Implicit Attitudes PDF

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Assignment from Professor Jamie Gorman's class, regarding how implicit attitudes work and taking the Implicit Association Test....

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Social Psychology Implicit Attitudes Assignment For this assignment, you will complete the IAT (Implicit Associations Test). The IAT is designed to assess participants’ implicit associations. In other words, it is designed to assess associations that participants may not be aware of themselves.

Take a moment to think about your results on the IAT task. Answer the following questions using complete sentences. 1. What are implicit attitudes? In other words, what is the conceptual definition of the IAT score? Implicit attitudes are the beliefs which people are unaware that they may have or that individuals would be unlikely to report on their own because they may not be honest about reporting or even willing. For example, the IAT that I took was measuring my implicit preference of Ronald Reagan over Donald Trump, or vice versa. The IAT makes it possible to get a (mostly) honest report based on the speed with which an individual answers certain questions.

2. What does the IAT objectively measure? In other words, what is the operational definition of the IAT score? (Note: This question requires you to identify the objective measurement that is attained through the IAT. The question asks what is being measured, not what does the measure represent. Use the information from the Education section of the website for help.) The IAT objectively measures the strength of associations between two concepts, based on the notion that an individual will respond more quickly when they associate an evaluation with the item that shares the same response key. To put it more simply, if I did have a preference for Ronald Reagan over Donald Trump, I would be more likely to respond quickly when the “e” key was associated with positive terms (“lovely” and “good”) as well as with photos of Ronald Reagan. Depending on how quickly and how often I associated “good” terms with Ronald Reagan, the strength of my preference would increase.

3. What would have to be observed from one’s performance on the IAT to determine that a person has an implicit bias in favor or against a certain group? The individual would have to respond faster when the concept and the evaluation in question were depicted by the same response key if they had an implicit bias in favor or against a certain group. If a person had an implicit bias in favor of gay people over straight people, their performance on the IAT would most likely be that they responded faster when, for instance, Gay People + Good were paired

together, as well as Straight People + Bad. This doesn’t necessarily mean that this individual is prejudiced against straight people, but it does give some indication into a certain aspect of their attitudes.

4. What would have to be observed from one’s performance on the IAT to determine that a person has no implicit bias? In order for one’s performance on the IAT to determine that they have no implicit bias, they would have to respond essentially the same no matter if the “good” terms shared a response key with concept A, or vice versa, and the same for the “bad” terms. This was the case with my results. I did not respond more quickly whether Donald Trump and “bad” evaluations shared a response key, or if Ronald Reagan and “bad” evaluations shared a response key (and the same for “good” terms). 5. What were the results of the IAT that you completed? Did it indicate you had any implicit biases (a.k.a., automatic preferences)? If so, please describe. I did not have any automatic preference for Ronald Reagan over Donald Trump based on the results of the IAT that I completed. I did not respond more quickly for either association, so I likely do not have any implicit biases when it comes to comparing these two presidents.

6. How do your results compare to the results of others who have taken this IAT? The majority of people who took this IAT responded with a preference for other presidents over Donald Trump. Only 3% of participants had a strong automatic preference for Trump compared to other presidents, and 20% of participants had the same results as I did (little to no preference), while 19% had a strong automatic preference for other presidents compared to Trump.

7. According to the textbook and lecture, what factors did Laurie Rudman (2004) identify as particularly important contributors to the formation of implicit attitudes versus explicit attitudes? Laurie Rudman explained that one reason individuals develop implicit attitudes is due to their past experiences, which may be forgotten or unrecognized. She states that explicit attitudes, on the other hand, are more likely to reflect current and more memorable occurrences. She also explains that we may be more likely to develop implicit attitudes when we are exposed to affective experiences, or those that are more influenced by emotions. Another contributor to the formation of implicit attitudes according to Rudman is cultural biases; individuals may be likely to show an implicit preference towards responses that are similar to them because of in-group biases. Rudman also explains that cognitive consistency, similar to in-group biases, plays a role in the development of implicit attitudes. For example, because I am artistic and also a woman, I may be more likely to associate “female” with “art,” even if those two concepts are not always connected.

8. In your opinion, how can implicit attitudes be changed? I think that harmful or unwanted implicit attitudes can be changed with education and openmindedness. The Harvard IAT website states that there is no evidence that implicit attitudes can be changed or eliminated, and that even if they can, there are no guarantees that one’s behavior will subsequently change regardless. However, the website does state that one can attempt to “blind” themselves from certain implicit biases, or otherwise “compensate” for the preference. I agree that these are probably helpful strategies--make decisions without taking the individual’s age/race/gender into account, or be kinder towards gay people if you have an implicit preference towards straight people--and even if they don’t work to change implicit attitudes, I think they are good habits to practice to be more accepting. The “compensation” strategy can be harmful if it is taken too far, so I think it is more beneficial to just keep a person’s gender, race, age, etc. hidden or at least not to let it be a factor in one’s decisions. 9. In your opinion, do you think it is important to try to change implicit attitudes? Why or why not? While I don’t think it’s important or necessary to try and change implicit attitudes, I think it is important to recognize any biases a person may have and educate themselves so that they do not behave negatively towards certain groups because of that bias. I think it’s also important to ensure that these biases do not become real prejudices. I believe this because I’m not sure if it is actually possible to change or eliminate an implicit attitude, so I think it is best to do what we are definitely capable of doing—educating ourselves and accepting people regardless of their identity. The IAT website repeatedly emphasizes that implicit attitudes can play a large role in behavior, so it is important that, upon recognizing an implicit attitude, one ensures that they do not act on it. Someone who has an implicit preference for gay people over straight people should not give gay people preferential treatment, but they should at least acknowledge this preference and, as stated previously, consider blinding themselves to a person’s identity if possible or simply not letting it affect their actions towards them.

Bonus: Read http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-tool-isnt-up-to-thejob.html and list two major criticism of the IAT and implicit attitudes research that were identified in the article. This article criticizes the IAT and implicit attitudes research mainly because the test is unreliable and not actually indicative of real-world behaviors. It is also emphasized that the test was released and the website was published shortly after, which helped it gain a lot of popularity before it was actually proven to be valid. Another criticism of the test was that it, in some ways, allows people to justify their own racism and other prejudices because it appears that most people are, deep down, also prejudiced and racist. This

misconception also leads people to believe that this issue can be fixed if we only change our attitudes— another false idea that is not backed up by scientific research....