The IAT

The Implicit Associates Test (IAT) was first developed and tested by Greenwald and others in 1998.  The IAT is the most well-known method of measuring people’s unconscious beliefs and preferences (Greenwald et al., 1998). 

The IAT measures the extent to which an individual associates two concepts together. For example it measures implicit racism (racism that operates unconsciously and unintentionally) toward African American, it does this for example by comparing how quickly or slowly participants associates African American cues (such as black face) with negative and positive concepts compared to how quickly or slowly the participants make the same kinds of associations with European American cues (Greenwald et al., 1998).

The IAT has sparked an explosion of new research in the past decade about racism and other forms of discrimination and prejudice (Smith & Nosek, 2010). 

Religion and Gender-Career IATs

I took the Religion IAT and later took the Gender-Career IAT.

Religion (Religious) IAT

This IAT showed that out of the four religions; Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, I have a more positive attitude/view toward Judaism, a more negative attitude/view toward Christianity and Hinduism, and then a more negative view toward Islam. 

Though I was not aware of my more positive attitude toward Judaism, I’m not surprise. I grew up in in a town that when I was young thought was a normal town, but looking at it now I see it as being a somewhat prominently Jewish neighborhood. I grew up being exposed to Judaism, learning about it, associating it with more individual people, rather than a group of people. I also think it helped that I learned about Judaism and Jewish people, but it was never forced upon me.

I’m not surprised by the more negative attitude toward Christianity, though I did grow up around Christianity as well, much like I did with Judaism. The difference is though is that I went to an all-girls private Catholic high school, despite not being Catholic or Christian. I had to learn about Christianity (Catholicism) in a more forceful way I think, so I’m not surprised that I have a slight more unconscious negative view towards Christianity, because I do have at times a slightly more conscious negative view toward Christianity. I try to consciously work through it, as after going to college I try to think less negatively about the Catholic religion and Christianity in general. 

I was surprised by that my view/attitude toward Hinduism was the same as my view toward Christianity. Just because I really don’t have any conscious thoughts about Hinduism, because I’m not really exposed to it that often. I have learned about Hinduism in religion classes and through the media, but it’s not really a prominent religion in NJ or in TX, at least not from what I have seen.

I am a bit surprised and at the same time not that surprised that Islam was the religion I had the most negative view of. I think this shows the most unconscious attitude I have toward a religion, because I do try to consciously not think negatively about the Islam religion, because there is so much negativity toward it in the USA media. Consciously I know the numbers and statistics to the number of ‘terrorists’ out there and the number of Islamic people in the world, but despite that I grew up in a country where there is a lot of negative associations reinforced often, through the news, internet, TV-shows, and in general people’s opinions. 

Overall though it looked that all the religions were not really high on the scale of positive and negative scale from the IAT test. They all looked that they were in the middle. I know that I do have certain unconscious negative attitudes towards certain religions, because of the fact that I grew up in the USA in the time that I did. 

Gender-Career IAT

According to the data, I have a moderate automatic association of male with career and female with family compared to female with career and male with family. 

I’m not that surprised by this, as I think I do automatically see woman being with family and men being with a career. I suppose I’m a little bit surprised thought that it’s not less, because I did grow up in an household where both my parents had an active career, and I was prominently raised by hired help (female help though), so actually looking at that fact I suppose I’m not that surprise. 

Even though my mom actively instilled into me having a career was important and that since I live in a time where females can have a career, I definitely should have one. At the same time I was taken care of by female nannies and never once did my parents even consider a male nanny. 

Personal Example: In fact one time I did meet a guy who was a professional male nanny and I thought that was weird. I even have to admit I thought it was more weird when I discovered that he was straight, and though I’m not proud of these thoughts, I was thinking ‘weirdo’, ‘pedophile’, ‘creep’, and ‘he probably is gay’. The idea of a straight male doing something so female associated (taking care of children), despite it being a job was so weird to me, to my family and my friends. Despite the fact that later we all said it was perfectly acceptable for a straight male to be a nanny, though our first reactions showed the exact opposite attitude. 

I think my results from this IAT, not only show some of my conscious thoughts that I have, but also unconscious. These results are a product of how I grew up and especially what I have been shown outside of my family with TV-shows, book, and the news. 

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References

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

Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. F. (2011). The social self: Mechanisms of self-enhancement. Social Psychology, 8, 81-83.

Smith, C.T., & Nosek, B. A. (2010). Implicit Association Test. IN I B Weiner & W.E. Craighead (Eds.), Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley