“Implicit Bias”

How to Think about “Implicit Bias”
"When is the last time a stereotype popped into your mind? If you are like most people, the authors included, it happens all the time. That doesn’t make you a racist, sexist, or whatever-ist. It just means your brain is working properly, noticing patterns, and making generalizations. But the same thought processes that make people smart can also make them biased. This tendency for stereotype-confirming thoughts to pass spontaneously through our minds is what psychologists call implicit bias. It sets people up to overgeneralize, sometimes leading to discrimination even when people feel they are being fair"

What is “Implicit Bias”? 

"Implicit biases, however , are associations learned through past experiences. Implicit biases can be activated by the environment and operate outside of a person's intentional, conscious cognition. For example, a person can unconsciously form a bias towards all pitbulls as being dangerous animals. This bias may be associated with a single unpleasant experience the past, but the source of association may be misidentified, or even unknown. In the example, this implicit bias may manifest itself as a person declining an invitation to touch someone's pitbull (dog) on the street, without this person understanding the reason behind. Implicit bias can persist even when an individual rejects the bias explicitly."