Taking the IAT

The Implicit Association Test (IAT), first developed by Greenwald and others (1998), tests our subconscious prejudices against different groups of people. Sometimes we know our prejudices, sometimes its not so obvious to us. I took two different IAT tests: one for age and one for race. The IAT for race is a well known measure for implicit racism, which is racism that runs unconsciously and without our awareness of it (Eberhardt et al., 2006). It works by measuring how quickly participants pair African Americans with negative and positive words compared with how quickly they make the same associations with European Americans. I did not believe I would be high in prejudice towards the elderly or African Americans, but surprisingly, both tests showed I had a slight prejudice. The results were definitely inconsistent with what I believed they would be.

The entire experience of taking the IAT was eye-opening. Like most people, I like to think I don’t have any prejudices, but I guess they are really unavoidable. I definitely don’t consciously change my behavior towards the elderly or African Americans, the attitudes are subconscious. My attitudes most likely stem from my upbringing (raised in a conservative family) and all the cultural associations in the media that we see all the time. The IAT probably is fairly accurate and reflects my true attitudes, no matter how much I don’t want to believe it.

Completing the IAT made me realize how inescapable prejudice can be sometimes. Even when you consciously think you hold no prejudices and don’t want to be prejudiced, they still pop up. Since the attitudes are all subconscious, it makes me wonder if I have ever subconsciously treated these groups of people differently. Greenwald et al. (2009) found that white people with implicit racism tend to have more negative nonverbal behaviors in interracial interactions (physical distance or no eye contact). I would never consciously behave differently towards people just because they are older or African American, so I was astonished to get these results. Taking these IAT’s was extremely eye-opening and an interesting experience!

References:

Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdier-Vaughns, V. J., & Johnson, S. L. (2006). Looking deathworthy: Perceived stereotypicality of black defendants predicts capital-sentencing outcomes. Psychological Science, 17, 383-386.

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.

Greenwald, A. G., Poehlman, T. A., Uhlmann, E. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2009). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta- Analysis of predictive validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 17- 41.

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