Implicit Bias
What is Implicit Bias?
Implicit biases are internalised attitudes, opinions or stereotypes that unconsciously inform our perceptions, beliefs, actions and interactions. Implicit biases and attitudes enter our minds through cultural and social conditioning, present in all our interactions and experiences from birth. Our brains use stereotypes to help us categorise and make sense of the world when there is an excess of information. Eg, kindness can be more closely associated with femininity than masculinity. This has no bearing on the kindness that exists within any individual but is a bias that may exist within us unconsciously and affect how we interact with others (Shah, 2024).
Heuristic shortcuts in thinking may be responsible for the development of these biases (Yager, 2021). Biases and stereotypes allow us to make decisions with a small amount of energy, as opposed to engaging in critical thought or reasoning. Eg; Confirmation bias: Focusing on information that confirms pre-existing beliefs rather than doing the reasoning and critical thought to alter beliefs (Klayman, 1995).
How Do Implicit Biases Form?
Cultural Conditioning influences the development of common beliefs, stereotypes, adherence to gender roles and internal definitions of what is true, expected, acceptable or desired in society. This can happen through (Feibleman, 1970);
Media - marketing influence, character stereotypes, movie relational scripts, sports teams
Education - selective subjects, prescriptive testing
History - colonialism, capitalism, racism, genocide (Endler, 2021)
Societal Development - industrialisation, individualisation (Marx & Engels, 1974)
Almost every aspect of society contributes to our implicit biases, this is not to say they are all bad nor all have negative consequences, but that even our preferences are informed by our social and cultural knowledge and exposure. We are all unique individuals but we exist in relation to others and to the society we live in. This is to say, bias is okay when we can find awareness for the effects and origins of it and prevent any potential for harm.
If we deconstruct the above concepts - (consider a philosophical approach to the idea of multiple truths) we can find the roots and effects of our bias eg; thin people are super healthy (perpetuated by marketing, media and colonialism (Gershon, 2019)). If we have a positive bias towards health, combined with this stereotype, we may be more likely to have (unconsciously) positive feelings towards thin people and negative feelings towards fat people. While in reality there is no moral value to weight, a bias towards thin people may result in attributing negative moral judgements to fat people.
What Does Implicit Bias Effect?
Everything to put it simply.
Confirmation bias effects our ability to absorb alternative information (Klayman, 1995).
Elderly people can be associated with fear of dying and face prejudice as a result (Shah and Bohlen, 2023).
Non-white people face discrimination in healthcare in the USA (Shah and Bohlen, 2023) For example; Black women in America are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. This is as a result of a combination of racial, class and sex implicit bias within individuals and the wider medical field..
People living with HIV face discrimination based on sexual taboos and homophobia that can limit access to healthcare and are pervasive in the access to preemptive for LGBTQIA people (Shah and Bohlen, 2023).
People with substance use issues face prejudiced levels of treatment and assumptions around patient ‘treatability’ (Shah and Bohlen, 2023).
Socially, our ability to communicate, build trust and interact with others in informed by our implicit biases (Vain, 2025)
Really useful article - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK589697/
Effects on Therapy
Practitioner bias effects patient outcomes (Betterhelp, 2025). The potential to unconsciously frame others experience with our own stereotypes/ internalised attitudes/biases can effect everything around us, on an individual and social level, from aesthetic perceptions to quality of medical treatment. This is particular relevant in a therapeutic relationship where these bias may result in blocks to the therapy such as;
Misdiagnosis and Improper Treatment: Biases can cloud judgment, leading to incorrect diagnoses and ineffective treatment plans.
Reduced Effectiveness of Therapy: When therapy is influenced by bias, it becomes less tailored to the client’s unique needs, reducing its overall effectiveness.
Potential Harm to Clients: Biased therapy can harm clients by reinforcing stereotypes, making them feel misunderstood, or causing emotional distress.
Erosion of Client-Therapist Trust: Trust is foundational in therapy. Bias undermines this trust, making clients feel unheard and invalidated.
(Shah, 2024)
Why do we Form Implicit Biases?
Using a dual-process theory of cognition, we can consider 2 systems that account for how we make decisions, think and behave. (Burrell and Olsson, 2021)
System 1 thinking refers to fast, associative, subconscious cognition. This is our instinctual responses and our stereotypes and assumptions. This system uses less energy, and relies on our brains stored information about the world to make the quickest, most efficient decisions.
System 2 refers to slow, propositional, reflective thinking. This is our critical thought, analysing, making choices, and thought out plans or decisions. This uses more energy and engages different parts of our brain in different processes to achieve a result. (Vaisey, 2009).
Implicit Attitude Tests
IATs test our internal attitudes towards certain demographics and whether we have more negative or positive associations (Project Implicit, 2011).
They test our associations between concepts and demographics through speed of response. Making a response is easier/ quicker when the associations are closely related (system 1 thinking).
IATs consider a dual process model of cognition - system 1 responses which are fast, subconscious, associative or automatic are the ones responsible for implicit bias and influenced by cultural conditioning. Crucially, these do not involve critical thinking (system 2).
IATs were developed by the Harvard Project Implicit and can be found here; https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html