Bias against Indigenous Australians: Implicit association test results for Australia

Abstract

Reported experiences of discrimination amongst Indigenous Australians may reflect an implicit bias inherent in Australian society. Such a bias may predispose vast swathes of the population towards considering Indigenous Australians through a negative lens, perhaps unconsciously. This paper explores previously unpublished data from the internationally renowned Implicit Association Test that attempts to measure the implicit biases that Australians may hold against Indigenous peoples. Other data collections on this issue focus on self-reported experiences of discrimination from the victims of verbal or physical racially motivated abuse (e.g. the Australian Reconciliation Barometer). This new data source, which comes from the social psychology domain, provides a means to measure the positive and negative implicit associations that Australian participants make about Indigenous and Caucasian Australians. The data reported in this paper contains observations from 11,099 unique individuals captured over the last decade across different cross sections of the Australian population, including based on gender, age, ethnic background, education level, occupation, religion and political leaning. The findings of this paper suggest that most Australian participants on average - regardless of background - hold an implicit bias against Indigenous Australians. A regression analysis of the results confirm that largely immutable characteristics such as gender, age, ethnic background, religion and political leaning have a statistically significant effect on a person’s average level of implicit bias, as measured in this paper. The data could potentially explain why Indigenous Australians continue to experience some of the poorest socioeconomic conditions and living standards in this country - not necessarily through fault on the part of Indigenous Australians, but rather perhaps because of the lens the rest of Australia may view them through.