IMPLICIT BIAS: ONLINE TEST CAPTURES OUR HIDDEN ATTITUDES ON RACE. More than two decades ago, Tony Greenwald and his colleagues debuted an online Implicit Association Test, also known as the IAT. The award-winning test has been taken more than 25 million times since 1998.

Greenwald, a University of Washington psychology professor emeritus, explains that the test uses pictures of light and dark skin people along with words to help measure implicit bias.

“Implicit biases are now defined fairly simply as attitudes, meaning likes and dislikes, and stereotypes, meaning associations of traits with groups of people that operate automatically outside of our awareness and are capable of producing unintended discrimination,” said Greenwald.

When asked why implicit biases exist, Greenwald said, “it is because our culture has been filled with racial stereotypes. It’s in literature, it’s in history, it’s in entertainment, media.”