Conscious experience provides an immediate, compelling, and incomplete account of the mind. Much of perception, thinking, and action occurs outside of conscious awareness or conscious control. Because of that, judgment and action can be unintentionally influenced by factors that we do not recognize, and may not value.

The gap between intentions and actions is called “implict bias,” “unconscious bias,” or “implicit social cognition.”  The pervasiveness of implict bias – we all do it – and its impact on our behavior is documented by a large and growing body of empirical research.  

Organizations such as Project Implicit, a multi-university research collaboration in 1998 by three scientists – Tony Greenwald (University of Washington), Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia), support on-going research into implicit bias, disseminate the finding of that research, and translates the scientific research into actionable individual and organizational practices aimed at reducing the impact of implicit bias.

Visit the Project Implicit website to learn more about the research and yourself!