Does your unconscious mind harbor prejudices that differ from your conscious
beliefs regarding race, gender or sexuality? The Implied Association Test (IAT),
from Project Implicit, attempts to reveal whether there is a divergence between
one’s “explicit” attitude or belief on a subject, and one’s “implicit” or unconscious
beliefs, stereotypes, biases or preferences on the subject.
An introduction to the site states: “It is well known that people don’t always
‘speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’.
Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology. This web
site presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences
much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods.”
There are demonstration IAT’s for topics ranging from Disability, Skin-tone,Gender-
Science, Religion, Weapons, Gender-Career, Race (Black-White, Asian American,
Native American), Sexuality (Straight-Gay), Arab-Muslim, Body Weight, Presidential
Popularityy, and Age (Young-Old), Each demo test takes about ten minutes to
complete.
Project Implicit is jointly sponsored by Psych Departments at Harvard,
Virginia and Washington Universities. The scientists behind the Project
are Mahzarin Rustum Banaji (Harvard); Brian Nosek (U.Virginia); and
Anthony Greewald (Univ. of Washington)
The heart of the Project is a large-scale study of preferences. Volunteers
“have the opportunity to assess your conscious and unconscious prefer-
ences for over 90 different topics ranging from pets to political issues,
ethnic groups to sports teams, and entertainers to styles of music,”
while assisting the Project.
“MRBanaji”
M.R. Banaji
Younger readers may have already heard of Project Implicit from their recent
college days. I discovered it today, through an email invitation from the Harvard
Alumni Club in NYC, to attend a talk on March 2nd by Prof. Banaji, entitled
“Mind Bugs: The Psychology of Ordinary Prejudice.” [If, like me, you can’t
attend, a similarly-titled talk given by Prof. Banaji at Yale Law School is available
from its Video Archive (“Mind Bugs,” March 11, 2003).] Banaji focuses “on
systems that operate in implicit or unconscious mode and their relationship to
conscious social cognition. . . [S]he asks about the social consequences of
unintended thought and feeling, and its implications for theories of individual
responsibility and social justice.”
Yes, it sounds a little woo-woo to me, too. However, it’s also fascinating. The
IATs ask you to put words or pictures into one of two categories. If it takes you
longer to match a word with the appropriate category, it is assumed that your
unconscious or implicit beliefs make your conscious mind work harder to get
the “right” answer — thus, showing an implicit preference/bias for the incorrect
category.
Before starting an IAT, you must agree that:
“I am aware of the possibility of encountering interpretations
of my IAT test performance with which I may not agree.
Knowing this, I wish to proceed.”
So far, I’ve only taken the Gender-Career IAT. Because I responded more
quickly in assigning Male names to the Career category than assigning Female
names to that category, my test performance data “suggest a moderate association
of Male with Career and Female with Family compared to Female with Career and
Male with Family.”
A lot of people, including Prof. Banaji, and test-takers at Montgomery-Blair High
School, in Bethesda, Maryland (Silver Chips Online, April 6, 2005), are unhappy
with the assessments they receive after taking IATs. An article last month in
the Washington Post Magazine ,”See No Bias: Many Americans believe they are
not prejudiced. Now a new test provides powerful evidence that a majority of us
really are” (by Shankar Vedantam, Jan. 23, 2005, p. W12), takes an extended
look at Project Implicit, the results and conclusions drawn from
Here are a few intriguing passages from the WaPo article:
“The tests were better predictors of many behaviors than people’s explicit
opinions were. They predicted preferences on matters of public policy —
even ideological affiliations. Banaji and others soon developed tests for bias
against gays, women and foreigners. The bias tests, which have now been
taken by more than 2 million people, 90 percent of them American, and used
in hundreds of research studies, have arguably revolutionized the study of
prejudice.
“In their simplicity, the tests have raised provocative questions about this
nation’s ideal of a meritocracy and the nature of America’s red state/blue state
political divide. Civil rights activists say the tests have the potential to address
some of the most corrosive problems of American society; critics, meanwhile,
have simultaneously challenged the results and warned they could usher in an
Orwellian world of thought crimes. Banaji has received death threats from supre-
macist groups; sensing that the tests can detect secrets, officials from the Central
Intelligence Agency have made discreet inquiries.
“But the tests do not measure actions. The race test, for example, does not measure
racism as much as a race bias. Banaji is the first to say people ought to be judged by
how they behave, not how they think. She tells incredulous volunteers who show biases
that it does not mean they will always act in biased ways — people can consciously
override their biases. But she also acknowledges a sad finding of the research: Although
people may wish to act in egalitarian ways, implicit biases are a powerful predictor of how
they actually behave.”
Although the tests are anonymous, volunteers are asked about their sex, race and whether they
consider themselves liberal or conservative. Here’s one of the most provocative conclusions from
Banaji and her colleagues:
“Conservatives, on average, show higher levels of bias against gays, blacks and Arabs than
liberals, says Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and a principal IAT
researcher with Greenwald and Banaji. In turn, bias against blacks and Arabs predicts policy
preferences on affirmative action and racial profiling. This suggests that implicit attitudes affect
more than snap judgments — they play a role in positions arrived at after careful consideration.
“Brian Jones, a Republican National Committee spokesman, says the findings are interesting
in an academic context but questions whether they have much relevance in the real world. “It’s
interesting to ponder how people implicitly make decisions, but ultimately we live in a world where
explicit thoughts and actions are the bottom line,” he says. Volunteers drawn to the tests were
not a random sample of Americans, Jones adds, cautioning against reading too much into the
conclusions.”
For more on this topic, see Stealthy Attitudes, from the Harvard Magazine (Summer 2002).
All and all, a lot of food for thought, debate, devil’s advocacy. Although I’ll have to decline the
invitation, I’m glad the Harvard Club of NYC pointed me to Project Implicit and the work of Prof.
Banaji and her colleagues.
All this talk of psychology put me into the mood for
a bit of poetry from Prof. George Swede:
anchored supertanker
its reflection
trembles
county graveyard
a dog burying
a bone
made for each other
the fishing pole and
the full moon
dropping stone after stone
into the lake I keep
reappearing
February 22, 2006
i don’t like your (implicit) attitude!
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the Arkansas Bar irks me
Later this evening, I will post on the topic of our implicit attitudes and
biases. First, though, I want to mention one very explicit attitude/bias
that I have: I do not respect bar associations that put the interests of the
lawyers before those of clients (see bar & guild) — especially when lawyers
are merely being asked to give clients information that is important to their
selection of counsel.
Today, my bad attitude goes out to the Arkansas Bar Association. Why?
Via Ben Cowgill, I learned that the Arkansas Bar’s House of
Delgates voted by a two-to-one margin to reject a proposed
rule requiring lawyers in active practice to certify whether
they carry professional liability insurance. As Ben reported:
The proposal had been drafted by the Bar’s Profession-
alism Task Force and had received a strong endorsement
from the Bar’s Board of Governors.
Arkansas is the first state that has rejected the concept
of mandatory reporting of professional liability insurance
since the ABA recommended a Model Court Rule on Insur-
ance Disclosure, in August of 2004.
The rejected rule is a weak form of disclosure — made to the Court
and not directly to clients. Ben lists eleven states that now require
disclosure along with annual registration statements: AZ, DE, IL,
KS, MI, NE, NV, NM, NC, VA and WV. There are also five states
requiring notification of clients: AK, NH, OH, PA and SD. In addi-
tion, as Ben notes in his comprehensive review, “Oregon is still the
only state which requires all members of the Bar to maintain profes-
sional liability insurance.” Find state-by-state details from the ABA
here.
the submission of the legal reform group HALT to the Georgia State
Bar (Nov. 4, 2004), explaining the benefits of mandatory disclosure
rules, and the need for notifying each client or potential client. HALT
gives one statistic that would surely surprise most members of the
public — and lawyers, too — the national average of lawyers who carry
professional liability insurance is 40%. It is no surprise that disclosure
rules have motivated many formerly “naked” lawyers to purchase pro-
fessional liability insurance.
p.s. Arkansas is among the 8 states that still impose a Gag Rule
on complainants in disciplinary matters. Several state supreme
courts have recently declared such rules to be unconstitutional,
including the New Jersey Court last September.
hidden in leaves
gazing at the camellia
croaking frog
hidden in shadows
a laughing mouse…
New Year’s inventory
midday’s mosquitoes
hidden behind
the Buddha of stone
Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue
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