I was introduced to the concept of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) in my Women and Gender Studies class, where we then went on to take multiple tests and write about our findings of our own internal biases in a paper.
IATs measure your conscious and unconscious associations with different kinds of people by asking you to pair words or images with other words or images and looking at your reaction times. If you're interested in taking any yourself, you can find them here. These tests aren't definitive of you or your personality, and obviously a lot of things factor into how their measurements could be faulty, for example, right-handedness / left-handedness, but they do give you a good idea overall of your internal biases and stereotypes.
Why is knowing about them important? I think that knowing about how your mind jumps to conclusions about different people is important because then you can understand that maybe what you're thinking is wrong or unfair. For example, if you are an employer and you know you have a bias towards white people vs. black people, then it helps you make more educated decisions in choosing your employees as opposed to employing a bunch of people and then wondering why your entire company is whitewashed (because no, I can guarantee most of the time this is not because only white people are super qualified for your jobs).
To summarise my paper, I found through the IATs that I'm fairly unbiased for most things - here is my list of results and my immediate reactions:
Your data suggest little or no association between Native Am. and White Am. with Foreign and American.
Not surprising at all. I'm not American, the relationship between Native Americans and White Americans is literally something I never think about.
Your data suggest a moderate association of Asian American with American and European American with Foreign compared to European American with American and Asian American with Foreign.
This was kind of funny but I realized that I tend to associate white people with Europe more because when I was little I spent many summers traveling in Europe where, surprise surprise, there's a lot of white people. Also, I probably do it in defense of all the "Where are you really from?" questions I get all the time. (Don't ask this. Ever. Also, RUDE.)
Not surprising at all. I'm not American, the relationship between Native Americans and White Americans is literally something I never think about.
Your data suggest a moderate association of Asian American with American and European American with Foreign compared to European American with American and Asian American with Foreign.
This was kind of funny but I realized that I tend to associate white people with Europe more because when I was little I spent many summers traveling in Europe where, surprise surprise, there's a lot of white people. Also, I probably do it in defense of all the "Where are you really from?" questions I get all the time. (Don't ask this. Ever. Also, RUDE.)
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Arab Muslims compared to Other People.
This was hilarious and completely unexpected but very nice to know. You Arab-Muslims out there, I got your back. Apparently. ;)
Your data suggest a slight association of Male with Career and Female with Family compared to Female with Career and Male with Family.
This was frustrating because my mom traveled when I was little and my dad stayed home with me, so why would I have an internal bias for the opposite? Probably because I was aware from a very young age that my home was an anomaly? Also, I tend to associate women with many more things than Career (mom tends to spread herself thin and do all the things), whereas I associate men with only one thing (because they're wired to be very single-minded).
Your data suggest little or no association between Female and Male with Science and Liberal Arts.
Well, duh. I grew up in China and China thinks that the liberal arts are useless. My dad says all the time, "Master math, physics, and chemistry, and you can walk anywhere under the heavens without being afraid." (The Chinese version of this is a lot shorter and sounds a lot better.)
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin.
Also unsurprising: Asian beauty standards dictate that lighter skin is better than darker skin. In China they say that the perfect man is "tall, rich, handsome" and the perfect woman is "white, rich, beautiful". Also notice the importance of being rich in Chinese eyes.
Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Straight People and Gay People.
Super surprising! Asians tend to be fairly homophobic and since I grew up in China thats what I thought I would end up being (despite all my protestations), so this was a huge relief to me. Since homosexuality is so taboo in China, they don't really talk about it - the first time I was exposed to the idea of it, I was in the US and was, by then, making friends with all sorts of people, so I guess they shaped my stereotypes and biases (or non-stereotypes and non-biases?) into what it ended up being today.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for European American compared to African American.
This was the only result I got that made me extremely disappointed in myself. I've known for a long time that I grew up in a somewhat racist family (Asians are generally literally the most racist people ever. They don't even like other Asians.) but I thought that my exposure to non-Asian, non-White people in high school would help counteract it. Hell, one of my favorite people is black. But I guess four years of high school of being friends with not very many black people and learning about their culture and themselves can't counteract the thirteen years before of being exposed to only Asians and White people - I do tend to find myself attracted to white people a lot faster than to black people (not to say that I haven't been attracted to black people. A lot of you out there are very, very attractive. sigh.)
This was hilarious and completely unexpected but very nice to know. You Arab-Muslims out there, I got your back. Apparently. ;)
Your data suggest a slight association of Male with Career and Female with Family compared to Female with Career and Male with Family.
This was frustrating because my mom traveled when I was little and my dad stayed home with me, so why would I have an internal bias for the opposite? Probably because I was aware from a very young age that my home was an anomaly? Also, I tend to associate women with many more things than Career (mom tends to spread herself thin and do all the things), whereas I associate men with only one thing (because they're wired to be very single-minded).
Your data suggest little or no association between Female and Male with Science and Liberal Arts.
Well, duh. I grew up in China and China thinks that the liberal arts are useless. My dad says all the time, "Master math, physics, and chemistry, and you can walk anywhere under the heavens without being afraid." (The Chinese version of this is a lot shorter and sounds a lot better.)
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin.
Also unsurprising: Asian beauty standards dictate that lighter skin is better than darker skin. In China they say that the perfect man is "tall, rich, handsome" and the perfect woman is "white, rich, beautiful". Also notice the importance of being rich in Chinese eyes.
Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Straight People and Gay People.
Super surprising! Asians tend to be fairly homophobic and since I grew up in China thats what I thought I would end up being (despite all my protestations), so this was a huge relief to me. Since homosexuality is so taboo in China, they don't really talk about it - the first time I was exposed to the idea of it, I was in the US and was, by then, making friends with all sorts of people, so I guess they shaped my stereotypes and biases (or non-stereotypes and non-biases?) into what it ended up being today.
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for European American compared to African American.
This was the only result I got that made me extremely disappointed in myself. I've known for a long time that I grew up in a somewhat racist family (Asians are generally literally the most racist people ever. They don't even like other Asians.) but I thought that my exposure to non-Asian, non-White people in high school would help counteract it. Hell, one of my favorite people is black. But I guess four years of high school of being friends with not very many black people and learning about their culture and themselves can't counteract the thirteen years before of being exposed to only Asians and White people - I do tend to find myself attracted to white people a lot faster than to black people (not to say that I haven't been attracted to black people. A lot of you out there are very, very attractive. sigh.)
Now that I know these automatic associations about how I view other people, I can hopefully counteract it in my conscious mind. All in all, it was a really interesting project and I learned a lot about myself, even if I had some issues with how some of the tests were set up. I hope you take the time to do a few of the IATs too (link above!) and don't forget to let me know what you think about them and your results!
