Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Are implicit biases unconscious mental phenomena? In the philosophical and psychological literature, the default answer to this question seems to be ‚yes.' In recent papers, Gawronski and other social psychologists have argued that this standard position is false. Instead, they defend the so-called Associative-Propositional Evaluation (APE) model. According to this model, implicit biases are not unconscious but mental associations between concepts that induce affective reactions that can be introspected. In this talk, I will argue that this model is promising but problematic when it comes to explaining cases where implicit and explicit attitudes diverge. The major problem is that the APE-model neglects the fact that implicit biases usually are unconscious in some sense. I will introduce what I will call the Repression Model of implicit bias. I will show how this model keeps the merits of the APE model while avoiding its problems.