January 24, 2005

Project Implicit - It seems biases are more prevalent inside us than we imagine, and these tests seem to indicate that they might not be going away any time soon. Related link: WaPo article (very long!) about the phenomenon, the tests, and what it all means. Via The Smoking Room
posted by f8xmulder 19 years ago
  • I took the carreer/woman test, and, as I expected, I associate carreer and male. The test, which they call a 'task' (and rightly so) required all my concentration.
  • This is interesting, thanks. I was not familiar with this test. I didn't have time to take it, but I am well aware that I have numerous biases (some I don't know about, I'm sure) that conflict with my outward stance. I have to rationalize them every day.
  • I'd seen and taken the race bias test before, linked from a discussion on another site. I'm a bit sceptical of the technique (if it's the same for all tests) as it seemed to be partly a test of motor skills (clicking on pictures of black or white people in association with positive or negative words). I actually came out as having no particular bias (which is something I hope is true) but I did wonder if this might be more a function of playing lots of FPS games and having good click response times to onscreen stimulii. i guess I should poke around the site and see if they address this anywhere.
  • Some pleasant surprises for me. I always thought of myself as prejudiced against Blacks, instinctually (mainly because of lack of contact). But it seems the prejudice is negligible. I did the Race test twice (if you read the conclusion, there's a reason why), and I got "little or no preference for Whites over Blacks" for the first test, but the reverse result for the second. I also have a "slight preference for Gay people over Straight people". Is that why I can't get a boyfriend...
  • An old but related story I wrote on racial bias, over at Plastic.
  • Hmm, not too much in the FAQ but it did remind me that it was about pressing keys, not clicking the mouse as I remembered, so I guess my point above still holds. There's this bit:
    How does the IAT measure implicit attitudes? Answer: The IAT asks you to pair two concepts (e.g., young and good, or elderly and good). The more closely associated the two concepts are, the easier it is to respond to them as a single unit. So, if young and good are strongly associated, it should be easier to respond faster when you are asked to give the same response (i.e. the 'E' or 'I' key) to these two.
    So it seems they do factor speed, which as I said, could be vary for reasons other than implicit bias.
  • Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American relative to White American I'm not sure if they controlled for this by swapping which key did what (dont remember all the combinations), but my speed of response was faster for whichever was the "E" key, thats just the way I type.
  • drjimmy, do the test again, they should swap the terms around this time. Then you can check the results of the second test and balance it against the first one.
  • I don't need a to take a test to find out what I already know: I hate people.
  • Hang on, am I being stupid? It's comparing your relative speed for positive against your speed for negative, not against some arbitrary standard, right? So what I said is irrelevant. That's something I do have an implicit bias towards.
  • Yeah, I'd disagree with speed being an indicator of bias. Probably because entering into this test I assumed that was a factor they would be measuring, and therefor was remarkably consistent in my timing of keystrokes. All of the tests said I had no implicit associations with the given concepts.
  • Yeah, I'm the most unbiased mofo ever.
  • While there might be a grain of truth to this, especially if it turned up with a strong preference, I will say that since I'm a gamer, I'm really used to hitting keys to shoot things and having the keys change and such things. I got no bias and so I'm thinking that even if a biased gamer took the test, they might show up as unbiased because of the skill developed in gaming.
  • Unbiased people are all shiftless thieves who don't know how to properly coordinate a wardrobe and secretly worship Sporty Spice. So are Belgians.
  • Sport Spice was the totally best. But then, I've always gone for the soccer girls.
  • And last night I watched Hotel Rwanda, and currently thing all Belgians are shiftless thieves.* *said by an American... isn't irony grand?
  • Young Good Good Old Bad Old Bad Young Good Young Old Good Bad etc... What fun!
  • I'm not biased against George Bush? WTF! Either that's a false negative, or he's the biggest fucktard on the planet.
  • Well, Belgians are pretty good at comics, and their chips and beer are absolutely great.
  • I'm biased. I hate tests.
  • And apparently, I'm biased towards fat people and women in science. I knew about the science thing, since I am a woman in science, but had just assumed I would be biased towards thin people.
  • I'm totally unbiased, except I have an very, very slight preference for teh gay. I'm shocked, surprised and a little upset. The only rationalisation that I can come up with for this is that I am a pure equal opportunity misanthrope. You bastards.
  • Everything I took came back as inconclusive, but that could be because it seems to be all about pattern recognition and response in kind. My genetically engineered senses and reflexes can break any test.
  • Do they offer a neutral test where there shouldn't be any real associations that could affect your response time? I'd like to compare my reaction times on some real tests with a neutral one.