According to the Harvard Implicit Association Tests...
(You should try these as well:
http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/)
Evidently I have (possible psychological explanations in parens):
Little or no preference between the abled and the disabled,
(psychological explanation? Never formed a prejudice.)
A moderate preference for European-Americans compared to African-Americans,
(Grew up at Arrowwood where everyone seemed mistrustful of me because I was white. Not an excuse, but possibly a factor.)
A moderate preference for Fat People compared to Thin People,
(I don't know. Eating disorders make you thin? Subconscious pining for Amber? Concerns about my own weight?)
A moderate preference for Gay People compared to Straight People,
(Seems fairly obvious. No gay person has ever called me a "fag" or told me my sexuality is dysfunctional or immoral. Again, not an excuse, but clearly a factor.)
A slight association of Females with Careers and Males with Family,
(interesting, isn't it? Both of my parents have always worked. Is my father more nurturing? I do think we need a female President.)
A moderate association of Indian people with American and White people with Foreign.
(I'm not sure that's actually a prejudice, is it? I mean, they were here first... I suppose it could be something racial--there is some Mohawk in me after all?--but they didn't do "good/bad" like they did with black and white, they did American/Foreign.)
Maybe an assocation of African-Americans with Weapons and of European-Americans with Harmless Objects?
(I ran this test three times, because the first run really worried me. First time said "strong," second time said "moderate," third time said "little or no." So now I don't know if I have such a despicable racist association in my subconscious or not.)
That's enough of that. These tests really start to get to you after awhile.
And even if they're right, what do they mean? What should we do?
http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/)
Evidently I have (possible psychological explanations in parens):
Little or no preference between the abled and the disabled,
(psychological explanation? Never formed a prejudice.)
A moderate preference for European-Americans compared to African-Americans,
(Grew up at Arrowwood where everyone seemed mistrustful of me because I was white. Not an excuse, but possibly a factor.)
A moderate preference for Fat People compared to Thin People,
(I don't know. Eating disorders make you thin? Subconscious pining for Amber? Concerns about my own weight?)
A moderate preference for Gay People compared to Straight People,
(Seems fairly obvious. No gay person has ever called me a "fag" or told me my sexuality is dysfunctional or immoral. Again, not an excuse, but clearly a factor.)
A slight association of Females with Careers and Males with Family,
(interesting, isn't it? Both of my parents have always worked. Is my father more nurturing? I do think we need a female President.)
A moderate association of Indian people with American and White people with Foreign.
(I'm not sure that's actually a prejudice, is it? I mean, they were here first... I suppose it could be something racial--there is some Mohawk in me after all?--but they didn't do "good/bad" like they did with black and white, they did American/Foreign.)
Maybe an assocation of African-Americans with Weapons and of European-Americans with Harmless Objects?
(I ran this test three times, because the first run really worried me. First time said "strong," second time said "moderate," third time said "little or no." So now I don't know if I have such a despicable racist association in my subconscious or not.)
That's enough of that. These tests really start to get to you after awhile.
And even if they're right, what do they mean? What should we do?
posted by PNRJ at 18:32
3 Comments:
I think we should at least know those prejiduces exist. That's always the first step.
I took the Disabilities test, but the server would not give me the results. I must say, however, that I have doubts about how valid these tests can be. It is, I think, rather simplistic to assume that someone who has negative associations with disabled people, for instance, will automatically be more likely to associate words like "pain" and "bomb" with disabled people. (If that's even the correspondence they're looking for. As far as I can tell, they don't fully explain how they judge the results.) And I do not think it is provable that this test world measure such automatic associations, if they did exist, since the test forces its subjects to lump two categories into one. On the other hand, tests that look for _specific_ judgements on images, such as the one about which I read in the newspaper in which people were asked to distinguish between men holding guns and men holding harmless objects, seem much more valid. (The test showed, unsurprisingly, that the subjects were more likely to incorrectly judge a harmless object to be a gun if the bearer was black.) This test looks for general judgements, and tries to find them by lumping together two entirely unrelated categories, and so I suspect that the test results may be constructed by the test itself.
-N.D.
P.S.: The "subjects" of a test are really its objects.
Well, I can see how the disabilities one is a little weird, because I feel it is perfectly natural to associate "bomb" and "pain" with disabilities, if merely because bombs can cause disabilities and pain can be a result of disabilities, and also because when I took it, I had little to no preference (it was the only one I achieved this on, despite having taken 7 or so tests) and I actually feel like of the things I took tests on, this was one of the ones where I probably do have a subconscious bias.
However, after my experience with the test dealing with Judaism (I found myself almost physically incapable of placing Jewish symbols with the negative words), which did match pictures of things associated with Judaism to a set of negative words (brutal, awful, horrible, hate), I am inclined the believe even the tests matching more vague and unrelated categories have validity.
Post a Comment
<< Home