A Reflection on Taking an Implicit Association Test

I took the Implicit Association Test twice and it was fun, especially when it got to the categorization part. It felt more like a mind game and it was quite entertaining because there are some things I already associated together on my mind which I did not even realize until I took the test. My result came out as “strong automatic preference for Straight people over Gay people”. I honestly do not see myself as someone who would discriminate, but this test revealed my biases which I am happy about because I will be able to work on them.

The second result revealed that I have “moderate automatic preference in associating men to career and women to family”. I will blame this on the orientation I have from my country. My society and culture favors men more in Nigeria, and they also believe it is a man’s world which means no matter how educated a woman is, she will still end up in a man’s kitchen. I’m actually surprise I still have that mentality because I have been in the United States for some time now, and I expect my orientation to have changed in that aspect. This means I see men as superior being over women, as we have been made to believe from childhood. I will definitely like to work on this, it is extremely important I do so because I would not want it to affect my self-esteem or end up teaching my daughters to think less of themselves.

According to Julia T. Wood, “Every culture has values, norms, and people learn their culture’s values in different ways. In some culture, children see adult women deferring to adult men. In western culture, men and women operate as equals as they have become a single unit. Lastly, we learn our culture’s values through the media”. Our cultures are factors that play major roles in shaping our mind sets, it will be good if other races’ cultural values are portrayed well on the media in order to eradicate the implicit biases and prejudice.

I enjoyed listening to the Invisibilia podcast, from Karen with the alien hand to the little girl Kelly. The part that really piqued my interest was when Jack, a professor from Yale University conducted a research by staging a make-believe kind of accident. A large part of those who said they were not racist behaved in a racist way. It is obvious questionnaires can no longer how we behave, until we find ourselves in a real world scenario, we will then be able to see the part of us that we are not aware of, which we may also find embarrassing.

However, I am still skeptical about the result of my Implicit Association Tests as a result of the research on the staged accident. Thus, I will not use it as a yard stick or basis of making my decisions until I find myself in such situation or in a real life scenario.