Although more than 200 studies have employed numerous versions of the IAT,19,20–24 and data from 5 million tests has accumulated from www.implicit.harvard.edu, the test has not been used to systematically observe the behavior of health care professionals. Given questions about the source of observed disparities in health service use, the IAT might provide insight into the contribution of implicit biases among physicians. In this study, we used a race preference IAT to measure implicit biases among emergency medicine and internal medicine residents. We also developed two new tests to measure stereotypes about general cooperativeness and specific cooperation with medical procedures. We tested whether both preferences and stereotypes affected physicians’ clinical decisions for white and black patients. More specifically, using a case vignette with patient race assigned randomly, three IATs, and a questionnaire, we sought to determine whether implicit or explicit race biases predict physicians’ decisions to give thrombolysis for acute myocardial infarction.
