Exposing Racial Discrimination: Implicit & Explicit Measures–The My Body, My Story Study of 1005 US-Born Black & White Community Health Center Members
Abstract
Background -- To date, research on racial discrimination and health typically has
employed explicit self-report measures, despite their potentially being affected by
what people are able and willing to say. We accordingly employed an Implicit Association
Test (IAT) for racial discrimination, first developed and used in two recent published
studies, and measured associations of the explicit and implicit discrimination measures
with each other, socioeconomic and psychosocial variables, and smoking. Methodology/Principal
Findings -- Among the 504 black and 501 white US-born participants, age 35–64, randomly
recruited in 2008–2010 from 4 community health centers in Boston, MA, black participants
were over 1.5 times more likely (p<0.05) to be worse off economically (e.g., for poverty
and low education) and have higher social desirability scores (43.8 vs. 28.2); their
explicit discrimination exposure was also 2.5 to 3.7 times higher (p<0.05) depending
on the measure used, with over 60% reporting exposure in 3 or more domains and within
the last year. Higher IAT scores for target vs. perpetrator of discrimination occurred
for the black versus white participants: for “black person vs. white person”: 0.26
vs. 0.13; and for “me vs. them”: 0.24 vs. 0.19. In both groups, only low non-significant
correlations existed between the implicit and explicit discrimination measures; social
desirability was significantly associated with the explicit but not implicit measures.
Although neither the explicit nor implicit discrimination measures were associated
with odds of being a current smoker, the excess risk for black participants (controlling
for age and gender) rose in models that also controlled for the racial discrimination
and psychosocial variables; additional control for socioeconomic position sharply
reduced and rendered the association null. Conclusions -- Implicit and explicit measures
of racial discrimination are not equivalent and both warrant use in research on racial
discrimination and health, along with data on socioeconomic position and social desirability.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6323Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1371/journal.pone.0027636Citation
Krieger, N., P. D. Waterman, et al. (2011). "Exposing Racial Discrimination: Implicit
& Explicit Measures–The <italic>My Body, My Story</italic> Study of 1005 US-Born
Black & White Community Health Center Members." PLoS ONE 6(11): e27636.
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Gary G. Bennett
Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Gary G. Bennett, Ph.D., is vice provost for undergraduate education and professor
of psychology & neuroscience, global health, and medicine at Duke University.
As vice provost, Dr. Bennett drives Duke's undergraduate education strategy, leads
curricular and co-curricular programs, and serves as the university's primary spokesperson
for undergraduate concerns.
He directs Duke's <a href="http://undergraduate.duke.e

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