The dark side of snap judgments: prejudice
The Implicit Association Test measures how easy it is for us to associate concepts to one another and provides measurements for our automatic preferences. The results may be shocking as they may reveal the effect of strong cultural biases that the subject is either unaware of or consciously opposed to.
I think of myself as a pretty liberal guy. I believe in egalitarianism and I am a firm proponent of human and civil rights without regard to skin color. I realize that I probably have some prejudices, but I hope that they are not so pronounced as to be noticable.
The Race IAT bowled me over. I agree with the logic of the test and I don’t believe that it measures my beliefs, but I think it probably does a good job of measuring unconsidered assumptions. And it basically called me a bigot. I could tell as I took the test how difficult it was to associate «happy», «safe» or «laughter» with the face of an African American.
This is very disturbing. Go try it yourself and let me know what you think.