How Racist Might You Be?

Great Debates
1

Inspired by this thread:

I thought I would post this. I don’t think its a poll and I don’t think that it is a General Question but:

How racist mightyou be?

Background- in American terms I am an Ultra-liberal, brought up to fight for the underdog and to continually question capitalism. Well read in prejudice and bigotry- a bleeding heart liberal. Many friends of non WASP origin. As an employer I chose the most racially and culturally mixed ward team of the whole hospital. I enjoy different cultures and believed that I was relatively free from gross prejudice.

Then I did this test:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1

And this was the result:

"Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for European American compared to African American.

The interpretation is described as ‘automatic preference for European American’ if you responded faster when European American faces and Good words were classified with the same key than when African American faces and Good words were classified with the same key. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic preference may be described as ‘slight’, ‘moderate’, ‘strong’, or ‘little to no preference’."

What the f…

Anyone else interested in predicting how they would score and then comparing it with their results for similar public humiliation purposes? Then lets debate what this means for prejudice and possible (unconscious) bigotry.

2

I call bullshit on this test, assuming we’re talking about the same test (I couldn’t follow your link and went here and selected Canada). I allegedly have an “automatic preference for white” because I made a mistake during a process that the test itself demands be done as rapidly as possible. It’s identical to a test that said the following:

“We’ll give you a simple arithmetic equation. Press E if the equation is correct (i.e. 2+2=4) and I if it is wrong (i.e. 2+2=5). Do this as fast as you can.”

…followed by 20 equations and…

“Okay, now do the same, except E is now ‘wrong’ and I is ‘right’. Keep going as fast you can.”

It’s not a test of racism - it’s one of conditioned reflexes. Also, you have to identify a series of close-up photos in (heh) black-and-white and determine if the person is black or white. I found most of them obvious, but if there was ambiguity, I guess I tended to guess ‘white’. Big fucking deal.

This test is like Scientology auditing - vagueness that can be interpreted to fit the questioner’s bias.

3

I just did another test, checking for my preference for Canada vs. the United States. I’m asked to sort pictures of flags, leaders, maps and names of capital cities and words like “pleasure” and “abuse”. I know exactly how to place all of them, without hesitation. If I make mistakes, it’s because my fingers hit the wrong keys, and typically after the E/I thing is flipped, so the short-term memories I’ve formed of what goes where actually hampers me. This is like trying to psychologically analyze someone based on what typos he makes.

I reiterate: bullshit.

And Canada’s better. I don’t need a test to tell me that. :smiley:

4

I had a black woman I know take the test after I scored a moderate preference for whites.

She scored a STRONG preference for whites.

Toward the end of the test she was cracking herself up saying “This is SO much easier when white is associated with good, and I DON"T KNOW WHY!!” and " I am a disgrace!"

5

I took this test a while back when it came up around here. I also call bullshit on it. I am a bleeding heart liberal as well. I don’t think speed and hand-eye coordination have any bearing on a person’s true attitudes toward race. I think a person’s record speaks for itself. There is no “test” for your responses to racial issues beyond how you conduct yourself in your day-to-day life.

6

I copied the link above as I was redoing the test, and obviously it was not a linkable URL.

TrY:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Left Right bias is accounted for by the test being replicated using each hand for each association. Here for background information:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/background/faqs.html

Having read the supporting information and with some knowledge of Psychological Testing, I think that there is something here that needs to be disproved beyond just shouting ‘bullshit’.

7

Digging deeper, they seem to have a fair amount of material published in Peer Reviewed Journals:

http://www.projectimplicit.net/articles.php#1

Personally, I am able to accept that I have an atavistic or socially conditioned preference for ‘European’ faces over ‘African’ faces, and this just makes me more determined to double-check any negative feelings that I have for people of color when they occur- are they bias, prejudice and racist.

8

I have taken the test several times and got “no preference” every time. I’ve tried several other topics on their site and had the same result.

To those who are crying bullshit, note the word “implicit” in the test. Read around the site. Note that it is a long-running Harvard study with lots of peer-reviewed publications. Self-knowledge is a tricky thing. It’s much harder if you aren’t prepared to look into it.

I work hard at doubting myself. Partly it’s my job - I have to understand the arguments of people I disagree with and find ways to confront them in their own terms. Partly it’s having had the experience of re-reading articles that I dismissed as rubbish years ago and finding that I had not really read them because I hadn’t been open to them.

You can be wrong about yourself. Optical illusions should teach you that what you see is not always what’s real and that your perceptions are influenced by things that you are not consciously aware of.

9

[QUOTE=hawthorne]
Self-knowledge is a tricky thing. It’s much harder if you aren’t prepared to look into it.
[/QUOTE]

That’s crap, like saying someone who keeps losing his umbrella has a subconscious masochistic streak and is seeking punishment i.e. getting rained on. But for the left/right switch, someone taking the test would fairly quickly learn how to make snap correct assessments, but because of that switch, errors occur which can then be pseudo-scientifically inflated into a diagnosis of bias. It’s the speed factor that screws it up because not everyone is a perfect typist.

Of course, now I’m inclined to take the test again and count off exactly five seconds between answers, which I’ll make sure are all correct, just to see the results.

10

Hawthorne, did you take the old person one? I got totally confused in that one.

11

Bryan, I don’t think you get it.

Consider sorting a deck of cards into two piles. You do this in two ways:

  1. One pile hearts and diamonds, one pile spades and clubs.

  2. One pile spades and diamonds, one pile hearts and clubs.

If you try, you will find that you can do 1 faster, because they are closer related. Since this will work, the implicit test works in principle. There might be some problems with the race test, but it’s not “bullshit”.

12

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
That’s crap, like saying someone who keeps losing his umbrella has a subconscious masochistic streak and is seeking punishment i.e. getting rained on. But for the left/right switch, someone taking the test would fairly quickly learn how to make snap correct assessments, but because of that switch, errors occur which can then be pseudo-scientifically inflated into a diagnosis of bias. It’s the speed factor that screws it up because not everyone is a perfect typist.

Of course, now I’m inclined to take the test again and count off exactly five seconds between answers, which I’ll make sure are all correct, just to see the results.
[/QUOTE]

You obviously havn’t read the protocols which explain the left/right bias elimination.

If you do wait a long time you are avoiding the very thing that the test is meant to measure and the test will be returned as invalid.

Do you have any experience interpreting scientific papers?

If you want to try something more neutral, but using the same underlying mechanism, try the Stroop test and try to explain that one away.

Stroop test:

http://www.snre.umich.edu/eplab/demos/st0/stroopdesc.html

13

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
Bryan, I don’t think you get it.

Consider sorting a deck of cards into two piles. You do this in two ways:

  1. One pile hearts and diamonds, one pile spades and clubs.

  2. One pile spades and diamonds, one pile hearts and clubs.

If you try, you will find that you can do 1 faster, because they are closer related.
[/quote]

This is where the test flaw lies. It isn’t that the terms are “related”, it’s that they swap midway through the tests. Had your example been “Put spades and hearts on the left, clubs and diamonds on the right” (an “unrelated” pairing), within ten cards or so (once the pattern is learned), the sorting becomes rapid and accurate. Rearranging it to “Hearts and diamonds on the left, spades and clubs on the right” naturally creates errors not because the person views spades and clubs as unrelated, but because he got into the habit of putting spades on the left and will tend to keep doing so until the new pattern is learned, especially since the test stresses at all times that speed is a factor.

When I ran the test, I found myself reciting the relevant adjective as soon as I recognized what was being presented, saying “white, good, black, good, white, bad, white, bad, black, bad, white, good, etc.” and even though I knew how to properly sort, trying to go quickly meant I was prone to finger-twitch mistakes, especially after the categories were switched around. Is that indicative of some deep psychological significance? If that’s the (very generous) standard one wants to apply, then the concept is reduced to meaninglessness.

I don’t know what the confidence interval for a test like this is, given the high chance for false positives (a nonbigot who is just a bad typist) and false negatives (a Klansman who happens to be a very good typist) and I’m disinclined to trust it.

14

A test like this is a lousy indicator of racist attitudes that mean anything in a real-life setting. However, worrying and obsessing about how you score is probably a solid indicator of bleeding-heart liberalness.

Some of your best friends, no doubt. :smiley:

15

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
This is where the test flaw lies. It isn’t that the terms are “related”, it’s that they swap midway through the tests. Had your example been “Put spades and hearts on the left, clubs and diamonds on the right” (an “unrelated” pairing), within ten cards or so (once the pattern is learned), the sorting becomes rapid and accurate. Rearranging it to “Hearts and diamonds on the left, spades and clubs on the right” naturally creates errors not because the person views spades and clubs as unrelated, but because he got into the habit of putting spades on the left and will tend to keep doing so until the new pattern is learned, especially since the test stresses at all times that speed is a factor.

When I ran the test, I found myself reciting the relevant adjective as soon as I recognized what was being presented, saying “white, good, black, good, white, bad, white, bad, black, bad, white, good, etc.” and even though I knew how to properly sort, trying to go quickly meant I was prone to finger-twitch mistakes, especially after the categories were switched around. Is that indicative of some deep psychological significance? If that’s the (very generous) standard one wants to apply, then the concept is reduced to meaninglessness.

I don’t know what the confidence interval for a test like this is, given the high chance for false positives (a nonbigot who is just a bad typist) and false negatives (a Klansman who happens to be a very good typist) and I’m disinclined to trust it.
[/QUOTE]

Perhaps this will help:

Where can I find technical discussion of implicit social cognition and the IAT?

Answer: Papers from the laboratories of the principal investigators are available at http://projectimplicit.net/ and at the researcher’s personal pages. For starters, an overview of the topic of ‘implicit social cognition’ is available in an article by Greenwald & Banaji in Psychological Review, (1995), and in a second paper also appearing in Psychological Review (2002). The first publication of the IAT was in an article by Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, (1998). A more recent paper by Nosek, Greenwald, & Banaji (in press) summarizes what is known about the reliability and validity of the IAT. Anthony Greenwald’s website also has information on the validity of the IAT (Dr. Anthony Greenwald/IAT Materials. To learn about how to make an IAT and criticisms of the IAT see Lane et al. (in press)

Young people show an automatic preference for Young. Do older people

16

[QUOTE=Pjen]
If you want to try something more neutral, but using the same underlying mechanism, try the Stroop test and try to explain that one away.
[/quote]

Done. Eight seconds for parts one and two, nine seconds for part 3.

The problem with the Stroop (at least at this simple level) is that it really only works the first time. Once you’re aware of the pitfalls, it only takes a minor adjustment to adapt. In any case, extrapolating this to a racial test is problematic, especially since the test in question presents all photographs in shades of grey. And again, if the Stroop consistently showed “red” words, with the “red” choice being on the left, errors are understandable if the “red” choice gets shifted to the right, not because the person being tested is losing the ability to identify red words, but because he got in the habit of clicking left.

This is kind of like saying DVORAK keyboards cause illiteracy, when it’s actually just the time it takes to adjust one’s typing from the QWERTY standard.

17

[QUOTE=Pjen]
Perhaps this will help:

[/QUOTE]

Sure, because paragraph three starts with “Answer: You may be giving the test more credit than it deserves!”
:smiley:

18

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Done. Eight seconds for parts one and two, nine seconds for part 3.

The problem with the Stroop (at least at this simple level) is that it really only works the first time. Once you’re aware of the pitfalls, it only takes a minor adjustment to adapt. In any case, extrapolating this to a racial test is problematic, especially since the test in question presents all photographs in shades of grey. And again, if the Stroop consistently showed “red” words, with the “red” choice being on the left, errors are understandable if the “red” choice gets shifted to the right, not because the person being tested is losing the ability to identify red words, but because he got in the habit of clicking left.

This is kind of like saying DVORAK keyboards cause illiteracy, when it’s actually just the time it takes to adjust one’s typing from the QWERTY standard.
[/QUOTE]

You really do have trouble interpreting Psychology Research, don’t you?

The Stroop test is incredibly well established and shows how information transfer can be affected by contrary conflicting information. The extra effort required to answer correctly when confromted with a different name and color shows that there is a processing delay caused by the uncertainty.

The IAT shows that unconscious ideas of good/bad and black/white might (repeat might) be explained by a similar processing delay. That such a processing delay exists over literally millions of tests is unassailble evidence that there is some effect. This team asserts that such a finding suggests that it relates to a preconscious set of assumptions about good/bad and black/white. If it is not incipient racism to blame, then some other mechanism would need to be proposed as, for the moment, that is the most likely explanation put forward.

It is neither good argument nor good science to contine to exception bar and find fault repeatedly. This research has been published in peer reviewed journals, and does not appear from some junior college in the mid-west- its from a little known university called HARVARD!

19

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Sure, because paragraph three starts with “Answer: You may be giving the test more credit than it deserves!”
:smiley:
[/QUOTE]

and goes on to say:

We encourage repeating any test for which the outcome surprises you. If the outcome repeats, the result is definitely more trustworthy than is the first result alone. If the outcome varies, it is best to average the different results. However, if the outcome varies widely from one taking to another (something that is unusual) we suggest that you just regard the set of results as ‘inconclusive’. Besides normal variation in the reliability of assessment, the IAT is also known to be malleable based on differences in the social setting and recent experience. These factors will influence the consistency of measurement across occasions. For more information about reliability see Nosek, Greenwald, & Banaji, in press. For more information about malleability of implicit attitudes and stereotypes see Blair, 2001.

20

I did this test a while ago when someone else linked to it, and I had a strong preference for African-American. I tried it a couple of times and always got the same result.