Real-world blinding fails because stigmatizing attributes correlate with other, non-removable characteristics.

Evidence

Blinding. In principle, blinding appears to qualify as a foolproof method of avoiding unintended discrimination. If a stigmatizing attribute is unavailable to a decision maker, it would seem that it could not possibly influence judgment. The value of blinding appears to be confirmed by experimental tests that permit clean manipulation of presence versus absence of a potentially stigmatizing attribute, independent of all other stimulus variation (see, e.g., the review by Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992). However, because natural possession versus nonpossession of almost any socially stigmatizing attribute tends to be correlated with possession of other characteristics that are not (and often cannot be) removed by blinding, effective blinding of the sort producible in experiments is often not achievable in practice. — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition, 253

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the discussion of remedies for group-defense-based discrimination, given the reader’s purpose of checking whether implicit measures track such mechanisms.
• XREF: The point that stigma correlates with real-world confounds parallels the observer/audience limitation logic elsewhere in the chapter; connects to study-design discussions of construct validity. — connects to: A stigmatized identity becomes concealable and then actively disowned — Cornel Verwey and Michael Quayle, Whiteness, racism, and Afrikaner…, 73

Broader Connections

• A stigmatized identity becomes concealable and then actively disowned #complicates (0.76) — Cornel Verwey and Michael Quayle, Whiteness, racism, and Afrikaner…, 73