The Temporal and Directional Relationship Between Group-Level Implicit and Explicit Gender Bias

Abstract

Explicit and implicit gender-science and gender-career biases have shifted toward neutrality in the past decade. Researchers speculate that these changes result from women's increased visibility in the science field and job market, but little is known about how the changes in group-level explicit and implicit gender-science and gender-career bias relate to one another over time. Building on contemporary models of group-level bias, this study investigates the temporal and directional relationship between group-level implicit and explicit gender bias between 2007 to 2016 using multivariate multilevel modeling. We found that lower group-level implicit bias in a previous month predicts lower group-level explicit bias in the following month. We also found evidence that group-level explicit bias in a previous month was positively associated with group-level implicit bias in the following month. These findings have practical and theoretical implications for understanding the bidirectional relationship between group-level implicit and explicit biases over time.