Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38321002›Full record

ArticleNature communications2024

Implicit racial biases are lower in more populous more diverse and less segregated US cities.

Andrew J Stier, Sina Sajjadi, Fariba Karimi, Luís M A Bettencourt, Marc G Berman

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Associations between county-level racial attitude bias and disparities in Advanced Placement participation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  2. Implicit biases change more slowly in larger cities.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  3. Sociohydrodynamics: Data-driven modeling of social behavior.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Andrew J StierDepartment of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. stier@santafe.edu.ORCID 0000-0002-2863-5978
Sina SajjadiComplexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria.ORCID 0000-0001-7173-1044
Fariba KarimiComplexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria.
Luís M A BettencourtDepartment of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-6176-5160
Marc G BermanDepartment of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. bermanm@uchicago.edu.ORCID 0000-0002-7087-3697

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Implicit biases - differential attitudes towards members of distinct groups - are pervasive in human societies and create inequities across many aspects of life. Recent research has revealed that implicit biases are generally driven by social contexts, but not whether they are systematically influenced by the ways that humans self-organize in cities. We leverage complex system modeling in the framework of urban scaling theory to predict differences in these biases between cities. Our model links spatial scales from city-wide infrastructure to individual psychology to predict that cities that are more populous, more diverse, and less segregated are less biased. We find empirical support for these predictions in U.S. cities with Implicit Association Test data spanning a decade from 2.7 million individuals and U.S. Census demographic data. Additionally, we find that changes in cities' social environments precede changes in implicit biases at short time-scales, but this relationship is bi-directional at longer time-scales. We conclude that the social organization of cities may influence the strength of these biases.

Indexed as

Social EnvironmentCitiesHumans

Identifiers

PMID38321002
PMCPMC10847142

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.