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The Implicit Association Test (IAT)

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IAT Test The Implicit Association Test (IAT) I chose to take was the Race IAT test. It tests the users ability to associate with images of European Americans (white) and African Americans (black) as well as words that correspond to good and bad. The normative results are that most Americans tend to have some form of an automatic association with European Americans. My results were typical. I felt a little embarrassed at first in reaction to seeing the results of a slight automatic preference to European Americans. I even took the test again to see if I would be better prepared for it and the result remained the same. Firstly, I went into this test a little bit skeptical. I felt that no matter how well I did it was going to show that I had an unconscious bias towards white Americans and viewed them as good over the others. The test starts out with black on one side and whites on the other. It then adds words of bad on the left side and words that are good on the right side. Then associates black with bad and white with good. I wonder how the results may differ if the test starts out with White with bad and Blacks with good. …show more content…

I argue that it has more to with how I view myself and how I relate to the images and words versus how I felt about other images and words. In my opinion it has more to do with relationship between myself and what was in front of me rather than preferences. I can connect quicker with words that I feel represent me and can associate those words quickly of images I feel I can relate to. I feel after seeing results like this or even writing a reaction paper about it, I find myself trying to prove that I am not a racist and get a little defensive. In contrast to the video, where some individual’s who were African American, were proud to be preferential to African

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