Reflexes and prejudice

[El_Machinae]

Basically, the program tests your reflexes while making positive associations with minorities and negative associations with minorities. It's really quite fascinating, because unless you deliberately go slowly (which is pretty well lying to yourself), you'll see some drift. There's no way to hide where the associations in your brain are stored - and if you associate honesty (or violence, etc.) more with blacks than with whites.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/

I heartily encourage you to give this a try. If for no other reason, to test your relative reflexes.

It's just a quick little game, basically. But it can tell you a lot about yourself

 

[Little Raven]

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin.

Sadly, this is not a surprise, and exactly what I was expecting. I like to think that I'm capable of intellectually compensating for emotional response, but there's no denying it exists.

 

[warpus]

I took the 'race' test.

The first task was to sort faces based on their skin tone. Left was 'white' and right was 'black'.

Next task involved sorting items based on whether they were 'good' or 'bad'. 'good' was on the left whereas 'bad' was on the right.

So of course my brain is going to associate 'left' with 'good' or 'white' and 'right' with 'black' or 'bad'... and by extension 'good' with 'white' and 'bad' with 'black'

 

[Erik Mesoy]

It switched sides several times for me, so I don't see the problem.

From the first test:

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Abled Persons compared to Disabled Persons.

I'll be taking more shortly...

EDIT: Ok, this was just freaking strange!

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Judaism compared to Other Religions.

...WTH?

Edit 2: I realize that I was listening to James Bond music and pressing the keys in time with the music. Not a good idea. That might explain the Judaism result which I've never noticed, and my third test which stated that I had a moderate preference for Straight People.

 

[Mise]

The thing is with the test is that they spend 5 minutes telling you to lump "blacks" with "weapons" and "whites" with "harmless objects", and then on the last part of the test they tell you to do the exact opposite... I got completely messed up when they swapped it around like that. I'd like to know what result I would have got if they had lumped whites with weapons from the start.

 

[blackheart]

The thing is with the test is that they spend 5 minutes telling you to lump "blacks" with "weapons" and "whites" with "harmless objects", and then on the last part of the test they tell you to do the exact opposite... I got completely messed up when they swapped it around like that. I'd like to know what result I would have got if they had lumped whites with weapons from the start.

These tests are flawed because of exactly this.

I have a strong penchant for light skin though, but does that make me racist or is it that I find white girls more attractive?

 

[Sidhe]

Don't the asians have the fastest eye hand coordination though? And higher IQ's Raccism is always pointlessly argumentative it's a wonder any one bothers with it. Of course there are differences between races, but there hardly anything to get to hot under the collar about and I too wonder about the impartiality of these tests.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

The thing is with the test is that they spend 5 minutes telling you to lump "blacks" with "weapons" and "whites" with "harmless objects", and then on the last part of the test they tell you to do the exact opposite... I got completely messed up when they swapped it around like that. I'd like to know what result I would have got if they had lumped whites with weapons from the start.

Did you RTFFAQ?

#1. I had to group one category together with pleasant words first. I then found it difficult when I later had to group the other category with pleasant words. Was that because of the order in which I had to group the categories with pleasant and unpleasant words?

Answer: The order in which tests are administered does make a difference in magnitude of what we call 'IAT effects'. However, the difference is small and recent changes to the test have sharply reduced the influence of order. Because of this order effect, the orders used for IATs presented on this website are assigned at random. If you want to check whether the order made a difference for you, you can take the test again and complete it if you get assigned to the reverse order. If you do take the test twice in different orders and get different outcomes, the best estimate of your result is intermediate between the two.

Oh, and Sidhe, that goes for you too. They explicitly state that you may be giving the test more credit than it deserves.

 

[Elrohir]

They put whites with the good catagories and blacks with the bad, then switch them to see how fast it takes you for each. I wonder if the results would differ if they put blacks with the good things first, and whites with the bad, then switched them. I imagine the results would be the exact opposite.

In case anyone is wondering, I got "Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin." Which is unsuprising. I'm white, my family is white, and I find white girls more attractive than girls with darker skin. This hardly makes me a racist, though, so I'm not quite sure what this test is supposed to prove.

 

[Sidhe]

Thanks Erik, I skimmed through the prelims and missed that part, I'll take it tomorrow I think when I'm in a more alert frame of mind

 

[woody60707]

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for african american compared to white american.

What’s odd being that I told the site that I thought taxi drivers are justified in passing up blacks as riders?

 

[Mise]

Did you RTFFAQ?

#1. I had to group one category together with pleasant words first. I then found it difficult when I later had to group the other category with pleasant words. Was that because of the order in which I had to group the categories with pleasant and unpleasant words?

Answer: The order in which tests are administered does make a difference in magnitude of what we call 'IAT effects'. However, the difference is small and recent changes to the test have sharply reduced the influence of order. Because of this order effect, the orders used for IATs presented on this website are assigned at random. If you want to check whether the order made a difference for you, you can take the test again and complete it if you get assigned to the reverse order. If you do take the test twice in different orders and get different outcomes, the best estimate of your result is intermediate between the two.

Oh, and Sidhe, that goes for you too. They explicitly state that you may be giving the test more credit than it deserves.

I did read that but I didn't believe it. If I made a test I'd play down the flaws in it too, or say that I had "accounted for" it.

 

[Taliesin]

I did this test last year, so I probably shouldn't do it again. I do remember my results: a moderate preference for blacks over whites, and a slight preference for George Bush over Abe Lincoln. Suffice it to say I was scratching my head for a while after this one.

I think the preference for Bush might be explainable by the fact that the pictures of Lincoln were mostly unflattering. I may thus have had an aesthetic preference for George's face over Abe's. I'm utterly at a loss to explain the other result, since my family is lily white and I have precisely one black friend.

 

[Souron]

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin.
I didn't expect that.

Edit: Actually in retrospect that makes sense as far as the test goes because it is easier to asociate white with good and black with bad. Such a test would reveal as much about liking black cars to dark skinned people though.

 

[Norlamand]

I suspect that a good statistician would be able to show there is an bias in the testing simply based on the initial presentation of options and its impact on subsequent choices.

 

[bad_ronald]

I also had:

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin.

I searched the various pages at the top but found no discussion of how they take into account actual differences in the behavior/preferences/career choices of the various groups presented. This is especially important in the "Gender-Science IAT", "Gender-Career IAT", and the various race related IATs. I suppose that one could counter-argue that they are ignoring actual distinctions among these groups and focusing exclusively on the associations the test takers make, but I'd imagine people would use the results to suggest that these implicit associations are prejudicial. However, if the groups actually do differ in the their career preferences, for example, then the associations are not prejudicial; they're simply correctly using appearance as a correlate of that preference.

I found the Asian-European American IAT particularly poor. They ought to eliminate the European/Australian pictures from the Asian-European American IAT since the distinction between European Americans and Asian Americans is racial and the European/Australian foreign architecture could be associated with the race that created it.

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Don't the asians have the fastest eye hand coordination though? And higher IQ's

It's only Northern Mongoloids (Japanese, Koreans, and Han Chinese - including Han Chinese living in Southeast Asia) that have higher average IQs than Whites. Central Asians, Southeast Asians, South Asians and Middle Easterners all have lower average IQs than Whites. So, it's not strictly correct to say Asians have a higher average IQ than Whites. (Source*)

*Richard Lynn has recently released an even more robust analysis of IQ tests throughout the world in Race Differences in Intelligence (2006), but the data isn't available online; this chart is from IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002) which is why the GDPs are also shown.

 

[ironduck]

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between White American and Black American.

Interesting tests, I'll try some more. I do think it was a bit hard to disassociate the sides (it started with white-good and black-bad)..

edit, also took the religion one (I find it hard to focus so I think errors may skew results..)

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Judaism compared to Other Religions.

 

[shortguy]

I did this for some Psyc experiments at school once. Most boring 2 hours of my life.

 

[Gladi]

Bright day
Nothing too suprising.
Preference of Europoids over Negroids. Slight preference of Europoids over Mongoloids.

 

[ironduck]

*Richard Lynn has recently released an even more robust analysis of IQ tests throughout the world in Race Differences in Intelligence (2006), but the data isn't available online; this chart is from IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002) which is why the GDPs are also shown.

Talk about a chart that shows the importance of education in IQ tests. Poor African countries scoring in the 60s while the richest countries in the world all score around 100.