Implicit Association Tests

An IAT, or Implicit Association Test, attempts to measure people’s “conscious-unconscious divergences”. Basically, an IAT puts you in a situation with no time to think and compares your reaction with your behavior when you’ve had time to think things over. On the Project Implicit Web site (click on “Demonstration”), you can take a number of IATs to get an idea of your own divergences, including factors such as age, gender, race, sexuality, and religion.

I took the Race IAT:

This IAT requires the ability to distinguish faces of European and African origin. It indicates that most Americans have an automatic preference for white over black.

and the Arab-Muslim IAT:

This IAT requires the ability to distinguish names that are likely to belong to Arab-Muslims versus people of other nationalities or religions. It frequently reveals an automatic preference for other people compared to Arab-Muslims.

On the Race test, my data suggested “moderate automatic preference for White American relative to African American” which isn’t surprising because I spent the first 17 years of my life in northern Wisconsin where there weren’t any black people and all my associations were from what I saw on the news, TV, in the movies, or from what my friends and relatives told me. Of course, I’ve since come to believe that people of all races, while culturally and physically different in some ways, are deserving of the same level of respect. The IAT reveals that though that’s what I consciously believe, my subconscious mind still shows a preference for white people. From the Race FAQ:

Automatic White preference may be common among Americans because of the deep learning of negative associations to the group Black in this society. High levels of negative references to Black Americans in American culture and mass media may contribute to this learning. Such negative references may themselves be more the residue of the long history of racial discrimination in the United States than the result of deliberate efforts to discriminate in media treatments.

On the Arab-Muslim test, a more surprising result: “your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Arab Muslims relative to Other People”. Maybe I’m one of those self-hating white American liberals the neo-cons are always talking about. Growing up, I can’t really remember any positive or negative associations about Arabs or Muslims…I wasn’t really aware of them as a culture. And even with 9/11 and the American military action in the Middle East…those events aren’t something that I associate with any particular religious or cultural group.

Even though these tests are just demonstrations, the differences in what you believe and your mind’s true feelings are important to be aware of for many reasons, even though it may be uncomfortable to know — as I am — that you prefer whites to blacks or thin people to obese people. For those who wish to balance your conscious and subconscious minds and lessen your divergences, the site’s FAQ offers hope:

One solution is to seek experiences that could undo or reverse the patterns of experience that could have created the unwanted preference. But this is not always easy to do. A more practical alternative may be to remain alert to the existence of the undesired preference, recognizing that it may intrude in unwanted fashion into your judgments and actions. Additionally, you may decide to embark on consciously planned actions that can compensate for known unconscious preferences and beliefs.

If you’re interested, you can sign up on the site to participate in the research effort.