Racism test

[Arkady]

Has anyone played around with "implicit association tests"? They're ways of trying to root out subconscious prejudice. The idea behind it is that our brains are better at making associations that are consistent with our subconscious prejudices than with associations that are inconsistent with them.

So, for example, let's say you have a strong, subconscious prejudice against Muslims. Now, picture you're presented with a stack of photographs, consisting of pictures associated with sports and ones associated with religious practice. You're told you should go through the stack of photographs and put any pictures of religious practice into a bin labeled "good" and any pictures of sports into a bin labeled "bad." If you make an honest effort to go through the deck as quickly as you can while being accurate in our sorting, something interesting will happen. It will end up taking you longer, on average, to put pictures associated with Islam (crescents, minarets, people bowing towards Mecca) into the right bin than to put pictures associated with Judaism (orthodox rabbis, yalmulkes), Catholicism (the Pope, St. Peters), etc., into the right bin. Your brain will subconsciously view associating Islam with "good" as more of a stretch than associating those other religions with "good," and it'll take it an extra fraction of a second to override the gut reaction to do the categorization. You'll be able to defeat your subconscious reaction quickly, but the stronger that reaction, the more time it will take, and it will make a measurable difference. It's an ingenious way to look at these questions.

Anyway, there's an online form of this test:

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

I last played around with that site a couple years ago, so it may have changed since then. However, when I last took the tests I tried to be as honest about it as possible so I could really root out my subconscious prejudices. Turns out I have a positive prejudice in favor of overweight people, slight prejudices against gay people and elderly people, a slightly stronger prejudice against religious people in general, a surprisingly strong prejudice about women, and no discernible prejudice against any of the racial groups I tested for. If others are willing to take the test honestly and report honestly, I'd be curious to hear about it.

 

[BobbyT]

Has anyone played around with "implicit association tests"? They're ways of trying to root out subconscious prejudice. The idea behind it is that our brains are better at making associations that are consistent with our subconscious prejudices than with associations that are inconsistent with them.

So, for example, let's say you have a strong, subconscious prejudice against Muslims. Now, picture you're presented with a stack of photographs, consisting of pictures associated with sports and ones associated with religious practice. You're told you should go through the stack of photographs and put any pictures of religious practice into a bin labeled "good" and any pictures of sports into a bin labeled "bad." If you make an honest effort to go through the deck as quickly as you can while being accurate in our sorting, something interesting will happen. It will end up taking you longer, on average, to put pictures associated with Islam (crescents, minarets, people bowing towards Mecca) into the right bin than to put pictures associated with Judaism (orthodox rabbis, yalmulkes), Catholicism (the Pope, St. Peters), etc., into the right bin. Your brain will subconsciously view associating Islam with "good" as more of a stretch than associating those other religions with "good," and it'll take it an extra fraction of a second to override the gut reaction to do the categorization. You'll be able to defeat your subconscious reaction quickly, but the stronger that reaction, the more time it will take, and it will make a measurable difference. It's an ingenious way to look at these questions.

Anyway, there's an online form of this test:

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

I last played around with that site a couple years ago, so it may have changed since then. However, when I last took the tests I tried to be as honest about it as possible so I could really root out my subconscious prejudices. Turns out I have a positive prejudice in favor of overweight people, slight prejudices against gay people and elderly people, a slightly stronger prejudice against religious people in general, a surprisingly strong prejudice about women, and no discernible prejudice against any of the racial groups I tested for. If others are willing to take the test honestly and report honestly, I'd be curious to hear about it.

I took a couple of the tests. Apparently I have a preference for thin people and European people over fat people and black people. Huh. I wouldn't have said that about myself but my hand-eye coordination betrayed my inner truth. Guess I'll work on that.

 

[fairsheet]

The cool thing about this test, is that it's virtually impossible to "cheat". Anyway...let's say we were to arrive at some means for "scoring" prejudice from 0 to 100. Let's say the guy who holds a deep prejudice against EVERYONE, scores zero. And, let's say the guy who evidences no prejudice whatsoever, for anyone, scores 100.

I'll betcha that none of us - no matter our perceptions of ourselves, would score anywhere close to 100. That doesn't necessarily mean we're "bad" people. It all depends upon what we do with the information.

 

[Arkady]

I took a couple of the tests. Apparently I have a preference for thin people and European people over fat people and black people. Huh. I wouldn't have said that about myself but my hand-eye coordination betrayed my inner truth. Guess I'll work on that.

Kind of funny, isn't it? You can actually feel that little instant of your brain "freezing up" when it has to do an association that doesn't come naturally. I remember being a little surprised by my anti-gay prejudice, but actually being able to feel it, as I was taking the test. And, when I'm honest with myself, I know it's there. I have some gay friends and consciously wish them the best, and I support gay rights, but I haven't completely shed the aversion I felt, as a young person, to anything that didn't fit neatly into my masculine/feminine worldview.

 

[Arkady]

The cool thing about this test, is that it's virtually impossible to "cheat". Anyway...let's say we were to arrive at some means for "scoring" prejudice from 0 to 100. Let's say the guy who holds a deep prejudice against EVERYONE, scores zero. And, let's say the guy who evidences no prejudice whatsoever, for anyone, scores 100.

I'll betcha that none of us - no matter our perceptions of ourselves, would score anywhere close to 100. That doesn't necessarily mean we're "bad" people. It all depends upon what we do with the information.

Yep, EVERYONE has prejudices. I'm sure I'd come across as a raging bigot on some stuff they didn't test. For example, I have a huge prejudice against southerners. Eventually I came to respect Bill Clinton more than any president in my lifetime, but when he first ran for office, it took me about two months to get over my visceral aversion to his southern-fried charm.

 

[BobbyT]

The cool thing about this test, is that it's virtually impossible to "cheat". Anyway...let's say we were to arrive at some means for "scoring" prejudice from 0 to 100. Let's say the guy who holds a deep prejudice against EVERYONE, scores zero. And, let's say the guy who evidences no prejudice whatsoever, for anyone, scores 100.

I'll betcha that none of us - no matter our perceptions of ourselves, would score anywhere close to 100. That doesn't necessarily mean we're "bad" people. It all depends upon what we do with the information.

I agree. Racism (or prejudice, more precisely) is ingrained in us. We extrapolate from our own and others' experience, which is a great short-hand learning tool and likely helped our un-furred, non-clawed forebears to survive. It also leads to wrong conclusions though, that can be tough to "unlearn."

 

[fairsheet]

I'll be taking this test this evening, and reporting back.

 

[BobbyT]

Kind of funny, isn't it? You can actually feel that little instant of your brain "freezing up" when it has to do an association that doesn't come naturally. I remember being a little surprised by my anti-gay prejudice, but actually being able to feel it, as I was taking the test. And, when I'm honest with myself, I know it's there. I have some gay friends and consciously wish them the best, and I support gay rights, but I haven't completely shed the aversion I felt, as a young person, to anything that didn't fit neatly into my masculine/feminine worldview.

It reminds me of a study I learned about while taking my undergrad degree in Anthropology. They had two separate audiences, one was American young men of many ethnicities and the other was young men from an Amazonian tribe (Yanomamo maybe but I'm not sure). Anyway, they had 20 pictures of young women, half American and half from the Amazonian tribe and asked the young men to rate the women's beauty. Some of the American women were "classically" beautiful using
American standards and some were "plain"; same with the tribal women - some beautiful and some plain, using their "classic" standards of beauty. All the American men rated the American women more beautiful than all of the tribal women, rating even the 'plain' women as more beautiful than the tribal women. In turn, all of the men in the tribe rated all the women in their tribe as more beautiful than all the American women. It's a strong indicator that we appreciate and prefer that with which we are familiar.

 

[fairsheet]

There was another interesting study along these lines, about who people might vote for for president. They were shown a series of photos of men, with no backgrounds provided. Put simply, taller men with more hair, did better than shorter bald men.

 

[BobbyT]

There was another interesting study along these lines, about who people might vote for for president. They were shown a series of photos of men, with no backgrounds provided. Put simply, taller men with more hair, did better than shorter bald men.

Maybe taller/more head hair equates to an impression that they're more virile/powerful? Because short/bald men don't generally get to be the romantic lead in movies (Ron Jeremy being the exception)?

 

[Corruptbuddha]

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for European American compared to African American.

Hell, I could have told you that...I'm white...it makes sense that I prefer white people.

We all gravitate to the things we most associate to.

 

[fairsheet]

I'll be taking this test this evening, and reporting back.

It took the race test and in order, my "preference" was for black, hispanic, white, and Asian. But, they were all grouped towards the middle. I don't feel like the pictures made any difference to me - I was only looking the words, and I'm guessing that if I took this one ten times, I'd get 10 different results. I don't know what that means.

 

[fairsheet]

It took the race test and in order, my "preference" was for black, hispanic, white, and Asian. But, they were all grouped towards the middle. I don't feel like the pictures made any difference to me - I was only looking the words, and I'm guessing that if I took this one ten times, I'd get 10 different results. I don't know what that means.

The next test I took, "suggest(ed) little to no automatic identification with Hippies compared to Jocks". Something tells me I'm braindead and/or really really boring.

 

[marvin martian]

Hell, I could have told you that...I'm white...it makes sense that I prefer white people.

We all gravitate to the things we most associate to.

You're right, but in lala land, that makes you a racist...

 

[Corruptbuddha]

Of course it does.

Nowadays, anything that doesn't fit into the 'progressive' world view is inherently racist.

 

[OldGaffer]

Strange, my most preferred was Asians, then Blacks, Whites and Hispanics at the bottom.

 

[marvin martian]

Strange, my most preferred was Asians, then Blacks, Whites and Hispanics at the bottom.

Racist. Why do you hate Hispanics?

 

[Arkady]

There was another interesting study along these lines, about who people might vote for for president. They were shown a series of photos of men, with no backgrounds provided. Put simply, taller men with more hair, did better than shorter bald men.

In the TV era, that's been the standard. We haven't had any short presidents in years, and most of our presidents have been uncommonly tall. We also haven't elected a president without a good head of hair since Eisenhower, who was before most people had TV. We also now insist on presidents without glasses, within a pretty narrow range of accepted weights (Obama to Clinton). It's almost like, subconsciously, we're trying to select a "big man" to physically lead our tribe into battle with the neighboring tribe, and so we're looking for signs of youth, health, and vitality -- weeding out the frail, the small, the elderly, the fatties, etc.

Perhaps that's why the US is so far behind the curve when it comes to electing a woman head of state -- we're such a militarized nation that we're subconsciously thinking about picking a lead combatant, which is something that's going to be less of a consideration in the UK, Germany, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Australia, etc.

That said, I wonder what's up with our modern aversion to politicians who have facial hair. Walk down the street and you'll see a huge portion of men with goatees, mustaches, beards, mutton chops, etc., but in Congress it's practically unheard of, and in the presidency we haven't had one since the mustachioed Taft, a full century ago. If someone like Paul Krugman were to run for office, I assume his advisers would tell him he's going to have to lose the beard.

 

[Arkady]

The next test I took, "suggest(ed) little to no automatic identification with Hippies compared to Jocks". Something tells me I'm braindead and/or really really boring.

Strange. Possibly you just get into a rhythm that keeps your timing consistent by slowing your responses on items where you could have been quicker.

 

[Arkady]

Hell, I could have told you that...I'm white...it makes sense that I prefer white people.

We all gravitate to the things we most associate to.

I agree that's probably natural, but it doesn't seem to be universal. Although I had many prejudices pop up on the tests, including at least one strong one (associating women with domesticity), I'm white and didn't show a preference for European Americans over African Americans.