Bridging cultural sociology and cognitive psychology in three contemporary research programmes

Improving Empirical Scrutiny of the Habitus: A Plea for Incorporating Implicit Association Tests in Sociological Research

“…The sociological application of the IAT proposed here, however, does. We are not the first to stress the potential of studying cognition for answering sociological questions (see, for a recent example, Lamont et al, 2017). Note, however, that few sociological studies using latency-based methods such as the IAT have thus far been conducted (for exceptions, see Moore, 2017;Srivastava and Banaji, 2011), and none of these has scrutinised the existence and role of the habitus systematically.…”

“…Taken together, IAT-survey combinations provide a valid and reliable measure of socially situated cognitive schemas (Lamont et al, 2017), enabling one to assess whether, and under what conditions, the non-declarative aspects of the habitus explain behaviour. Accordingly, instead of 'throwing out the baby with the bath water' (Carlsson and Agerström, 2016: 286), we plead for a sociological application of the IAT that allows for the inclusion of the non-declarative aspects of the habitus in empirical analyses, making its status as a post-facto explanation of stratified patterns a thing of the past.…”

“…Furthermore, there has been considerable discussion about the IAT's validity (e.g. Blanton et al, 2007), even though it continues to surpass comparable measures regarding internal validity (Lamont et al, 2017), and has good internal reliability (Lane et al, 2007). Unfortunately, however, these disagreements have led researchers to bypass the IAT -'throwing out the baby with the bath water' (Carlsson and Agerström, 2016: 286).…”

Prejudice and the Brexit vote: a tangled web

“…The ability to measure conscious attitudes toward groups (explicit prejudice) or examine behaviour in interactions has been added to with the ability to study subconscious attitudes (implicit prejudice) using tools such as the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al, 1998) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain structure and function processes. Whilst questions exist regarding whether implicit prejudice predicts direct discrimination, and whether it reflects a lack of exposure to cultural knowledge rather than unconscious bias (Lamont et al, 2017), these measures provide us with a greater ability to understand prejudices at an individual level than we previously had. However, to be able to tackle issues in society it is also important for us to be able to find broader categories of prejudice that, nonetheless, create subcategories of the too-encompassing 'prejudiced' or 'not prejudiced'.…”

“…Research suggests that they may not consciously believe that they are prejudiced but their conative actions may betray subconscious attitudes that can result in forms of discrimination (Dovidio and Gaertner, 2004). Kovel (1970), who coined the AR term, suggested that this type of person may not actively dislike people of other groups, and would likely be mortified if it were suggested that this were the case. However, they may feel uneasy around people of different groups, may avoid interactions and keep their distance so as not to feel uncomfortable.…”