First, I confirmed that the term ‘unconscious cognition’ has been academically replaced by the term ‘implicit cognition.’ Then, I examined ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘implicit bias‘.
The tool is the Google Books Ngram Viewer. The Google Books Ngram Viewer displays how often the inputted Ngram appears in the corpus of books (a large text dataset collected and organized for natural language processing) over the selected years. An Ngram is a sequence of N items in a text or speech, for example, ‘kindergarten’ is a 1-gram, and ‘nursery school’ is a 2-gram.
The figure below shows the search results for ‘implicit cognition’ and ‘unconscious cognition’ (as of Octorber 18, 2024) The vertical axis indicates the respective proportions of these two search terms appearing in 2-grams in books published in the United States between 1800 and 2022, digitized by Google and written in English. The settings are case-insensitive. Although the text is small, the data for ‘implicit cognition’ is represented in blue, and ‘unconscious cognition’ is represented in red. The vertical dashed line represents the year 2000. Click to enlarge the image.
It can be observed that the usage frequency of “Implicit Cognition” has increased more than “Unconscious Cognition” since the 1990s. This trend is believed to be influenced by the developments in scientific psychology described earlier by Greenwald and Banaji. Additionally, both terms have seen an increase in usage since 2000, but according to 2022 data, “Implicit Cognition” is used approximately four times more frequently than “Unconscious Cognition.” Incidentally, the value of “Unconscious Cognition” rose between 1870 and 1890, but the reason for this is currently unknown (it predates Freud’s works).
The following graph includes the terms “implicit bias” and “unconscious bias” (as of Octorber 18, 2024). Green represents “implicit bias” and yellow represents “unconscious bias.” Both terms have seen an increase in usage since 2000, with a sharp rise after 2010. According to 2022 data, “Implicit Bias” is used approximately 1.6 times more frequently than “Unconscious Bias.” It can be seen that “Implicit Bias” and “Unconscious Bias” are used more frequently than “Implicit Cognition” and “Unconscious Cognition.” Click to enlarge the image.
Next, I examined the influence of academic literature using these terms by looking at the number of citations and the publication year of documents searched on Google Scholar. I searched for “implicit bias,” “unconscious bias,” “implicit cognition,” and “unconscious cognition” on Google Scholar and sorted the top 100 results for each term by a measure of influence (citations per year since publication) as of August 17, 2024. Note that Google Scholar does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters. The following graph illustrates this data. Please note that the vertical axis is logarithmic. From this graph, it can be seen that papers using the terms “Implicit Cognition” and “Implicit Bias” have a greater influence than those using “Unconscious Cognition” and “Unconscious Bias.”
Among these, the top two papers with outstanding values for (citations per year since publication) are those searched under “Implicit Cognition.” These are the papers previously mentioned, published by Greenwald and Banaji in 1995, and by Greenwald et al. in 1998. The vertical axis is logarithmic, and the influence of the top-ranking papers is literally orders of magnitude greater. These papers suggest that the term “unconscious” was likely replaced by “implicit” in the 1990s.
Below is a graph plotting the top 100 results by publication year and number of citations. Note that the vertical axis is also logarithmic. The search results for “Implicit Cognition” and “Unconscious Cognition” span from the 1980s to recent years, while those for “Implicit Bias” and “Unconscious Bias” do not appear before 1999. It can be seen that the term “Implicit” is used in more frequently cited literature compared to “Unconscious.”
From the data we have seen so far, it is clear that “Implicit Cognition” and “Unconscious Cognition” started being used first, followed by “Implicit Bias” and “Unconscious Bias.” The current usage (estimated from the graphs of period and frequency of use, or period and number of citations) suggests that “Implicit Cognition” and “Implicit Bias” are used more frequently than “Unconscious Cognition” and “Unconscious Bias.”
The following are the results of extracting the definitions of the top 10 papers for “Unconscious Bias” and “Implicit Bias” based on citations per year since publication, summarizing them with ChatGPT(note: two papers related to deep learning and machine learning in the results for “Implicit Bias” were excluded. ChatGPT used 2024/10/18).
Implicit bias refers to unconscious attitudes or stereotypes that influence our understanding, actions, and decisions. These biases can lead to behaviors that diverge from an individual's explicit beliefs and intentions, even among those with the best intentions. They are pervasive, affect how we interact with others, and can contribute to discrimination, particularly in contexts like healthcare, where providers may hold negative biases against marginalized groups. Implicit biases operate outside of conscious awareness, complicating efforts to address discrimination, as they challenge the assumption that people act solely based on their consciously held beliefs.
Unconscious bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that unconsciously influence our perceptions and decision-making, affecting behavior and interactions without our awareness. These biases can be both favorable and unfavorable, impacting various contexts, including workplaces and healthcare. Despite intentions to act fairly, individuals often harbor implicit biases that can lead to discriminatory behaviors, such as unequal treatment in medical diagnoses or biased performance evaluations in corporate settings.
Unconscious bias training aims to raise awareness about these biases and their effects, yet its effectiveness remains debated. Critics argue that knowing about biases doesn't guarantee behavior change, especially when structural constraints are present. The training has gained popularity in organizations as part of diversity and inclusion initiatives, but it is suggested that a more profound, long-term approach may be necessary to create meaningful change. Ultimately, unconscious biases are powerful because they operate outside of conscious awareness, often resulting in actions that contradict one's explicit beliefs.
This is a rough method, but I hypothesize that in influential literature found through Google Scholar, ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘implicit bias’ are considered synonymous.
Upon individually reviewing each interpretation, one paper mentioned apophenia (the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things) as an example of unconscious bias. However, the author believes that the other literature generally aligns well with the above summary.
From previous investigations using the American Psychological Association’s database and public data, it appears that ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘implicit bias’ are used interchangeably, which is why they are often listed together. Additionally, it was found that ‘implicit bias’ is more mainstream than ‘unconscious bias.’
For reference, when the Japanese term ‘アンコンシャス・バイアス’ (unconscious bias) was similarly checked as a search term in Google Scholar, the citation count/year since publication was 1 for 5 cases, and zero for the remaining 95 cases. This indicates that the number of influential and well-cited documents written in Japanese about unconscious bias is very small.
Next, I would like to introduce the background of how the term ‘unconscious bias’ was introduced in Japan.
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