Implicit social cognition: A brief (and gentle) introduction

Over the past three decades, implicit social cognition research has flourished and has produced myriad novel insights into the automatic operation of social attitudes (evaluations) and stereotypes (beliefs). In this chapter, we provide an overview of what we regard to be significant and settled issues as well as the most pressing open questions that remain. Following a brief historical overview, we address (a) basic findings, such as mean levels of and demographic variation in implicit bias; (b) the relationship of implicit attitudes and stereotypes with other measures, including explicit attitudes and stereotypes and other forms of intergroup behavior; (c) the neural underpinnings of implicit bias; (d) questions of stability and change at different levels of analysis, including developmental stability, situational malleability, the prospect of long-term change within a single individual, and societal-level change; and (e) ongoing work and stimulating new developments, including aggregate-level analyses, the role of language, and questions about the representational format of implicit attitudes and stereotypes.