Social Psychology
Social Psychology
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After conducting the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the results were as follows:
“Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for European American compared to African American” (Project Implicit, 2014).
I picked a test on Race. The reason for choosing race for the test is because of the prevailing and past campaigns to end racism not only in the United States but also everywhere around the world. The issue of racism has been a major concern in the country, and I thought that it was astonishing to view how the results of the test would be if I presented my thoughts regarding the topic.
After the results were out, I noticed that my conscious attitude could not match my unconscious results. Typically, I consider myself conscious when it comes to racism. I perceive both African Americans and European Americans as having equal opportunities when it comes to resource allocation and social interaction. Nevertheless, it was quit shocking to find out that I had a higher preference for European Americans as compared to African Americans according to the results (Project Implicit, 2014). After completing the results, I expected to get neutral results regarding racial preferences.
There could be some key reasons why there is no match between the conscious and conscious attitude as I had probably expected. First, the difference could have been created by a mistake I noticed during the determination of the facial differences between the white and black individuals presented in the test. Although I could clearly distinguish between the faces of each of the two races, I was slightly confused by the idea of bad or good that was tested alongside the same facial tests. At first, I did not want to associate White faces with bad things. It was as if I was forcing my mind to act in a specific way, but the test actually required that I act in the opposite way. I tried to rectify the same in the proceeding tests, but it was impossible. Other than this, I could have made other several errors as I tried to maintain speed. This aspect could have been the reason why my score was reported as an implicit preference for White people compared to Black people, mainly because I was quicker at categorizing good word with White faces and Black faces with bad things (Project Implicit, 2014).
I think of the IAT as great in revealing the unconscious attitude of individuals towards something; in this case, liking or disliking a particular race. The IAT is good at bringing out associations that would definitely differ from a person’s conscious beliefs. Typically, many people think of themselves as being perfect when it comes to a given social issue, but this could end up being untrue. Often, it comes out that even the people who are strongly antiracists would find themselves having some implicit associations that a particular race is better than another. In this case, the results depicted my implicit association that White is better than Black, although I practically fail to agree. Practically, I try as much as possible to consider the two races equal.
Reference
Project Implicit. (2014). Project Implicit. Retrieved from implicit.harvard.edu: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study
