Examining Differences in Implicit Bias Towards Students of Color Within the Higher Education System

This quantitative, quasi-experimental, static-group comparison design study aims to address the unknown factors of implicit bias within our public education system by examining the differences between the awareness of school staff towards students of color. The theories that guided this study were the Theory of Experience and the Theory of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory. The Theory of Experience emphasizes the need for a positive connection between the school staff and students of color to prevent social injustice through awareness and empathetic behavior. The LMX theory supports the need for positive behavior from the school staff to increase the motivation and self-efficacy of the student (Khorakian & Sharifirad, 2019). Data was collected using the Affect Misattribution Procedure which is favorably compared with the Implicit Association Test, and an intervention. The data were analyzed using ANOVA (SPSS) analysis of the 120 participants from higher education. This technique allowed me to gather assumptions, normality, linear relationships, Homogeneity of Variances, and Homogeneity as well as the Tukey test. The outcome was statistically significant and showed an increased positive response rate following the intervention groups. Future research recommends examining multiple schools at different levels of academia and in various locations (other states).