Are You Biased? Implicit Associations Test

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take the Implicit Associations test(s)

all my life I thought I was the most impartial, reasonable person until I took those tests (made by Harvard psychologists).

apparently I have:

- a strong preference for black people over white people

- a strong preference for thin people over fat people

- a slight preference for old people over young people

- a slight preference for UK rather than US

- strong association between liberal arts and females and between science and males (<--- this one made me the most surprised as I thought myself to be gender-blind )

- a strong preference for dark skin over white skin

so according to the results I'm a sexist, ageist person who hates fat people and her own race LOL

the one that I agreed with was no bias in sexual orientation.

ok guys, time to reveal what you're really made of! I dare you to share your results!

That test made me want to pull out my hair. I couldn't finish it. I love Obama and got tripped up when they wanted me to identify good words with McCain.

ok you're excused

i hate white people too. i don't need a test to tell me that, though. they're normally the most selfish people and normally also more aloof when they get even the slightest hint of having money.

god damned crackers.

my only problem with fat people is that they take up too much space in stairwells and they're generally crappy drivers. and i'm not physically attracted to fat females.

I form whatever associations they give me for the first task in the "game." For example, they first had you associate "good" and "McCain" and then later switched to "good" and "Obama." I learned the rules of the game for the first set, and got tripped up when they changed, so it told me I had an automatic preference for McCain (which, I can assure you, I do not). The associations detected in me are the ones I formed to complete the first round of word associations, and they lingered for long enough that they impacted the next ones.

Oh, and I am apparently moderately racist as well. But I dislike white people as well as black, so at least I'm an equal-opportunity hater.

I did 2 of the tests before I accidentally closed the window, I might go back & do more later.

I show little or no preference when assigning male & female to sciences or liberal arts, but I think I was just concentrating hard & trying to put words in the correct place without thinking about their content.

But apparently I have a moderate preference for straight people over gay people. I think this result was skewed by one of the tiny grainy pictures they kept flashing up which showed 2 people in wedding dresses, but 1 looked like a man & 1 looked like a woman, so where's that supposed to go? I'm still not sure if it was 2 women or 2 guys.

Load of bollocks that was. Seems to rely on primitive word-association techniques and leading questions, and other sort of trips and traps.. a little like an optical illusion would.

Well, how else would you construct a test to get at people's implicit assumptions? the answers people give to leading questions & the associations they make between words can be revealing.

Anyway, I think the main method it uses is measuring the speed it takes you to put the words in the right box, which seems like a pretty good way of discovering if someone has a problem associating homosexuality with positive words, or whatever.

^^I agree. seems like Macbeth has some trouble accepting the outcome

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Last edited by claire-333 on 24 Dec 2008, 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i normally don't like personality tests...particularly political ones or ones dealing with race because they normally have a built-in prejudice where the author's design effects the outcome rather than attempting to achieve a balanced, fair test.

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Old and Young.

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Arab Muslims compared to Other People.

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Dark Skin and Light Skin.

Your data suggest a slight association of White Am. with Foreign and Native Am. with American compared to Native Am. with Foreign and White Am. with American.

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Judaism compared to Other Religions.

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Gay People compared to Straight People.

Your data suggest a slight association of Black Americans with Weapons compared to White Americans.

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Last edited by claire-333 on 24 Dec 2008, 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'll update as I go along

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Heterosexuals compared to Homosexuals.

I never thought i;d say this, but... yeah it's true. The whole test when i'd see a straight couple i'd keep thinking of it as a "good word" I'm shocked at myself.

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Heterosexuals and Homosexuals.

Your data suggest a slight automatic negative self esteem.

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Fair compared to Biased.

Your data suggest a slight automatic association between Self and Atheist.

Last edited by ShadesOfMe on 17 Dec 2008, 8:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Given that I tried all the trials a couple of times, and got wildly different answers, yes I do. Its falsified word association. It does not reflect how I associate words with pictures, or pictures with other pictures, as it creates that association itself. Were I to replace the elements of say, the Skin colour test with a combination of soup, cheese, bad and good, would that really give a sound idea as to how I feel about cheese?

For example..By associating a string of black faces with bad words, it conditions you to expect that a black face will follow or precede a bad word, and a white one with a good word.

So yeah, its a load of s**t.

I tried a few they all basically said the same "Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Heterosexuals and Homosexuals." fill in the between whatever and whatever.

But they did make my head hurt a little.