Future studies might do well to examine actual patient-physician interactions, introducing such dimensions as communication, rapport, and other nonverbal behaviors that are known to be related to implicit discrimination. It may in fact be the subtleties of interracial interactions that lay the foundation for differential treatment to occur.28 IATs can be developed to provide a broader range of clinically relevant stereotypes, in addition to the tests we used. Studies should continue to obtain detailed measures of participant awareness because this did show impact on treatment decisions in our study.
