Hit me with your best IAT

Taking tests such as the IAT (Implicit Association Test) always make me a little nervous. The IAT, which was developed by Anthony Greenwald and colleagues in 1998, is a test which determines your unconscious stereotypes to a specific group such as age, race, or weight by testing how fast your reflex selections are when separating words or images into groups quickly. In other words, the test recognizes how you relate to concepts to one another. I took two IAT’s: the weight IAT and the gender-science IAT. I will first begin discussing my results on the weight IAT. I chose this particular IAT because I knew that it was relatable to my self schema for weight, a concept developed by Markus and colleagues in 1987. Although I am aware that I do process relevant information in my everyday life that has to do with weight, I never would have thought this would make me bias towards people other than myself. My results stated that I was in the top range, and that I have a strong and involuntary preference for thin people over fat people. As surprised and as disappointed I was to see this result, I noticed that the number of people who ranked the same as me was the second highest group at 25% of participants. This statistic shocked me as well. It is almost terrifying to know that 25% of a given population may prefer a thin person over a heavier person, without even taking their personality into account. I wouldn’t say the IAT test was showing my true beliefs on this, because I believe I am a very open and welcoming person, and I don’t believe I would ever choose to be friends with someone due to their weight, but then again, I have never been presented with that choice either. The weight IAT was a particularly great experience and outcome for me, because although the outcome was not positive, the results make me want to shift my weight schemas towards a more positive light, so that I do not rationally judge others for their physical appearance. I think to do this, I am going to have to work on my judgment of myself a lot as well.

The second IAT I took was on gender-science, and I was sure my influences from Southwestern University’s liberal ways would place me towards women’s equality or even favoritism towards science, but my results differed from expected. I actually had little or no association of men and women towards liberal arts (history, English, philosophy) or science (biology, math, astronomy, etc.) I am actually quite happy with the results, because I interpret them to mean that I have no bias towards what subjects men or women study, as long as they are happy and successful within them. 18% of others who took this IAT scored the same as me, which shows that not many others feel the same as I do. I noticed a large portion leaned towards men pursuing work in science and women in liberal arts, which according to stereotypes is not surprising. I am a psychology/animal behavior major, so being a part of the science community has made me realize how many brilliant females we have at our school in this field. We not only have a large portion of female science based majors, but I believe we have a large portion of female science oriented teachers as well.  Personally, I do not think that either men or women are better at science of liberal arts, I just believe that whichever career path we pursue is influenced by our experiences and culture during youth, and that it follows us through adulthood. Even though my results did not show much prejudice, other results did, and I hope programs such as Southwestern continue to break gender stereotypes such as this. The IAT tests were very eye-opening, and I will be sure to recommend them to others around me. Without the proper understanding of stereotypes, and the backlash they can cause, they will continue to negatively impact society. Test such as the IAT could assist in changing this.

Until next blog,

Your social psychista

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Greenwald A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.

Markus, H., Hamill, R., & Sentis, K.P. (1987). Thinking fat: Self-schemas for body weight and the processing of weight-relevant information. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 17, 50-71.