The Psychology of Blink

[Salomé]

Project Implicit @ Harvard have developed a test which aims to reveal unconscious prejudices (gender/racial/political/etc). If you've read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink you'll be familiar with the concept. Fascinating/scary stuff. You can take test anonymously or contribute to the research. Unconscious preferences are more reliable than the things we tell ourselves about ourselves. This research has important applications for amongst others education and public policy.

Blurb from site:
The IAT was originally developed as a device for exploring the unconscious roots of thinking and feeling. This web site has been constructed for a different purpose -- to offer the IAT to interested individuals as a tool to gain greater awareness about their own unconscious preferences and beliefs.

Many years ago, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote: "Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind."

These lines from Dostoyevsky capture two concepts that the IAT helps us examine. First, we might not always be willing to share our private attitudes with others. Second, we may not be aware of some of our own attitudes. Your results on the IAT may include both components of control and awareness.

Also a lecture on ITunesU : The Psychology of Blink : Understanding how our minds work unconsciously

Post your results here, if you like.

 

[INTJMom]

After that, I don't know if I dare.



I was going to take the age test but it seems to high pressure.
I chickened out.

 

[01011010]

I scored: Moderate Automatic Preference for Barack Obama compared to John McCain

 

[Salomé]

After that, I don't know if I dare.
I chickened out.

Awww. Go on, go on, go on!
I think I was one of the 0.000001% that didn't associate women with family and men with work.

 

[Oleander]

I'm not sure how effective conclusions drawn from tests of this sort are. If you, for instance, do associate men with paid work and women with housework, does that show you are a male chauvinist who wants the world that way, does it show you are a feminist who sees the world trying to trap her in the home and hates it, does it show you feel forced to work and envy women free to stay at home, does it show you wish the modern world would go away so we could all live a simple village life clustered round the hearth? It may show what you feel to be true but it doesn't necessarily show why or whether you approve or not.

 

[Salomé]

I'm not sure how effective conclusions drawn from tests of this sort are. If you, for instance, do associate men with paid work and women with housework, does that show you are a male chauvinist who wants the world that way, does it show you are a feminist who sees the world trying to trap her in the home and hates it, does it show you feel forced to work and envy women free to stay at home, does it show you wish the modern world would go away so we could all live a simple village life clustered round the hearth? It may show what you feel to be true but it doesn't necessarily show why or whether you approve or not.

That's the whole point. Consciously, we may believe ourselves to be perfectly liberal and enlightened in these matters, but we are not immune to contamination by deep-ingrained cultural "norms".

It's not about judging people as chauvinist/feminist/racist/whatever. It's about revealing the way we process data at an unconscious level. It is useful because only by becoming aware of our unconscious prejudices, can we tackle the implications, both as individuals and as members of society.

 

[Colors]

I came out as:
Being neutral on George Bush/ Abraham Lincoln.
Slightly preferring gay people over straight people.
And slightly considering Asian Americans more American than European Americans.

It doesn't seem to mean much.

I had a really hard time on the straight/gay test because the images were made so similarly. Also, I think it made a huge difference which ones they showed paired up first.

 

[Salomé]

I came out as:
Being neutral on George Bush/ Abraham Lincoln.
Slightly preferring gay people over straight people.
And slightly considering Asian Americans more American than European Americans.

It doesn't seem to mean much.

I had a really hard time on the straight/gay test because the images were made so similarly. Also, I think it made a huge difference which ones they showed paired up first.

I don't know about those ones, I did the Gender/career, Race, Religion, and they used to have one on preference for different countries and on on Coke vs. Pepsi but I don't see those now.

I like how it's impossible to lie on these tests.

 

[bbites]

I did three:
Slight preference for straight people over gay people
Slight preference for African-Americans over European-Americans
Little to no preference for thin people versus fat people

For whatever it's worth I'm asexual, white, and slightly overweight.

I really liked the test; I definitely felt moments of surprise and guilt and determination to "get it right" whatever that means. I haven't read the book; maybe I'll check it out.

 

[Salomé]

I was going to start a thread on this, then realised I already had! lol
Crappy title tho, and few responses, so...
*bump*

I'd be interested to know how many people are surprised by their results, even if they don't feel like posting them.

 

[INTP]

Little to no automatic preference between Young and Old.

Moderate automatic preference for Straight People compared to Gay People.

cba to take more of these.

i think there are too many things effecting this test, even if it could tell something about your unconsciousness. like when you get 5 gay words in a row, you click them much faster than if the 5 words would be gay, straight, straight, gay, straight. or when you get the same picture 4 times in row. many other things that effect this, but cba to think about them all again

 

[KDude]

I only took a few, but I wasn't surprised at all. I know where my preferences lie (for instance, moderate preference for thin over fat, heterosexuality, and the religious scale had Christianity dwarfing other religions. I was kind of surprised that Buddhism was lower than Islam though, seeing that I grew up in a Buddhist household and I have nothing particularly against it. I think? Heh).

 

[sleepy]

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Straight People and Gay People.

I suppose

Your data suggest a strong preference for Not Smoking compared to Smoking.

yay. A dissonance. Suspected for a while that I want to stop.

Your data suggest a slight association of Female with Science and Male with Liberal Arts compared to Male with Science and Female with Liberal Arts.

Subjective perhaps.

 

[Donna Cecilia]

Your data suggest a strong automatic association of Religion with False and Science with True.

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for New compared to Old.

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Certain compared to Possible.

Not at all surprised. When my eyes stop hurting, I'll do others.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Your data suggest a moderate association of Black Americans with Weapons compared to White Americans.

 

[Stanton Moore]

I got that I associate Europeans with positive word and blacks with negative.
Frankly, that doesn't surprise me at all, not that I'm racist (well, according to Marm I am), but I grew up in an environment where there were almost no black people, so why wouldn't I have a slightly higher association with people I resemble on several levels? On the other hand, as a jazz musician, most of my heroes are black.
I just don't know that this reveals anything new or unusual in human nature. They are the unconscious legacies of childhood that one tries to overcome when one become aware of them...

 

[Totenkindly]

They were testing to see if a reduced bias against mentality ill people was related to reduced bias toward other targeted minority groups (in this case, homosexuals).

Your data suggest a strong implicit association of homosexual people with good (versus bad). **This is because you were much faster at the classification task when the concept 'Homosexual People' was paired with the concept 'Good' than when 'Homosexual People' was paired with the concept 'Bad', which we interpret as an indication of your implicit evaluation of homosexual people.

For this test, I'm not really surprised by the results.

 

[Salomé]

I got that I associate Europeans with positive word and blacks with negative.
Frankly, that doesn't surprise me at all, not that I'm racist (well, according to Marm I am), but I grew up in an environment where there were almost no black people, so why wouldn't I have a slightly higher association with people I resemble on several levels?

Why would that give you implicitly negative associations though? It wouldn't. If you were not influenced by your environment at all, your response would be neutral.

I just don't know that this reveals anything new or unusual in human nature.

Maybe not new, but the implications are pretty important. When we hold (conscious or unconsious) negative stereotypes of groups of people, we interact with them in ways that activate and reinforce those stereotypes. In the case of associating black people with guns, for example, it has been shown to lead to a "shoot first ask questions later" mentality in the police. It doesn't get more serious than that.

 

[Stanton Moore]

Why would that give you implicitly negative associations though? It wouldn't. If you were not influenced by your environment at all, your response would be neutral.
QUOTE]
You have miised the point of my post. I don't have negative emotions or attituted about black people. I do have positive associations with some aspects of my immediate culture because that is what I'm farmiliar with, so it stands to reason that I would evince some positive associations with it. I also have many negative associations with it too, so I can only concluse that the test is leading the answers in some way, since it is not a true reflection of what I actually feel regarding blacks. Frankly, I think if the test had specified 'green people' vs. white, I would have had a similar result becuase the test is flawed.

 

[Salomé]

^The ENTIRE point is to reveal the associations you DON'T know you have.
The science is sound but you don't have to accept the conclusions, up to you.