Foul Play: Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Student-Athletes

This research examines the content and correlates of attitudes of campus community members toward student-athletes. While both college student peers’ (Study 1, n = 169) and teaching assistants’ (TAs; Study 2, n = 132) explicit warmth ratings suggested disfavorability of student-athletes, Implicit Association Tests (IAT) indicated implicit associations of intelligence and pleasantness to White student-athletes (vs. White nonstudent-athletes). Intelligence was not implicitly ascribed to Black student-athletes (vs. White student-athletes), despite both samples explicitly rating Black student-athletes favorably. Implicit attitudes were negatively linked to academic appraisals for peers but not TAs. Implicit attitudes were correlated differentially in a hypothetical funding allotment task across the samples. Results convey a dualistic (positive and negative) quality of attitudes toward student-athletes and have implications for potential biases toward student-athletes generally and Black student-athletes specifically.