American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 5 2015

Understanding Ethnic Identity in Africa: Evidence from the Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Sara Lowes¹; Nathan Nunn¹; James A. Robinson²; Jonathan Weigel²

¹ Department of Economics, Harvard University, 1805 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (e-mail: ) · ² Department of Government, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (e-mail: )

Abstract

We use a variant of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to examine individuals' implicit attitudes towards various ethnic groups. Using a population from the Democratic Republic of Congo, we find that the IAT measures show evidence of an implicit bias in favor of one's own ethnicity. Individuals have implicit views of their own ethnic group that are more positive than their implicit views of other ethnic groups. We find this implicit bias to be quantitatively smaller than the (explicit) bias one finds when using self-reported attitudes about different ethnic groups.

DOI

10.1257/aer.p20151075

Volume

105

Issue

5

Pages

340-345

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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