The idea that human thinking and feeling can operate outside conscious awareness and without conscious control is well established. Researchers arrived at this conclusion less from complex theorizing about the nature of the mind than from evidence generated by several unique methods. This evidence revealed that much of social cognition occurs without conscious awareness, control, intentional thought, or self-reflection. Thus implicit forms of preference of both individuals and social groups have come to form a critical component in the understanding of intergroup relations.

One method that contributes to this understanding is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT is a measure of implicit cognition, assessing the relative strength of a associations between semantic concepts that may not be consciously accessible. For example, the IAT might provide ...