Discrimination is as old as humanity. People think positively about the group they belong to (ingroups). People think more abstractly about groups they do not belong to (outgroups): when one person from the so-called outgroup behaves badly, this is quickly generalized to the entire group. A distinction is generally made between three forms of discrimination. The two best-known forms are racism (discrimination based on ethnicity) and sexism (discrimination based on gender). Ageism is at least as important: discrimination against the elderly on the basis of their age. People generally think that discrimination is a clear and conscious process. However, this is not the case. There are two ways in which discrimination can occur to a person: implicit and explicit. This article describes the differences and influence of these types of discrimination.
Explicit discrimination
Explicit discrimination is discrimination in its best-known form. This is very clear: when one discriminates explicitly, one is aware of this. When person X says that he hates people from country Y, this is explicit racism. Person _ _
Implicit discrimination
Implicit discrimination takes a more unclear form. It is the unconscious side of discrimination. It can affect court cases, arrests and adjudication of guilt. Tests have been designed to measure implicit discrimination. An example of this is the Implicit Association Test . This test is explained below, to clarify implicit discrimination.
Implicit Association Test
In this test, subjects are shown twelve portrait photos. Six of these portraits feature people of color; six portraits feature white people. People had to classify these photos by skin color: for example, button A was ‘tinted’ and button B was ‘white’. Later in the test they were given another task in which they had to categorize the words: button A was ‘positive’ and button B ‘negative’.
To ultimately measure implicit discrimination, the two types of exercises were combined: people had to mix photos and words into the correct category. So sometimes one saw a photo, sometimes one saw a word. In the first exercise, button A was ‘white and positive’ and button B was ‘toned and negative’. In the second exercise this was the other way around (button A ‘blank and negative’, button B ‘tinted and positive’). (The order of these exercises could also be performed the other way around, to rule out that the learning process would play a role).
By looking at reaction times, it was determined whether people experienced implicit discrimination. If they found the task easier when they had ‘toned’ and ‘negative’ under the same button, this was seen as unconscious discrimination.
The influence of implicit discrimination
Now the question remains: what impact does implicit discrimination have? A lot, according to research. People can suppress their explicit discrimination and consciously choose not to express themselves in a discriminatory manner towards certain groups. However, implicit discrimination has far-reaching effects:
- People who experience implicit sexism find rape victims more guilty of rape.
- People who are implicitly racist attribute more blame to a victim of domestic violence when they know the victim has a different ethnic origin. In addition, when they see unclear photos, they are more likely to think that a black person is holding a gun than a white person.
- If a crime involves an older victim, implicit ageism can ensure that the perpetrator receives a lower sentence than if the crime involved a younger victim.
Conclusion
It is important that people realize that implicit discrimination exists. Explicit discrimination can be identified with little difficulty. The implicit form of discrimination, on the other hand, is a silent killer: people are influenced by it without being aware of it. Taking implicit discrimination into account can bring about a change in the world. my view on