Preservice teachers’ implicit attitudes toward students with and without immigration background: A pilot study

• Implicit attitudes play an important role for unfavorable judgments.
• Preservice teachers’ implicit attitudes toward students from their own race are positive.
• Those positive implicit attitudes can bias teacher–student interactions.
• An understanding of implicit attitudes can minimize their influence on behavior.

Minority students are often disadvantaged in school. One factor contributing to this disadvantage may be teachers’ judgments; these may, in turn, be influenced by implicit attitudes. Implicit attitudes often guide automatic behavior, which comes into play when cognitive resources are restrained. This is particularly important for preservice teachers, who lack experience in the classroom. In an affective priming task, results showed ambivalent implicit attitudes toward students with immigration background and positive implicit attitudes toward native students. Such asymmetrical implicit evaluations could bias preservice teachers’ interactions with students in the classroom. Acquiring an understanding of the influence of implicit attitudes during their academic studies might help preservice teachers counter implicit and automatic influences.