Implicit Prejudice and Ethnic Minorities: Arab-Muslims in Sweden

This paper examines whether Swedish employers implicitly/automatically hold i) negative attitudes toward Arab-Muslims, an ethnic minority group subjected to substantial labor market discrimination in Sweden, and more specifically ii) associate members of this minority group with lower work productivity, as compared to native Swedes. Adapted versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) designed to measure implicit attitudes and productivity stereotypes toward Arab-Muslims were used. Corresponding explicit measures were administered. The results clearly show that employers have stronger negative implicit attitudes toward Arab-Muslims relative to native Swedes as well as implicitly perceive Arab-Muslims to be less productive than native Swedes. Notably, the explicit measures reveal much weaker negative associations. Whereas traditional research has focused on self-conscious, explicit work related attitudes toward various ethnic minority groups, this study offers a novel approach to understanding work related prejudice.