Kaleb
10-27-2007, 01:45 PM
In short:
Large-scale online study at Harvard examines prejudices; nonracism stems from generally positive outlooks and significant positive interracial exposure.
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Whether out in polite society or answering the questions of nosy psychologists, most people insist to the utmost that they’re not racist. But when those same psychologists test people's subconscious feelings, they find a much different story. More than 80 percent of white people show some measurable prejudice against black people, for instance.
About 7 percent of white people, though, actually show a distinct lack of racism on probing psychological tests, says psychologist Robert Livingston of Northwestern University. ... It turns out that the nonracists share a unique emotional style: They rarely form any negative associations, whether they're thinking about meaningless symbols or real human beings.
...
In this type of experiment—which has been used by other scientists studying race psychology—subjects look at pictures of faces on a screen and press one button if the face is black and another if it is white. Interspersed with the faces are words that are either positive (“glorious,” “joyful”) or pejorative (“terrible,” “nasty”). In one round, subjects use one key for white faces and positive words and another key for black faces and negative words. In another round, the keys are switched so that the white faces are matched with negative words and black faces with positive words. If a person takes longer to press the “black” key when it’s paired with the “good” key than when it’s paired with the “bad” key, psychologists believe, that comes from a subconscious resistance to associating black people with goodness—a sure sign of racial prejudice. You can take this test yourself on Harvard University's Web site.
...
The researchers say that negative associations likely have such power in most people's minds because evolution prepared us to notice bad things more than good things. “If there’s a lion hiding in a bush, you’d better see it,” Livingston says. “Whereas if there’s a tree of mangoes, it’s unfortunate if you don’t notice it, but it’s not as critical to your survival.” Since each negative association has more weight in the brain, one must overcompensate with many positive links just to get back to neutral. ...
Other recent research on race has shown that the desire to look past these powerful negative associations is, unfortunately, not very effective at decreasing people's actual level of prejudice. “It’s not a matter of teaching people that prejudice is wrong,” Livingston says. “They know that already. You need to expose them to positive associations.” So how do you motivate people to form positive feelings for people they don't like? Psychologist Linda Tropp of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst calls Livingston and Drwecki’s paper “provocative and important,” but she says that the desire to avoid being racist can compel people to seek contact with the very people they're biased against, which is known to be the best way to reduce prejudice. So maybe our conscious angels can help us silence those subconscious devils after all.
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Full article:
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/oct/how-not-to-be-racist
Testing (Topics span race, religion, disabilities, political orientation, etc.):
https://implicit.harvard.edu/
Published Results:
Dense reading in PDF format, scanable charts towards the end Link
Charts I came across during testing...
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/images/arabbreakdown.gif
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/images/racebreakdown.gif
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/images/weaponsbreakdown.gif
my test results
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Black People compared to White People.
Your result, reported above, is already corrected for the order in which you took the parts of the IAT. If you have a question about the effect of order, please read the answer to FAQ 1 on the page of FAQs for this test.
The interpretation shown above is described as 'automatic preference for Black People' if you responded faster when Black People faces and Good words were classified with the same key as opposed to White People faces and Good words. It is marked 'automatic preference for White People' if you were faster when giving the same response to White People faces and Good words. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic preference may be described as 'slight', 'moderate', 'strong', or 'little to no preference'.
Large-scale online study at Harvard examines prejudices; nonracism stems from generally positive outlooks and significant positive interracial exposure.
----
Whether out in polite society or answering the questions of nosy psychologists, most people insist to the utmost that they’re not racist. But when those same psychologists test people's subconscious feelings, they find a much different story. More than 80 percent of white people show some measurable prejudice against black people, for instance.
About 7 percent of white people, though, actually show a distinct lack of racism on probing psychological tests, says psychologist Robert Livingston of Northwestern University. ... It turns out that the nonracists share a unique emotional style: They rarely form any negative associations, whether they're thinking about meaningless symbols or real human beings.
...
In this type of experiment—which has been used by other scientists studying race psychology—subjects look at pictures of faces on a screen and press one button if the face is black and another if it is white. Interspersed with the faces are words that are either positive (“glorious,” “joyful”) or pejorative (“terrible,” “nasty”). In one round, subjects use one key for white faces and positive words and another key for black faces and negative words. In another round, the keys are switched so that the white faces are matched with negative words and black faces with positive words. If a person takes longer to press the “black” key when it’s paired with the “good” key than when it’s paired with the “bad” key, psychologists believe, that comes from a subconscious resistance to associating black people with goodness—a sure sign of racial prejudice. You can take this test yourself on Harvard University's Web site.
...
The researchers say that negative associations likely have such power in most people's minds because evolution prepared us to notice bad things more than good things. “If there’s a lion hiding in a bush, you’d better see it,” Livingston says. “Whereas if there’s a tree of mangoes, it’s unfortunate if you don’t notice it, but it’s not as critical to your survival.” Since each negative association has more weight in the brain, one must overcompensate with many positive links just to get back to neutral. ...
Other recent research on race has shown that the desire to look past these powerful negative associations is, unfortunately, not very effective at decreasing people's actual level of prejudice. “It’s not a matter of teaching people that prejudice is wrong,” Livingston says. “They know that already. You need to expose them to positive associations.” So how do you motivate people to form positive feelings for people they don't like? Psychologist Linda Tropp of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst calls Livingston and Drwecki’s paper “provocative and important,” but she says that the desire to avoid being racist can compel people to seek contact with the very people they're biased against, which is known to be the best way to reduce prejudice. So maybe our conscious angels can help us silence those subconscious devils after all.
----
Full article:
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/oct/how-not-to-be-racist
Testing (Topics span race, religion, disabilities, political orientation, etc.):
https://implicit.harvard.edu/
Published Results:
Dense reading in PDF format, scanable charts towards the end Link
Charts I came across during testing...
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/images/arabbreakdown.gif
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/images/racebreakdown.gif
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/images/weaponsbreakdown.gif
my test results
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Black People compared to White People.
Your result, reported above, is already corrected for the order in which you took the parts of the IAT. If you have a question about the effect of order, please read the answer to FAQ 1 on the page of FAQs for this test.
The interpretation shown above is described as 'automatic preference for Black People' if you responded faster when Black People faces and Good words were classified with the same key as opposed to White People faces and Good words. It is marked 'automatic preference for White People' if you were faster when giving the same response to White People faces and Good words. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic preference may be described as 'slight', 'moderate', 'strong', or 'little to no preference'.