Implicit Social Attitudes and Job Interview Selection

After taking the Harvard University’s Project Implicit test, on the subject of social attractiveness, I was shocked by my results. Since I had an understanding that this test was based off of implicit biases, I kept that in mind when answering some of the questions on the test. So, when my results still revealed that subconsciously, I had a bias to more “socially” attractive individuals, I was slightly shocked. It is interesting to think about how one’s implicit biases may come into play when being interviewed, and how if someone has an unethical bias, it can harm individuals that are being interviewed.

Knowing that implicit bias plays a role in individuals that are interviewed for job positions, one can say that the reliability and validity of questions asked in an interview can be skewed negatively. Failing to understand one’s implicit biases and how it can affect their decision making, can lead to biases playing a large role in the decision processes. Ultimately, when it comes to individuals that are interviewing candidates for a potential job position, letting implicit biases affect judgement of a candidate makes the interview unreliable and not valid, which can lead to further troubles down the road. And this notion goes for any type of implicit bias, whether it be age, sexuality, gender, race, and more. From a company perspective as well, unconscious prejudices from interviewers can lead to gaps in diversity within a company (Frazier, 2023).

In order for companies to avoid letting implicit biases dictate employees, organizations should create workshops where individuals can understand and overcome any implicit biases. The Implicit Association Test, can be administrated to do just that (Doris, Niemi, et al, 2018).

CPT, R. S. F. (2023, January 20). Understanding implicit bias—and how to work through it. Real Simple. https://www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/implicit-bias

Doris, K. P. N. M. (2018, March 27). How to Think about ‘Implicit Bias.’ Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/