[Photography by Rod Long – Unsplash Image]
Our assignment was to take Harvard’s Implicit Association Test (IAT). The series of tests was to see if you have certain associations or stereotypes. Each of the tests came with a word associated to the “E” key or the “I” key. Then you would go through seven different phases of the test. Through the middle of the test the associations would flop between the two categories.
I started with the Age IAT, my results were:
“Your responses suggested a moderate automatic preference for Young people over Old people.”
When I was taking the test it was fine in the beginning when it was going through photos. I had particularly hard time at first because I didn’t really get the hang of it and took too slow. Eventually going through the other tests I was a little quicker. But I also found that being quick caused more mistakes in the end after the two category associations had swapped. It was hard to remember that the categories had moved so sometimes I would default to the original answers. I also just automatically started associating the words with the pictures, which is where I think that’s where it changes the answers.
The results I had expected was more neutral than a “moderate automatic preference for Young people” I was shocked to find out that I had that kind of preference because I usually don’t really discriminate between the two groups. I was pretty confident that I wouldn’t prefer one group over the other but it also could have been because after the flip I was going through the tests much quicker.
I think the most important experience I can take away from taking the IAT is to be more aware of these conditions. I can say I don’t have any personal biases and stereotypes but everyone in some kind of way still have them. Being aware of these could make you more cautious in the future though. Especially in a day and age where we are seeing more awareness and progression in trying to end stereotyping. It’s great to know that you can try to be more knowledgeable in these topics. To conclude about my experience, it is pretty easy to see how we might just stereotype one category over the other. The test had grouped positive words with younger people and negative people with older people. But now I am more educated on myself and I can better myself for the future