# Emergence of Implicit Bias during Adolescent Development

> **NIH NIH F32** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO · 2021 · $66,390

## Abstract

7. PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
The proposed research investigates how implicit racial bias develops and can be counteracted among racial
majority adolescents. Racial majority adults’ implicit bias toward lower-status racial groups perpetuates societal
inequalities in health (e.g., via subpar medical care), wealth (e.g., via biased hiring), and well-being (e.g., via
discriminatory social interactions). Developmental research identifies adolescence as a critical time to address
implicit racial bias before it becomes entrenched in adulthood. The broader goals of this project are to elucidate
the social-cognitive processes underlying majority adolescents’ implicit racial bias and to design interventions
to counteract this bias. These goals align with NICHD’s priority to understand social and cognitive factors
related to the development of (biased) reasoning. While implicit bias has negative consequences for minority
groups, such bias may also decrease racial majority adolescents’ intergroup contact and relationships, which
are critical for developing social-cognitive skills (e.g., cognitive flexibility) that facilitate adaptive adjustment in a
multicultural society. The central hypotheses of this study are: (1) adolescents with more exposure to African
Americans will have greater social-cognitive skills to individuate (i.e., perceive them as unique individuals) and
humanize them (i.e., attribute human mental states), and in turn will develop less implicit racial bias, and (2)
directly teaching adolescents to individuate and humanize African American people will reduce implicit bias.
The specific aims are: (1) to examine how peers and media influence adolescents’ implicit racial bias through
the development of the tendency to individuate and humanize African American people, and (2) to conduct an
intervention integrating individuation and humanization interventions to reduce adolescents’ implicit bias in the
long-term. Regarding methods, Aim 1 will be a yearlong, three-wave correlational study examining longitudinal
links between racial majority adolescents’ a) exposure to African Americans, b) individuation and humanization
of African American people, and c) implicit racial bias. Aim 2 will be a 2x2 intervention study (Individuation [yes,
no] x Humanization [yes, no]) in which participants will read first-person narratives from African American
adolescents and view corresponding photographs; the intervention conditions will vary in whether they promote
individuation (by training subjects to differentiate the target African American adolescents) and humanization
(e.g., by including emotional stories in the narratives). The study will assess implicit bias 3 months later to
examine long-term effects. This project is theoretically and methodologically innovative and is expected to be
significant because it will advance the development of empirically-validated strategies to reduce societal racial
inequalities. The accompanying three-year postdoctoral trainin...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10151462
- **Project number:** 5F32HD098777-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Jamie Amemiya
- **Activity code:** F32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $66,390
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-05-01 → 2022-10-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10151462

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10151462, Emergence of Implicit Bias during Adolescent Development (5F32HD098777-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10151462. Licensed CC0.

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