How can you find a bias you don鈥檛 consciously know you have? And can such a bias really affect your behavior?
The Implicit Association Test, developed more than a decade ago by University of Washington social psychologist Anthony Greenwald, uses a person鈥檚 reaction times to measure how closely two concepts are linked in the person鈥檚 mind. A participant quickly matches pairs of pictures or words鈥攆or example, the words 鈥渟cientist鈥� and 鈥渘urse鈥� with male and female names, or 鈥渉igh-achieving鈥� with black and white faces. Over thousands of trials, teams of researchers have found people take longer to match items that run counter to their own mental bias.
A recent meta-analysis of more than 100 studies found the Implicit Association Test can predict interracial discriminatory behavior better than personal reports of conscious racist beliefs.
Interested in finding out how you would score on an Implicit Association Test? Try this short online test adapted for Education Week readers by Jordan Axt, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Virginia鈥檚 Implicit Social Cognition Laboratory. If you agree to participate, your confidential answers will also serve as data for Project Implicit, an ongoing, international research project aimed at gauging levels of racial bias.
Related: 69传媒 Deemed 鈥楧iscriminatory鈥� Struggle to Erase Disparities
Intro text by: Sarah D. Sparks | Test text by: Jordan Axt
A version of this article appeared in the September 16, 2015 edition of Education Week