Explicit and Implicit Bias

¶ … humans unique is the combination of attitudes and opinions that make up perspective. Development of perspective determines how an individual lives, learns, and what decisions the individual makes. The attitude of a person has behavioral, affective, and cognitive components. Furthermore, it can exist in two different ways. The first is explicit attitudes. These attitudes manifest at a conscious level. They are intentionally formed and easy to identify (Wittenbrink & Schwarz, 2007). Implicit attitudes occur in an unconscious level, are not easy to identify, and are involuntarily formed.

A brief example of this is a person meeting someone new. The new person is wearing the shirt of the other person's favorite team. His name is Stu. Stu already likes the new person because he likes that team and they have something big, in common. Stu goes out a second night and has a bad interaction with a stranger. He doesn't know why, but it may be because that person reminds Stu of someone who hurt him in the past and he greatly disliked.

This then becomes an implicit attitude. Now if this situation were to include stereotypes, Stu would think the stranger, a black was hostile and into hip hop. An implicit stereotype would mean Stu saw a black man in the street behind him, gets scared and crosses the street. Although Stu consciously doesn't believe black people are violent, when he sees a black mind behind him, he gets scared and cross the street showing deep down he believes the stereotype.

Moving to explicit and implicit bias, explicit bias is consciously done and can be easily recognized. Explicit bias reflects the beliefs or attitudes of an individual on a conscious level. For example, whites may perceive Muslims as threatening and express prejudice if they see their country's security at risk by Muslim-based terrorist attacks. Implicit bias occurs unconsciously and can be seen in the sentencing rate of people with prominent Afrocentric features compared to those without (Ross & Dove, 2014). These people receive longer sentences are more often accosted by law enforcement.

Although those in law enforcement may not recognize their prejudice against a certain group, behaviors prove otherwise. This moves into bias and courtroom proceedings. Although racial bias has led to longer sentences for black males, there is another bias existing within courtroom proceedings, gender bias. Women are seen in society as being inherently good. Men are seen in society as being inherently bad. Thus, when a woman commits the same crime as a man, the woman generally will receive a less harsh sentence, especially for certain crimes.

One crime in particular is statutory rape. However, there are times as well when the gender bias does not favor the woman such as the case of mothers killing their children. Juries convicting these cases tend to want to give the harshest penalties because it goes against the widely accepted idea that all mothers love their children. Another area where women face gender bias is in custody battles and domestic violence disputes. One article mentions gender bias plays a role in perceived effectiveness of attorneys.

"Gender bias impairs not only a woman's chances of winning relief from her abuser but also limits the ability of her attorney, if female, to prove her case" (Dragiewicz, 2012, p. 13). With biases seemingly influencing court proceedings not just from a racial perspective, a but a gender one, it begs to ask just how fair is the justice system? When the innocence of someone is determined by a group of individuals whether it be judge or jury, is it impossible to avoid bias.

This is because even if someone is not aware of a bias, implicit biases are part of everyone's perspective and exists even without someone recognizing it. For women and black men to face difficulties or in the case of women, receive greater leniency for certain crimes, it shows the inherent flaw of the justice system and the need to observe and recognize potential implicit biases. Racial disparity in sentencing has a great effect on the judicial system.

The 'Black Lives Matter' campaign and the numerous videos of innocent black men being killed by police is a harsh remind of what happens when society sees a specific group in jail or arrested all the time. For example, blacks compared to whites experience longer sentences, higher arrest rates, higher bail amounts, and problems poorer probation hearing outcomes. "Black male defendants in U.S.

criminal cases receive much longer prison sentences than white men do: for instance, in federal courts, the average sentence during 2008 and 2009 was 55 months for whites and 90 months for blacks" (Rehavi & Starr, 2012, p. 2). Aside from these experiences, outside of the court room and prisons, police search black Americans' cars 3x more than white drivers. They also perform more drug searches on blacks than whites and blacks are jailed more frequently while awaiting trial than their white counterparts. Some of this may boil down to lack of resources and socioeconomic status.

However, the arrests and searches have been shown to stem from implicit or explicit biases. With the news and media showing black men as delinquents committing crimes and being violent, the negative biases of black men increase. As more and more black Americans are arrested by police and put into the prison system, their arrests and sentences prove to those with bias that their assumptions are correct. This then leads to more aggressive behavior by police and law enforcement, resulting in videos of black men killed by police officers.

Aside from court convictions and the processes before a conviction, black Americans are more likely to experience disenfranchisement after experiencing a felony conviction. Other processes after conviction where there is racial disparity is probation. Black Americans experience probation revocations more than their white counterparts. This then leads to more black reintroduced back into prison. Minority groups experience many problems when it comes to the court system. Some of it is due to bias. Most of it is due to opportunity.

It is much easier to convict someone unaware of their personal rights who has no private, skilled attorney to speak for them. White people on average know more concerning their personal rights than a Hispanic or black person does. Whites also are more likely to hire an attorney that will get them a better sentencing outcome. Blacks and Hispanics tend to go with whatever attorney the court appoints them.

Court-appointed attorneys usually have a large case load and cannot represent the defendant in the same capacity as a private attorney would. When a person does not have a good attorney in their corner, it can lead to a more severe sentence. This is what usually happens. Combine that with blacks and Hispanics more likely to confess to.