In my psychology class, we learned about the Implicit Association Test where people who take this test have to match up words with faces. Some faces are African American and others are European faces. When positive or good words are to be categorized with darker complected faces, the results showed that the test takers had a greater hesitancy (a longer time interval) to categorize "good words with darker skin tones" rather than when they were supposed to match "good words with lighter skin tones." The creators of this test were suggesting that people unconsciously have a negative bias towards African Americans. While this could be true, I thought the idea related back to what we talked about with ingroup and outgroup biases. Depending where a white American grows up, they may not know many African American people on a close personal bases. As humans, we are naturally inclined to view social groups outside of our own more negatively until we make friendships with someone from that social group, and we view people more similar to ourselves as positive. I felt like that could have implications with the IAT test, as opposed to suggesting the people who take this test are racist.
Ann Magnuson
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