Implicit Biases in Blame Allocation of Accidents across Organizational Components (Worker,Supervisor and Organization)

Abstract

The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between implicit biases and blame allocation of accidents across organizational components (workers, supervisors, and organization). The ‘European American-African American’ and created ‘Latino-African American’ Implicit Association Tests (IAT) were used to measure the participants' implicit biases. The Accident Blame Allocation instrument was used to measure the participants' blame allocations, which included accident scenarios with pictures of male and female faces of European Americans, African Americans and Latinos. A total of 102 students, aged from 18 to 23, participated in the study. Results of the two IATs showed that the participants did not have obvious preference tendencies toward any ethnicity, and the ‘European American-African American’ and ‘Latino-African American’ IATs have a positive correlation with score of 0.48 (p < 0.0001). Results of this study showed that implicit bias did not significantly correlate with accident blame allocation but that the participants' attitudes toward different ethnic groups affected their accident blame allocation patterns.

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