The study, recently published in the journal the Academic Medicine, found such unconscious biases could impede the entry of blacks into the medical profession, where they and other minorities are underrepresented.
The study analyzed the results of the black-white implicit association test for all 140 members of the Ohio State College of Medicine admissions committee. The black-white implicit association test is a measure that detects uncontrolled racial biases or preferences based on when and how quickly people categorize negative and positive words with white and black faces. The admissions committee took the test before the 2012-2013 admissions cycle. The results were collated by gender and student versus faculty status, according to Quinn Capers IV, MD, lead author of the study.
All of the groups — men, women, students and faculty — showed significant levels of implicit white race preference, with men and faculty indicating the largest bias measures.
Seventy-one percent of the members took another survey at the end of the cycle to record their impressions of their individual results and the effects of the implicit association test on the admissions process. Nearly three-quarters of respondents (67 percent) thought the test might be helpful for reducing bias, 48 percent said they were conscious when interviewing candidates in the next cycle and 21 percent indicated that their individual test scores affected their admissions decisions in subsequent cycles.
“The next class of medical students that were enrolled following the IAT exercise was the most diverse in our College of Medicine’s history, at that time,” Dr. Capers said.
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