Implicit Associations

[morgan_dhu]

Every once in a while, someone I know on the Netz finds a website that does work with Implicit Association testing, and I go and test myself again. I've been doing this for a long time, longer than most, because I used to know via a particular fandom one of the students of the original researchers on this particular methodology and I took a test she had developed for her own research project.

So I have a fairly long history of taking them. I may be testwise by now, but I try to measure that by, whenever I find a new site that tests some new set of implicit associations, finding one of the first tests I ever took and retaking it to see if there's been a change in my results. There hasn't been yet. And I try to approach each new test I take with a clear mind, focused on the task and not on what the results will be.

So today I wandered through my flist and followed some links to the Harvard IAT test site. There were some new tests that I hadn't taken before, and a few that I had, so I took some new ones and retook a couple of them.

As usual, I am bothered by some of my responses.

My responses to one of the new ones I took was perfectly understandable. It turns out that I have a strong automatic preference for fat people over thin people. Seeing as I am fat, and that society is obsessed with thinness to the point of unhealthiness, especially for women, that's likely a good thing. It probably means that while I'm concerned about health issues, at least I think fat people can be good.

I also have always demonstrated a moderate to strong automatic preference for gay people over straight people. Again, being bisexual, I tend to identify with gay people more than I do with straight people, in general terms, so that one makes sense, too.

It also turns out that I do not have an automatic association between men and science, as opposed to women and science, which makes sense because I'm a woman who has always been interested in the sciences and has spend a lot of time thinking about anti-woman stereotypes and assumptions and I think in my time I've managed to get over a lot of them at a pretty deep level.

Here's the stuff that I don't get.

Over the years I've been trying these tests out, I have consistently been told that my responses demonstrate a strong automatic preference for black or dark-skinned people over white or light-skinned people. My responses also apparently indicate that I automatically associate North American Aboriginal people with being American to a much greater extent than I associate whites with being American and that I don't appear to think Asian people are "foreign" compared to white people. I'm apparently neutral in terms of religions - I have pretty much the same pattern of associations with Judaism as I do with other religions. I apparently also have a moderate automatic preference for Arab Muslims over other people. All of these responses are apparently anywhere from somewhat to very uncommon - for instance, my response to the preference test for black people vs. white people is found in about three percent of the American test population.

Here's what bothers me. I am white, raised in a predominantly white environment. While it is true that over the years I have had colleagues, friends and lovers of other races and religious groups, I was, like every other white person in North America (at least) raised in relative privilege and raised to be racist.

So when I look at these results, I wonder, and I worry. Am I unconsciously faking out the tests to reassure myself that I'm "not really" a racist? Have I fetishised people of colour? Or am I just so disgusted by the history of white people’s behaviour in general and American/North Americans in particular that I automatically favour any other group of people in a context where I am thinking about prejudice and race? I'm not sure I understand or trust what may or may not be going on in my head, especially with respect to the responses to race-based tests.

And the literature I’ve found online isn’t much help. Most of it seems to be focused on either reassuring me that I’m not a bad person because my results show bias against minority groups, or arguing that the tests are invalid because they make almost everyone appear biased against minority groups. There’s nothing that I can find about people who appear to be consistently biased against majority groups, even the ones that they are members of.

But there have to be other people like me that have a consistent anti-privilege bias, because that’s what seems to be the connecting thread in all of my responses over the years. This would even explain my response to the religions test – if I was unconsciously faking it, you’d think I would have come out strongly pro-Judaism, but if I’m being anti-privilege, then I’d be expected to get confused with this test, because it’s not comparing responses between two religious groups with unequal privilege in North American, but rather comparing Judaism on one hand and a collection of several other religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and North American Aboriginal spiritual traditions as well as Christianity, on the other hand. And while I’m well-known to be severely critical of Christianity as the privileged religion in North America, I would expect that I’d tend to favour the other religions included as much as I’d favour Judaism.

But I wish I could find more information on how to interpret consistent responses like mine on race-based tests coming from white people. Does it make sense to think what’s going on in my head is an anti-privilege bias? Or am I just trying to justify some unusual manifestation of inherent racist thinking? Or am I overthinking the whole damn thing?

Comments

[loligo.livejournal.com]

because I used to know via a particular fandom one of the students of the original researchers on this particular methodology and I took a test she had developed for her own research project.

Would this be Xena fandom? If so, I know who you know. *g* (I haven't seen her or talked to her in ten years, but I hope she's doing well, wherever she is!)

I'll be back with more substantive comments tonight or tomorrow!

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

It was indeed Xena fandom.

Alas, I lost touch with her myself about eight years ago, and lately I've actually been sort of poking around to see if she still has an online presence under a new persona. Should you ever run into anyone who does know if she's still around online, I'd appreciate it if you would let me know.

Looking forward to your ideas on the IAT. I find it a fascinating methodology, but I'm just not sure what it means to someone like me. I grew up as the daughter of a psychologist who at one point in her career specialised in testing methodologies, and she often brought home new tests to try out on me as an informal subject, or maybe just for fun (imagine, if you will, having your first exposure to the MMPI as a pre-adolescent!)

So I probably have an acquired ability to figure out how tests work in general, and a tendency to get test-wise quickly. Although I've also, I think, learned to counter that to some extent by deliberately not thinking about test design when I'm doing a test - that must be possible, or all testing on psychologists when there is a legitimate need for some kind of assessment would be totally invalid, rather than just to be interpreted with caution.

But that's something else that I wonder about.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Alas, I lost touch with her myself about eight years ago, and lately I've actually been sort of poking around to see if she still has an online presence under a new persona. Should you ever run into anyone who does know if she's still around online, I'd appreciate it if you would let me know.

It took me about half an hour of Google-fu to find out what she's doing in real life (I kept spelling her name wrong), but as to whether she's still active in fandom, I don't know. But I could send you her RL contact info, if you want -- since she used to do fan stuff under her real name, I don't think she would mind a fannish friend searching for her that way!

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I think I located her myself - unless the info I found is outdated, she's got a position at the same place she (and you) did grad work, yes?