The implicit association test – A method to create awareness on diversity and inclusion?

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) has become an increasingly popular method to make people aware of their unconscious biases, especially on diversity and inclusion (D&I) issues within companies. However, the literature researching whether this is an effective method, is limited. The aim of this research is therefore, to create a design for companies to assess whether the IAT can be used to create awareness for D&I, within their organization. The research question central in this study is: Does completing an IAT on discrimination have an effect on a person’s awareness and behavior towards D&I? A newly developed design was tested as a pilot at Microsoft the Netherlands. The data generated from this design is then analyzed in three ways: overall analysis, single question analyses and principal factor analysis. In this pilot experiment, all three analyses methods showed no significant difference in awareness related to D&I between the subjects that took the IAT, compared to the subjects that did not. Nevertheless, the results are subject to a low sample size and sample variety. As a result, the contribution of this paper is the design of the conducted pilot experiment, and a proposed quantitative analysis for the gathered data.