The procedure of the experiments was typical for studies on UTT. In the first two experiments, participants were presented
with four candidate housemates (two White, two Black), and were asked to form impressions of them. The candidates
had an individual name, were described by 12 attributes each (making the decision a complex one), and a picture revealing
the candidate’s race. Participants in the conscious thought condition were allowed to think about their evaluative judgments
of the candidates for 3 min, while participants in the unconscious thought condition were distracted by an unrelated task for
3 min before making their judgments. Experiment 1 also included an immediate decision condition, in which participants
were given no time to think at all. As racial bias is usually stronger under conditions of limited time or cognitive capacity
(e.g., Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001), we expected racial bias to be strong among immediate decision makers. In
Experiment 3, one Black person was presented, after which participants thought about him consciously or unconsciously.