Undesirable Associations

Hey everyone!

While the IATs were incredibly stressful and some of my results were not all entirely encouraging, I think it is definitely good to try use them educationally and realize some underlying assumptions you have. 

First off, here is a great video that many of you have probably seen, but after talking about race so much today I was thinking about culture and remembered this video from a few years ago!

Anyway, I took both the race (more than once to see if my results varied) and gender related to occupation IATs. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was developed by Greenwald, McGee, and Schwartz (1998) and they work by provided you with either a word or picture (depending on which you're taking) and you have to sort it into a correct category as quickly as you can. Specifically with the race IAT, you are shown either a picture of a person's face (their race is either white or African-American) or you are shown an adjective that is either positive or negative (e.g. nasty, joy, peace) and you must quickly press a key that correctly sorts the word or image with the left or right category. Because there are only two categories, half the time the white faces are paired with negative adjectives and the African-American faces are paired with positive adjectives and the other half of the time the pairings are switched. Therefore if both African-American and positive is on the right, if an African-American face or the word joy appears you press the key for the right category (and if a white or negative word appears you press the left category key) as quickly as you can attempting to minimize error. 

Because this task is completed on a computer, the IATs are able to determine millisecond differences in response time and measure ability to associate and sort words and faces accurately and quickly. Therefore, if one is able to more easily (as in more quickly) associate positive words with white faces or, said differently, they quickly associate negative words with African-Americans or take a longer time with positive associations towards African-Americans, they are considered to have a preference for whites (the strength of that preference depends on the difference between the time one can associate negative words and positive words with members of each race).

On the gender IAT I obtained the result of little to no preference towards ones gender and their association with occupational or domestic words. I actively make an effort to think of men and women equally in terms of their career aspirations and think that this result is consistent with my beliefs and behaviors towards groups on this matter. I know that I am very proud of both my mother and father for working for my entire life. Furthermore, I have worked with many women professionally recently through several internships and that may have affected why my results showed no preference (my results may have been different at the start of college which I would not have been thrilled about). I very much hope that this is my “true” attitude as I greatly respect and admire hard workers and wouldn't want to have an underlying association that men are harder workers than women or that I have a primary or initial domestic association towards women.

Additionally, I took the race IAT several times in order to see if my results varied. They did vary but my overall result was not encouraging. I showed a slight to moderate preference for European-Americans. Again, I try to not make associations based on any external characteristic such as race and was therefore unhappy with this association. I had taken the race IAT during high school and obtained a similar result then. While I was unhappy with finding that out a few years ago, I would have thought that I would have made progress in destabilizing that association, as since then, I have have met many African-Americans in many different contexts and have really enjoyed my interactions with many of them. Unfortunately, I apparently have some work to do in continuing to break down my initial snap associations regarding individuals of a different race than mine. Therefore, I don't think of my results as representing my “true” or at least not desired attitude towards African-Americans but probably does accurately reflect some of my quickly made implicit associations which I would like to continue to try to change.

I think it is personally important to continue having diversity and variety in my relationships. Furthermore, I think having diverse relationships is one of the best ways for me fight these implicit biases. Indeed many of the examples I can think of for African-American friends are/were definitely positive, but perhaps not as significant or long lasting as they could have for various reasons. This insight informs how I have thought about stereotypes recently, that being that its is not a one time process to eliminate my biases but is an attitude that has to be challenged by continuing to experience diversity in my life. Therefore, I think my retaking the IAT I acquired insight into how I can personally be effective in continuing to effectively challenge my stereotypes. In sum, although I frequently and actively combat these associations (and have had many positive relationships with African-Americans) I will have to continue to endure and challenge these associations as I want them to diminish or be eliminated.

(Word count = 835)

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.