Smith–McLallen et al. IMPLICIT COLOR AND RACE PREFERENCES BLACK AND WHITE: THE ROLE OF COLOR BIAS IN IMPLICIT RACE BIAS Aaron Smith–McLallen, Blair T. Johnson, John F. Dovidio, Adam R. Pearson University of Connecticut Research using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has consistently shown that White participants demonstrate an implicit preference for White, race–related stimuli over similar Black stimuli. Scholars in many domains have also documented that people generally have more positive associa- tions with the color white and more negative associations with the color black. The present research, consisting of three studies, examined the po- tential contribution of general implicit evaluative associations with the colors white and black to implicit race preferences as measured by the IAT. Across three studies, evaluative associations with the colors white and black were significantly related to evaluative racial associations. Never- theless, implicit preferences for Whites relative to Blacks remained signifi- cant after controlling for the effect of implicit color preferences. Results support the position that racial IAT responses substantially reflect racial evaluative associations. Theoretical and methodological issues related to the assessment of implicit racial biases are discussed. The Implicit Association Test (IAT: Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) is a popular technique designed to measure the 46 Social Cognition, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2006, pp. 46-73 We thank Kerry L. Marsh and Felicia Pratto for their comments on previous drafts of this paper. David A. Kenny provided helpful comments regarding analyses. Portions of this re- search were presented at the 3rd annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Savannah, Georgia, 2002. Study 1 was included in the first author’s Master’s thesis, supervised by the second author. National Institutes of Health Grant (MH58563 to Blair T. Johnson) facilitated the preparation of this manuscript. Address correspondence to Aaron Smith–McLallen, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylva- nia, 3620 Walnut street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; E–mail: asm@asc.upenn.edu. This manuscript was accepted for publication under the former editor, Donal Carlston.