According to Frazer (2023), all human beings tend to impose certain notions, perspectives, and behaviors depending on stereotypes and attitudes toward individuals or groups, even without realizing it. Implicit bias is second to human nature; people perceive specific actions as associated with a particular group of individuals based on their race, country of origin, religious affiliations, and political alienation. Particular negative actions are often retrospectively linked and progressively imposed on individuals. For instance, individuals affiliated with Islam are often victims of terrorism blame, war, and crimes, yet the majority of Islam are good people; people of color are often implicitly associated with drugs, gangs, and stealing to the extent that law enforcement officers use it to justify their brutal actions. These historically grounded implicit biases are systemic to the extent that even Project Implicit Social Attitudes tests will almost nudge a person towards a specific religious affiliation just to conform to societal norms.
I took the Religion IAT test to establish how the implicit association test will associate me with religiously, as well as to compare my results with those of the other individuals who have taken the test. I know from Payne et al. (2018) that these results are just a measure and not evidence that confirms my religious biases. My results were contrary to what I expected, which was automatically grouped among those who prefer Judaism over Islam, “Your responses suggested a slight automatic preference for Judaism over Islam.” I did take the test on neutral grounds, implying that no matter what a person does, an element of bias may still exist within. Regardless of the test results, who we are, the color of our skin, our country of origin, or our religious practices, our common course as the human race needs to triumph because the baseline is that we live in an interdependency world; we need each other, and whatever affects me will in one way or another impact you whether you know it or not. I believe our uniqueness is our superpower; we, therefore, are stronger together than apart.
References
Frazer, R. S. (2023, January 20). Understanding Implicit Bias—and How to Work Through It. Real Simple. https://www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/implicit-bias
Payne, K., Niemi, L., & Doris, J. (2018, March 27). How to Think about “Implicit Bias.” Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/
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