Implicit Attitudes and the Challenge of Becoming a Reflexive Leisure Scholar

Abstract

This paper highlights the potential roles of implicit bias and implicit association testing (IAT) in the practice of reflexivity. In the paper, eight leisure scholars reflected on their explicit and implicit prejudice and privilege and its influence on their efforts to conduct critical leisure research. Data were collected from these scholars in three stages. First, participant-researchers engaged in a ‘conscious,’ written, personal reflexive exercise considering their biases and how these biases influenced their research. Second, participants completed four IATs – a parallel ‘unconscious’ reflexive exercise. Third, participants individually and collectively reflected on results of the IATs in relation to their conscious responses. The authors report results from thematic analyses of these reflections; consider practical opportunities, challenges, and cautions associated with using implicit measures to denote one’s positionality; and initiate a theory driven discussion of broader uses of implicit measures in critical leisure research.

Keywords:

• Critical research
• implicit association test
• implicit bias
• positionality