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Category: Project

Description: The present study examines relationships between self-reported friendships with Blacks and implicit preferences for Whites over Blacks. There is considerable evidence that friendships relates to more favorable attitudes toward outgroups, however, the bulk of this evidence comes from explicit self-report measures. Using a sample of 123,445 participants that completed a Black-White IAT on the Project Implicit website, results indicate the those participants reporting either childhood or post-childhood friendships with Blacks demonstrated weaker preferences for Whites over Blacks on the IAT. The size of this relationship was substantially smaller than found for an explicit evaluation of Blacks. Findings suggest that outgroup friendships relate to reduced implicit preferences but that the relationship is weaker than those typically found for friendship-explicitly stated attitude relationships.