Thursday, May 2, 2013
For Class on 5/8: Internalizing Social Constructions about Race and Ethnicity
This week's blog will take a slightly different look at how we have internalized constructions and values associated with different groups. I would like you to take at least one Implicit Assessment Test (IAT) which will serve as a tool as to how we have or have not internalized socially constructed values about race and ethnicity.
The IAT tests have been designed by Project Implicit which, according to the project website, "represents a collaborative research effort between researchers at Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and University of Washington. While the particular purposes of each study vary considerably, most studies available at Project Implicit examine thoughts and feelings that exist either outside of conscious awareness or outside of conscious control. The primary goals of Project Implicit are to provide a safe, secure, and well-designed virtual environment to investigate psychological issues and, at the same time, provide visitors and participants with an experience that is both educational and engaging."
You can find the tests by clicking on "I Wish to Proceed" at the bottom of this screen after reading the disclaimer. On the next screen I would like you to select the Skin Tone IAT which should take no more than 15 minutes to complete. Afterward, if you would like feel free to take other IAT tests including a Race (Black-white) IAT, Native (Native-White American) IAT, Asian (Asian-European American IAT), and Arab-Muslim (Arab Muslim - Other) IAT.
I would like you to comment on your experience taking the test and your results. I want to be clear: this is not a test suggesting that you are or are not racist. It is designed to indicate internalized preferences regarding issues that are both sensitive and influenced greatly by social, cultural, historical, and institutional influences.
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After completing the IAT Skin Tone test I felt a little weird. I personally like light skinned girls more than dark skinned. I wouldn't call it racist; I think it’s just a preference. Being African-American I can personally attest to groups being held down in this country. I thought it was interesting how certain words were attached to different faces. I thought about how people put labels on different groups that are not true. I thought about how most of the black neighborhoods are poor and have bad schools; and most of the white neighborhoods are wealthy, have better schools and more businesses. I think everybody in this country should have the same opportunities to attain success. Recently I saw the movie 42 and it showed how when individuals are thought of as inferior to a certain group; it can be very difficult to live your life. Society would be much better off if everyone thought of each other as equal.
ReplyDeleteWow this test made me feel kind of crappy. lol
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I am not making excuses for my results since they are what they are. I had a preference towards light skinned people (which is not uncommon I assume). I know personally I do not feel as if light skinned people are of greater worth than dark skinned people but my results show I favor lighter skin tones. I feel as though the test is slightly biased in that I had already made a connection with "light" being "good" and "dark" being "bad".
Also our society automatically associates light with good (such as angels glowing, purity, etc...) and dark being bad (the devil, plague, etc...). Personally these attributes never were connected to actual people, but perhaps it unconsciously got in lol.
I did feel weird afterwards because I like to think I dont associate skin with any specific term (even unconsciously).
I think this test simply reveals that our society is skewed. That lighter equals better. Whether this started during early slavery or slavery in America does not really matter. It is eye opening that even on an unconscious level people still have these associations.
I guess I can say I was "pleasantly surprised" by my results, as I was expecting this test of the unconscious thought to reveal some deep American cultural bias towards pro- light skinned versus dark skinned. My results came out to show little to no preference between light skinned and dark skinned. Obviously it's my preferred result, because personally I feel zero difference in acceptance or likability of any ethnicity. A human is a human, physical characteristics are trivial. I pretty positive it is collectively agreed upon that our society has a pretty distinct "bias" towards light skin. Even without touching upon the prevalent issues of economic disparity and opportunity with ethic minorities in this country, just the culture is more geared towards the dominance of light skinned (i.e. beauty more commonly depicted as light skinned, darkness is more commonly associated with mistrust, other questionable themes, etc.). Although the test didn't say so for myself I believe the test shows how people can have unconscious biases, courtesy of societal pressures, without being actually prejudiced.
ReplyDeleteWhen I received the results from the test, I was not surprised that my data suggested little to no automatic preference between Light Skin and Dark Skin. Being of mixed heritage, I was simultaneously raised in two completely different racial cultures. I was never taught to stress the color of others’ skin; it was deemed insignificant to me. My education also supports my results. I went to a very diverse (in race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status) public school in a large city. Since the beginning of school, I have been exposed to different racial backgrounds. My roommate, who also grew up in St. Louis, but went to a predominantly white Christian private school, took the test at the same time as me. She was very surprised when her data suggested preference to light skin individuals. Even though she is not overtly racist in any way, she was raised in a sheltered environment with little to no exposure to racial diversity. Her reaction time for sorting the pictures and terms was based on her unconscious mind, which was primarily shaped by her unexposed childhood. This test should not be taken so seriously as to indicate if someone is racist or not, but it does provide interesting insight on the construction of race in society.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely with Morgan. My results indicated that I moderately favored light skinned people, which I do not think is really the case. After I received my results, I was kind of ashamed and embarrassed by them. However, I do not think that they accurately portray my feelings towards light and dark skinned people. In the original sequences, you become conditioned to associating the "good" with the light skinned, which makes it difficult to switch when the categories are changed.
ReplyDeleteI do think this test does show how many people generally (and mostly unconsciously) connect things that are "good" with the lighter skin. I believe that even though this country has come a long way since the days of civil rights movement, society may still have an unconscious bias. I thought that this assessment was interesting at showing the construction of race in today's society, but I don't think the results fully provide your true feeling towards light and dark skinned people.
Results from my test showed that I preferred light skinned as opposed to dark skinned individuals. Like a few people mentioned before me, this is not how I feel at all. I did understand the construction of the test and how they associated good with dark and bad with light and vice versa to throw people off, however they words or images used were so basic that I do not feel it can accurately describe someone's preferences. For example, it would have the word "glorious" and we were to associate it with good. I understand the test was measured on how quickly we were to associate the images/words with the group, but I felt that I was moving at a relatively similar pace throughout the entire test. (I guess not lol). Aside from all that, it was kinda sad how stereotypical our society is constructed. Dark is bad and light is good, which is the root to some main issues of segregation and inequality.
ReplyDeleteI took the test and the results said that I had a preference for light skin over dark skin. I do not believe this to be true whatsoever, and I do not see how the test could possibly know this from what we had to do. Hitting either e or i after a while got tiring, and I made mistakes because I was getting bored and going too fast, it didn't have anything to do with a preference. Also, changing which side the good and bad words were supposed to go on in the middle of the test just made me mess up, but it was just because I was used to hitting it one way and then the test switched it up. Overall I feel this test can not really show in any way what we have a preference for, and the questions they ask afterwords seem biased in favor of certain responses.
ReplyDeleteThe test showed that I had a moderate preference for light skinned people as well, but I don't put any stock into this test. I'm not frantically going to try to convince everyone on the board that I'm not a racist because I know that I'm not and hopefully my actions attest to that. Honestly, the problem with this is because it made attributing qualities in a way that was almost like a game-- it trivialized the entire situation. Although I think society still has major problems with race relations and prejudice, I don't exactly buy into the Dark/Bad Light/Good argument. Being in the dark endangered people and being in broad daylight makes people feel safer-- when would you rather walk around Chicago. Just because the words "dark" and "light" are used, it doesn't mean that it applies to everything that includes those words. The problem was that this game conditioned you to answer in a certain way, and that's good because that's what society does to us on a daily basis. Seriously though, I suggest that nobody puts much stock in this-- check your actions and not your responses to a test.
ReplyDeleteMy politics is that race should have no affect on my preference for a person in education, economics, or personal relations. There should be no separation based on race, or skin color, than say eye color. However I know I have subconsciousness bias. As much as I try to active suppress or stop these bias I know I have it. The test gave me a light preference which is more generous than I think I am. When dealing with "race" issues we would be better served as class issues. The changing of our thought process will not change in our life time, nor our children, but we people actively trying to change out view to a human race then we will move past this pointless diversion of people.
ReplyDeleteI like many people taking this test found that I had a slight preference for "light-skinned people". Maybe it's because I grew up in a predominately white neighborhood and those are the people I had the most interaction with growing up? However, I do have both friends and co-workers that are not white and I enjoy their company just as much as my other friends and co-workers who are white. I think the test was setup with an inherent bias- to make the test subjects associate "good" with lighter-skinned images of people, then try and do the opposite after it was already enforced that way in one's mind.
ReplyDeleteThe results from the survey told me that I had no automatic preference between light skinned and dark skinned people, which I expected. I notice on the blog that most people resulted with preferring light skin people over dark skin. I definitely see why some may feel awkward, but I would not put much weight on the result. The survey was a little tricky, but it was interesting to see how the survey attempted to connect certain words with skin color. Many of the bad words, for example “angry” or “sad”, shared the same key with the dark skin face. The survey then tried to study our decisions by switching words and face around. Since the process was a routine of only pressing two keys, I can understand why some results may be a little skewed or contain errors, mine had errors at first. I do believe that a person’s environment has a lot to do with one’s perception of race. Depending on where and how you are brought up, you will think differently than others. Time is another important factor, especially regarding this country’s history with race. Race is a social construct, and it will continue to be as long as skin color continues to be a way of categorizing people.
ReplyDeleteThe results told me I have a slight preference for light skinned people. I honestly don't think that's the case in real life, and after awhile I got lazy on the test and made a few errors. I feel like the test was a little biased, and many people are going to score similar to me, just with how the words were setup in relation to faces, maybe not. I think there are many different factors that will influence a person's view on race. Race itself is a construct, because we know that prior to American colonization, we didn't really categorize race (race was created to keep people powerless). I feel like we're going to continue to experience issues if we keep using race as a description/categorization tool.
ReplyDeleteI've taken this test several times before because it was a requirement for one of the Social Justice classes. When I took it then, each time came out that I had a moderate preference towards light skinned people. Just like everybody else said before me, it was distressing, and I didn't want to believe it. But really, all of that is in the back of our heads and we don't realize it. Moving forward to this test, my preferences came out nearly even. I know this isn't perfect, as we all want to be completely even, but it is something to work towards. The way I see it, unless we make a conscious effort to be inclusive and care for all people, our results will come out uneven every time.
ReplyDeleteI recognized before the test when they asked the first question that I did have a preference for light-skinned people, however I only saw this as a slight preference. However I had a stronger preference according to the test. I dont know if this really is accurate, however I do believe that our culture and media do portray darker-skinned people in a more negative light than light-skinned, as we discussed in class with the Boston bombings when they were basically assumed to have dark skin. I dont necessarily believe that because someone, myself included, may have a preference for lighter-skinned people means that think that darker-skinned people are unequal to lighter-skinned people or that they should be treated differently. I think what it is telling us is that we consciously need to be aware of stereotypes and the way we interact and treat people.
ReplyDeleteThe test said that I slightly preferred light skinned people to dark skinned people. I think the order in which the words were associated with skin color is what caused most of the bias. For example in the first section sad and mad were associated with dark skinned people while happy and laughter were associated with light skinned people and the words were associated with the opposite skin color in the second section. I think the test is interesting but I don’t think that it alone can tell is someone is racist or not. I think the order of association was a large factor as well as which hand is dominate. I am right handed and light skinned people where on the right side; I react much quicker with my right hand than left hand. I think the test was interesting but that it should not be used as a concrete measure of someone having a race preference or not.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the test indicated that I did not automatically prefer one skin color over the other. While I feel that this test can be accurate in evaluating our subconscious preferences, the test could easily be tricked or could taken incorrectly. From reading others blog post, some became bored with the test and began making mistakes. I can see this happening often, even though you are suppose to take the test with minimal distractions and concentrate solely on the test. At the same time you could easily trick the test into giving you the preferences that you wanted. Just with a little concentration you could pick up on how the test was trying to throw you off. This is where I see the test is flawed because it is no longer trying to determine your subconscious preferences.
ReplyDeleteI also was told that I strongly prefer light skinned people to dark skinned people, which of course like everyone else is saying, is sort of embarrassing. It's also awkward if that is really true, considering no one I have dated so far has been light-skinned, and my best friend in high school was also not light-skinned. Adding my results with those facts left me mostly confused. At first, considering it was a test by people with resumes like this [https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/background/thescientists.html] I almost assumed the results were necessarily the emergence of my unconscious, and wonder if potentially I could just really be messed up or something, always choosing people to spend the majority of my time with that I think are bad, thus sort of choosing people that I think I am better than?! Maybe it is not THAT intense, but you get the picture, the results and reality do not seem to mesh in any logical, or at least comfortable way. After reading everyone elses reactions however, I am going to jump on the bandwagon with the people who said that they don't put much weight in the results. (Phew.) Anyway, I was then going to argue that potentially the majority of the people taking the test were light-skinned for some reason or another, ie) greater access to resources (internet/computer), being a larger portion of the population in general, etc. and thus simply preferred their own kind because humans are inherently self-serving, etc. However this idea proved incorrect in at least one case above, maybe that person is an outlier, but also possibly not. What came to mind then was the decision of Brown v. Board to start the end of segregation in public schools, and the way that the Supreme Court arrived at the decision, via. a sociological study as the basis, the famous doll test. The doll test was where dark-skinned, as the IAT calls it, children were asked to choose between a light or dark doll to play with. It was found that most often, they chose the light skinned doll, and the study concluded that because of this they were ashamed of being African American. It is possible that the light-skinned doll was just a generally prettier, nicer doll, etc. so this study could go both ways, but it I think it is certainly something we should remember when discussing this IAT, because it might give the results some backing. So after all that, I finally decided that while society might have led us to grow into favoring light skin unconsciously to some degree or another, I think today it is a very small degree, and I would attribute most of my "strongly prefer" score to the fact that the first round, when bad/dark skin were associated, I was leaning sideways on the arm that was reacting slower because I was eating, and also because even if someone tells me 150 times to go fast, I will probably still go slow so that I can get a perfect sore, ha, but then I also got a little bored. So I agree that the second round I went much faster for somewhat unrelated reasons, meaning the degree of the score is more of what was more questionable than the actual score.
ReplyDeleteThis test was very interesting, I think mainly because I was so conscious of what the underlying purpose of the test was or how I was or was not falling into different sterotypes or being influenced. I have always considered myself to be very apathetic when it comes to the importance or symbolism of race and to see everyone on an equal playing, and yet this test definitely challenged what I believed I thought and compared it I guess to natural instinct and how I maybe act without thinking. I'm not sure how I necessarily feel - pretty frustrated and uneasy. And this is despite having gotten a result I expected and am comfortable with. But it was interesting.
ReplyDeleteI think it's certainly an interesting test and while I wasn't too surprised by my answers, I don't think the process of the test is entirely accurate. I believe that the only reason my quick decision-making was slower the second time around was because I had just focused my attention the opposite way. I think if the test had begun the way it had in the "second round" I think my results would have been different. I wouldn't necessarily think that just because the "worse" words switch, that proves a preference. I think if both the faces and words switched sides together, I would have gotten some wrong and been slower as well. This, to me, seemed more based solely on reflexes and not the fact that we were associating certain words with light/dark skinned faces. That's not to say it was pointless, but I do think there are far more factors to consider and that there was not a sufficient constant to base the findings against.
ReplyDeleteMy results came out to a slight preference to light skinned people. I agree with Matt in that I felt the test was not set up in the best way. Since I was trying to answer so quickly, I was trying to memorize which thing was in which corner. When they moved the words around, it was difficult to compute. I am not blaming my results completely on this, although they do not reflect my conscious feelings at all.
ReplyDeleteIt was an interesting test, but I feel like there are too many variables to accurately gauge someone's feelings.
I found this test to be incredibly interesting. I received a score saying that I had a slight preference for Dark Skinned people over Light Skinned people. The whole process behind the test was very interesting, especially the switching of the categories. It helped place different amounts of stress on sorting the categories based on one's preference with regards to hands. The only problem I found with the test(which was most likely intended) was that I found myself falling into patterns with the key inputs. Instead of focusing on the categorizations, I started unconsciously inputting keys based on a pattern. Regardless, I enjoyed the whole process and found it to be fairly eye-opening.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who has finished the undergraduate psychology program, I have taken many tests with this format and I hate it. I think the format is awful and your fingers act quicker than even your unconscious because you get familiar with particular patterns. I also think this test is based on the assumption that people instantly look at color when meeting someone. Some of the facial expressions their characters made me press bad or good and then I was told that was the wrong answer. I think this method is outdated and based on the assumption of racism. They ask so many questions about my views and about what I look like and that is used for their records only probably. I think the methodology of pressing e or i is interesting but could have been done in a much better way. This is just more evidence of how the current academic paradigms have racism embedded in them. There are some scholarly journals that are not even that old that are shockingly racist. I am not a fan of the IAT at all right now. I'm going to try the other ones when I have had more sleep but as for now, it was interesting but flawed.
ReplyDeleteThe test for me was a little confusing, probably because I skimmed through the directions. My result was a moderate automatic preference for light skin compared to dark skin. I thought this was a little odd because I grew up as the "light" one in my family. My siblings are darker than me and growing up I use to wish I was darker to fit in with my family. Also my parents raised me to be proud to be Latino and embrace my native american roots. Growing up, I was considered white to the other latino kids, even though I can speak fluent spanish. In conclusion I'am not a fan of this test.
ReplyDeleteIt says I have little to no preference between light skin and dark skin. I don’t know how effective this test is in studying people’s internalized bias in a fifteen-minute word and picture survey. I do think there are negative connotations in the use of words in our society. For example angel fruitcake is white, and devils chocolate cake is black… but so what, who doesn’t like devils chocolate cake anyway, everything is subjective, but when people take it as objective then theirs a problem. Like the quota thing in Texas even though it might be a great thing, the reality of it is that you are giving something credibility when you treat someone different based on a perception. Prejudice will never go away, as long as there is ignorance. The problem I see when it comes to people who are prejudice is the fear of the unknown, we don’t know them there for we don’t know what their motive’s are, so we fear them and villainies and/or segregate them from “us” (ex. poverty is man made). Everyone has prejudices, I mean I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable in the south side out of fear for my safety, am I prejudice? Probably, now that I acknowledge my prejudice I can fix it, but how can I fix it when it goes against the status quo? I can fix my perception but I cannot change the circumstances that produced my perception. That’s the problem after the civil rights we turned from overtly prejudice to covertly prejudice to the point that we don’t even see it… (I hope my rambling makes sense)
ReplyDeleteI felt like this wasn't a good way to see if people have preferences toward people's skin tones. My results found that I had little to no preference between light and dark skin, like many others. I think that playing mind games for fifteen minutes is kind of like a really poor set up to make people taking the test sway one way or another. It was hard to re-train my brain for the second round when it included both skin tone and "good" vs. "bad" and actually I made more mistakes than I thought I would. While I don't consider this to be an accurate test, it certainly was interesting to participate in!
ReplyDeleteI think that this method is an interesting way of observing the human subconscious. Fingers move faster than your brain and this study suggests that they would choose which associations are our first instincts. As someone who identifies as politically and socially liberal, the feedback the test provided was not what I'd expected. I noticed, however, that in the first phase when Dark Skin & Good were paired and Light Skin & Bad were paired, my fingers were a bit tangled. I think the preface of the quiz, stating that it is meant to measure your interpretation of skin color made me second guess my answers on the grounds of political correctness. I think that this is an interesting way to try to reach a human's psyche and subconscious, but I'm not sure this is a very accurate system as computer screen pigment and lighting can vary and if your hand-eye or motor-coordination is subpar, your clicks may be inaccurate to your thinking. I think that this is a quick and relatively scholarly way to take a look at the socialization of skin color.
ReplyDeleteI personally did the tests with caution as to see the way that they were scoring (personal curiosity) and as such I found the tests to be very taxing. What I found odd is it lead to the test coming up as an N/A, probably because I did them too slowly. As such, the test is very easy to game in that the testee is able to see not only what is being tested, but also the way in that it is tested. Perhaps there is another meaning for the test, but as for an indicator of sexual/racial preference, it comes short in reliably finding an answer.
ReplyDeleteI agree with a lot of the commenters; I found myself following pattern more than association. Because the first part of the test was very habit forming with what key good words and light skinned people were associated with, I honestly think that once the sides switched, that had more of an impact on my key choice than the color of the people in the images' skin. Perhaps I feel this way because the results made me feel uncomfortable ( the test informed me I have a preference to light-skinned people ), but looking at what other people had to say about the test, I think it is indeed flawed and not an accurate or fair way to determine whether or not someone has a natural preference to light or dark skin.
ReplyDeleteI went into the test having already read about it and when I started I thought somehow I wouldn't let race bias lead me and I would just answer the questions rationally but something at the back of my mind made me hesitate in the last part of the exam when they switch the good from the light skinned side to the dark skinned side. The test results showed that I am moderately preferencial toward light skinned people. I think that this might be fairly acurate in terms of my cultural upbringing but consciously I would only admit to a slight bias. I think that perhaps even though in the fore-part of my brain I look at people and desperately try not to judge I still have to fight what is in my subconscious.
ReplyDelete