Take an implicit bias test

In the wake of the recent hanging-out-at-Starbucks-while-black incident, you’ve probably heard the phrase “implicit bias” mentioned a few times. The idea is that implicit bias is an involuntary, subconscious emotional response toward people from various social/ethnic/racial groups that subtly influences your outward actions toward such people, and that most people have implicit biases toward or against other groups; holding implicit biases does NOT, in itself, mean you are a bad person or deserve to be fired, ostracized, or shunned.

There seems to be a lot of emphasis lately on implicit bias training, with the hope that if you are aware of your own biases, you may be able to compensate in your daily life to offset them. In the case of the Starbucks incident, the manager who called the cops probably wasn’t an overtly hostile KKK racist thinking “ima get these darkies out of my coffee shop”; far more likely that an implicit bias led him to feel more uncomfortable with a couple of black non-customers hanging around than white non-customers, and his outward response toward them was different because of that. If the manager had been aware of his own biases, maybe he would have stayed his hand and given these black gentlemen the same treatment he gave other folks.

Maybe you’re still thinking to yourself “the manager is a racist asshole, 'nuff said.” You believe in equal rights for all, maybe you’ve even taken the time to participate in a protest or two. But you might still be surprised at your own implicit biases. Want to find out? Now’s your chance:

Harvard University: Project Implicit

Each test takes about ten minutes and is divided into parts. Suppose you’re taking the test for implicit bias against black people. For one part of the test, you respond to the display of positive words/images (“happy,” “achievement,” “safe,” etc.) OR black people/terms by tapping the “E” key with your left hand, and you respond to the display of negative words/images (“sad,” “failure,” “dangerous,” etc.) OR non-black people/terms by tapping the “I” key with your right hand. The speed of your reponses is recorded. For other parts of the test, you change which hand responds to positive/negative and black/non-black, so they can compensate for your left/right hand biases.

If you hold an implicit bias against black people, you will have have difficulty putting black/positive concepts in the same category. This will manifest as slower response times when black people/terms and positive image/terms are assigned to the same hand than when they are assigned to different hands. Note that it’s also possible to have an implicit bias toward black people (or other groups).

There’s a bit of variation in the results, but if you take any given test a couple of times, you’ll get some idea of where you stand. And yes, based on my test results, it appears I’ve got my own biases. Most interestingly, despite being married to a Japanese woman, the test indicates that I have a slight implicit bias against Asians. Go figure. :confused:

I have done this kind of test in the past. AFAIK there is no evidence that it correlates to anything in the real world.

Regards,
Shodan

I had to Google “Black while hanging out at SB”. I’m of the opinion: Buy something, or GTFO!

But, having read the article, it seems fairly common that SB allows folks to hang out in their stores and use their WiFi. So if these two guys were being singled out, that’s not cool.

As far as implicit bias goes. Yes it’s a thing. I’ve watched videos that show even babies have implicit bias. I think it’s important to realize this about ourselves, and be aware of it when dealing with others. Not sure there’s an actual “fix” for implicit bias though.

I took this test about a year ago. I am implicitly biased in favor of black faces.

This test was kind of weird (the skin tone preference one) because it used the same faces and words for all 4 tests. But the first two tests were dark/bad and the next two were dark/good. So I had a lot of “practice” choosing the right responses to each word and face by the time I got to the 3rd and 4th test. I also learned to go slower by the 3rd and 4th test so as not to make a mistake. I think the slowness is what gave me “a moderate automatic preference for Dark Skinned People over Light Skinned People.”

Or maybe I just like dark skinned people a lot. My mom and my brother have darker skin than me and I’ve always been jealous.

Very Mild Spoilers:

After the main test there was a place to indicate skepticism toward the results – I chose “very skeptical.”

My reasoning (which the test-givers may have accounted for) is that I prefer my right hand over my left hand. So, as the battery of tests continued I developed the strategy of immediately clicking a choice if it was supposed to be selected with the right hand.

Clicking a choice with my left hand was a slower, two-step process. 1. “That’s not a right-hand choice.” 2. “Do the other thing instead.”

My results showed a moderate favoritism toward the choices that were assigned to my right hand.

There were no questions about whether I was left handed or right handed.

I was surprised to get the result: Your data suggest no automatic preference between Black people and White people.

Why surprised? I was born in 1954 in Baltimore in a pure white, blue-collar neighborhood where the N-word was the standard word used to refer to black people in most contexts. My parents avoided the word, but used other disparaging words in its place. The version of eeny meeny miney moe used by all children I knew involved the N-word. I grew up steeped in racism toward black people.

I think of myself as a color-blind bleeding heart liberal, but assumed that my background would have left easily-detectable biases. This result makes me feel pretty good, but still a little skeptical.

Wasn’t there a version of a test like this in the past, where the test designers intentionally tried to trip up people’s fingers by saying* “If black = good, then click with right finger, right finger, right finger,” *and suddenly switching things around after half an hour, “Now, if black = bad, click with right finger, right finger - Oops, your muscle memory still said right finger, this means you think black people are bad!”?

What were the results of your test, if I might ask?

I took a similar type of test a couple of years ago. I grew up poor, white and in the midst of the Northern Annex of The South(North Idaho). The test said I was slightly biased…against whites, the right and males. I did not expect that result, but perhaps I over-rebelled against my upbringing.

Huh. Who knew?

I couldn’t finish the test. I’m legally blind in one eye and visually impaired in the other. It takes me longer to figure out what I’m seeing, and I recognized my very slow response time would throw off my results.

Is all bias visual?

I’m exhausted (9 hours of sleep over the last 3 days/nights) so my response time was slow and I was also bothered by how obviously manipulative the test was, and I am seriously skeptical about the results.

IMO, tho, almost every single “personality” test I’ve ever seen has been ludicrously obvious and easily manipulated if you want to see a particular result.

Maybe there are good ways to test for implicit bias. Too bad no one seems to have found them yet.

I’m pretty sure I’ve noticed implicit bias in myself, where after something happened I thought “whoa, what made me act that way?” So my intuitive guess says it exists and I have it. Beyond that, I don’t know.

Learning is a big mess of associating one idea with another idea with another with another, in a big interconnected web of ideas and associations. Things become associated in our minds for good reasons; things also become just as strongly associated for bad reasons, or irrelevant ones.

Love it. The first part of the test assesses your ability to remember which button to push. The second part asks for demographics which pigeonhole you regarding your race, gender, racial preferences, and socioeconomic status…then it says you are implicitly biased against the ‘other.’ I am surprised.

What they failed to grasp is I am implicitly biased against everyone, but especially anyone who considers themselves ‘other’ than me.