Harvard Implicit Bias tests?

[Ultralight]

Thought this was interesting. For a social work class I had to take any three of these tests. They are supposed to tell you if you have implicit biases against certain racial, ethnic, or other minority groups (skinny people, GLBTQ, etc.).

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

After I took the three tests I was a bit surprised with my results...

Feel free to take the tests. :)

[Zoe Girl]

I tried one about rating happiness and sadness, interesting. I thought was going to be a little different.

[Ultralight]

I tried one about rating happiness and sadness, interesting. I thought was going to be a little different.

Do tell.

[iris lilies]

I tried one of those tests about bias toward a specific group and came out barely or imperceptibly noticing of the group.,now I should try it with another group.

[Zoe Girl]

Well I was expecting the ones around race, and the happy/sad one was all white male faces. It makes sense I didn't say a lot of happy because they were not smiling. I didn't want to just say happy or sad but other words. I went on and took another one and saw that there are a lot of options.

[Ultralight]

Okay, so I took three tests.

One was about whether I thought science was for males and liberal arts were for women. The data showed I thought that both science and liberal arts were for everyone, regardless if they are male or female.

I took one about preference for skin tone (Dark vs. Light). It said I had a slight preference for darker skin. Not totally surprised.

The one that threw me for a loop was the one about "Arab Muslims." Apparently I have a strong preference for "Arab Muslims."

But with this test I am dubious. For one, the test included nothing about Islam. It just conflated Islam and Arabs -- but lots of Arabs are not Islamic. Two guys I hung out with a lot in college were Agnostic Arabs, for instance.

It had a lot of names like Hakim and Abdul, which to me sound like either Arab names or black people's names. So I dunno.

[LDAHL]

I tried a few of them, and the results seemed to indicate that I am less biased than I in fact know (or at least believe) myself to be. It may be that I wasn't following the directions properly. Or it may be that the designers of the tests underestimate the impact of traditional Catholic guilt.

[Zoe Girl]

I did the Native American one, with American landmarks and then either White Americans or Native Americans. I showed a slight preference for White Americans as connected to the landmarks, I actually would have preferred if they didn't pair landmarks with White Americans and then ask you to switch, the switch was hard but I am okay with the slight preference which I think is closer to neutral when I adjust for the test confusion. I am interested in the skin tones and other tests.

[bae]

Test results showed I am biased against homo sapiens, and prefer the company of dogs.

[LDAHL]

Test results showed I am biased against homo sapiens, and prefer the company of dogs.

“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.”Mark Twain