely are intended to provide a simple visual reference for 
how a decision or a group of decisions can be impacted at any point by 
the filter of negative bias. Now think about the hundreds of decisions, 
thoughts and groups of decisions that a minority must negotiate every 
week in their employment. The impact of even one person in the chain 
of decision-making with some degree of negative bias is very real.
That means they do not purport to measure racism or 
sexism. They only measure negative and positive attitudes toward 
groups. It may be that racists and sexists will also test for these lower 
levels of bias, but the point is to reveal the existence of bias in people 
who look and act like you and me. In short, even if the only bias that 
remained in society was subconscious, it would still provide barriers to 
minorities. Subconscious bias affects our decision-making regarding 
minorities as effectively as if we had hate in our hearts and 
minds.
Science can now clearly identify at least the bottom end of the scale. It 
can tell us that when it comes to the bare negative associations of certain 
protected groups or positive associations with historically advantaged 

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groups, that an extremely high percentage of people in our society retain 
these 
negative 
associations. 
There are three major categories of beliefs regarding groups. They are 
explicit attitudes, implicit stereotypes, and implicit attitudes. An 
attitude is a positive or negative evaluation of some object or idea. An 
implicit attitude can rub off on an associated object. The word implicit 
implies that these attitudes are sometime hidden from view and even 
from 
conscious 
awareness. 
A stereotype is a belief that members of a group possess or share some 
characteristic. A stereotype and an attitude are closely related. Not all 
attitudes are stereotypes, but all stereotypes are attitudes. Evidence of 
attitudes shows how negative or positive feelings about a group can rub 
off on a person or object. Likewise, a negative attitude toward a person 
can likely rub off on views of actions taken by that person. The implicit 
attitude represents the bottom of the scale. Stereotypes represent some 
level of awareness between implicit attitudes and overt bias. The explicit 
attitude may represents the high end of the scale for that person, 
assuming that they openly admit their true attitudes or bias.
Tests have been developed to measure the degree of hidden bias 
(implicit negative associations toward groups) in people who deny they 
have such bias. For example, people favor whites in this country, they 
favor males, and they favor the young. They do all this without regard to 
open racism or sexism or ageism and without feelings of animosity 
toward those groups. The actions of all of those individuals are 
intentional in the legal sense. They hire, they fire, they demote, but the 

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awareness of the nature of their own bias is often very low (or, to the 
extent the awareness is high) the willingness to express them explicitly 
remains 
low. 
The Implicit Association Test is a test that was designed to measure this 
hidden bias. The test was developed in the 1990’s because psychologists 
began to figure out that most people denied any bias or racism or sexism 
when asked. However the effects of racism and sexism continued to 
endure and the evidence of hidden bias remained. The question was how 
to measure bias that either people were denying or which people did not 
even know they had. The Implicit Association Test or IAT, was a direct 
response 
to 
this 
problem. 
Implicit Association is a mental response that is so well learned as to 
operate without awareness, or without intention or without control. The 
Implicit Association Test is a test designed to measure responses to 
gender, race and age. Greenwald & Banaji, Psychology Review, 
(1995) This test measures the reactions of individuals to simple word 
associations and photos of person of a particular race, or age or gender. 
The test measures reaction time that the subject uses to associate words 
that the subject views as positive or negative to the class of persons 
being reviewed for implicit bias. The results of this testing are showing 
that it is no longer a question of who has bias against certain races or 
against age or gender, but to what degree. 
TESTING SHOWS HIGH PREVALENCE OF BIAS 
The implicit association test has been given to thousands of people 
across the United States and the world. The advent of the Internet allows 

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millions of people to take it, and therefore vastly increases the database 
of information. The results from the IAT show a reasonable degree of 
scientific certainty about the following results regarding implicit bias 
concerning 
both 
attitude/preference 
and 
knowledge/stereotype: 
1. Implicit bias can be large. Implicitly if not explicitly, the 
magnitude of bias toward particular social groups is large. Whether it is 
age, race, class, ethnicity, religion, physical appearance, or sexual 
orientation, there is now strong evidence that negative associations 
automatically arise when we think about the less favored (gay, elderly, 
African Americans, Arabs, Jews--when compared to Christians, the 
obese).
2. The bias is widespread. Many, including the test developers 
themselves, show evidence of implicit biases, even in the absence of any 
conscious bias, and sometimes in opposition to the consciously 
expressed 
attitude. 
3. Not all groups demonstrate the bias equally. Quite often implicit 
attitudes, 
like explicit ones, favor the groups to which we belong. There are some 
surprising and psychologically meaningful deviations. For example, 
members of disadvantaged minorities and even statistical minorities do 
not show the same implicit ingroup preference as do members of 
majority and dominant groups. This finding often stands in contrast to 
the consciously expressed, strong in-group preference by members of 
disadvantaged 
or 
small 
groups. 
4. Not all individuals demonstrate the bias equally. Following from 

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the above finding, within groups, there is a wide range of individual 
differences. We have also learned that there are individual differences in 
the degree to which each person is contaminated, and that these 
individual differences in the strength of the bias is meaningful – those 
with stronger biases are likely to be more discriminatory in other 
behaviors 
than 
those 
who 
show 
a 
weaker 
bias. 
5. Implicit bias is related to explicit bias. The work shows that 
consciously held attitudes and stereotypes may indeed be associated 
with the degree of implicit bias, such that those who report lower 
explicit bias also appear to be lower in their implicit bias (this finding 
can vary quite a bit depending on the category – race, political attitudes, 
etc.), but it is no longer possible to ignore the fact that the two are 
related. Since conscious attitudes are controllable and can be 
consciously adopted, this provides a path whereby implicit attitudes can 
be 
influenced. 
6. Implicit bias is plastic. Among the more optimistic revelations 
from recent data is the finding that seemingly minor shifts in the 
environment (such as an imagery exercise or the presence of a particular 
person) can change the magnitude of the bias that is observed. For 
example, the presence of an African American experimenter appears to 
lower anti-Black bias, and imagining women in positions of authority 
lowers the Female+weak bias. These findings raise questions about the 
power of the immediate situation in determining which one of may 
possible 
attitudes 
is 
expressed. 

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Source 
- Mahzarin 
Banaji 
- 
Notes 
on 
Implicit 
Bias 
The ideas and data of implicit association and the IAT clearly 
makes visible the bottom end of the scale of those motivations prevented 
by Title VII. It shows that the nature of bias includes an entire range of 
motivations and conscious awareness. It makes known the true extent of 
bias within our society. Finally, it either is, or soon will be able to 
establish that the possession of attitudes measure by the IAT actually 
causes motivation that can adversely impact on protected groups.