I picked "Skin Preference," or whatever it was called, because it was the first choice, and "scored" the result:
"Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Light Skin and Dark Skin."
Big whoop.
What I did find interesting: I found myself conditioned to the first choice of category (at a midpoint, they switch the "racial" image and [connotatively loaded] verbal categories), with myself always trying to remember not to go back to the first (rationally arbitrary) pairings. In other words, I found the difficulty to be in overcoming the mechanical conditioning of the original categories assigned by the test. (There is much emphasis on speed, placing the fingers exactly on certain keys, etc.)
That being the case, should I worry that the test constructors first assigned the differently-toned images to "evil," "bad," etc.? Since if I look at this from the standpoint of classic conditioning, this can be seen as what is being "taught" to me by the experiment itself.
While going through the experiment, I wondered if there were some covert Tversky-Kahneman thing going on, and if I'm now supposed to go to additional tests and self-"correct" something based on what are really arbitrary or meaningless data, thereby proving something-or-other... who knows, but in retrospect this seems doubtful...
Anyway, if I had to say, "What is the actual (not necessarily planned) result of this research program, based on its structure?" it would be, "To actively inculcate or reinforce the association of people with skin tones different from the test-taker with negative characteristics," since that was the first, and as it seemed to me dominant, set of conditioning exercises to which I was subjected. Although I assume this isn't the intent.
Hmmm... wait... Harvard... Well, OK, I *suppose* this isn't the intent...
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 5:12 PM, John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net>wrote:
> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
>> https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/
>>
>> Wojtek
>>
>
>
> That was kind of fun.
> I took the test to check association of either white or NA with America or
> foreign.
> Surprisingly I showed the Strong preference for NA with America and White
> with foreign.
> A slight preference would not surprise me but a strong preference does.
>
> John Thornton
>
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