Catherine Rose

Social Psychology

Spring ‘11

Professor Volpe

04/01/2011

Assessing Attitudes Towards Groups: IAT

The Implicit Attitude Test was developed by Andrew Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji as a way

to explore people’s unconscious beliefs. The Implicit Attitude Test is essentially a computer driven test

that assesses these implicit attitudes. Implicit Attitudes can be defined as automatic, unconscious attitudes

(Myers, 125). The test uses reaction times to measure people’s automatic associations between attitude

objects and evaluative words. Easier pairings are taken to indicate stronger unconscious associations

(Myers, 126).

The IAT that I choose to complete was the Light Skin Dark Skin one. I choose to complete it

because in general it just sounded interesting. This IAT required the ability to recognize light and dark

faces. This IAT generally reveals the preference for light-skin over dark skin. I thought it would be

interesting to see what turned up for me and in my conscious and subconscious as a Jamaican and black

individual, but also because, even though I am black, black comes in many shades, and their are many

ways to explore skin tone. My father is black, born and raised in Jamaica, but he is much lighter than

you would think, even though he grew up in the sun. My mother, on the other hand is much darker than

myself and my father, but her mother is not. As learned in the race: are we so different exhibit, some of

our ancestors that are darker came from tropical climates. However, I think there is also something to be

said about the type of people that take the IAT test. Do more whites or light-skinned people take the test

than blacks? And also, what exactly is light skinned? There are dark whites, and light whites. There are

dark and light African-Americans and Hispanics, as well as dark and light Native Americans.

In order to complete this task, I was first asked a series of questions, and needed to rate them
as somewhat agree, moderately agree, and so forth. These questions were along the lines of such things

as whether I thought it was sometimes necessary to step on others to get ahead in life. Another question

was whether or not everybody deserved an equal chance in life. Although, I must also add, that for some

questions there was a definite agree and a definite agree. However, what about things that were in the ‘in

between’ phase. How do you really define what a sometimes agree or a sometimes necessary is? Next,

I was told to make sure that I kept my fingers hovered over the ‘E’ and ‘I’ keys of my keyboard. The

first step was that I would be shown on positive or a negative word. Depending on whether the term was

positive or negative, I would click ‘E’ or ‘I’ to link it to the Good or Bad words that were displayed on the

right and left sides of the screen. Next, I would be shown a series of images. The images would be either

of a light colored face or a dark colored face, and I would have to match the image I was shown with the

image on either right or left side of the screen. Lastly, I was given a combination of positive and negative

terms with a mixture of light and dark faces. The process was exactly the same. However, afterward, the

images would be switched on sides of the screen, and I was asked to complete the task just as quickly.

The IAT was designed to measure my conscious or subconscious attitudes.

The result of my IAT suggested that I had a slight automatic preference for light skin in

comparison with dark skin. I was surprised by the results. I think that as time went on the task became

more and more challenging. At first I started off answering things quickly, but then it became so

confusing that I started to slow down, and had to think more, especially when it came to the mixture of

terms and faces. I think that this result might be affected by the fact that I am consistently surrounded by

light skinned people. I don’t think I have am favorable towards them, or anyone in particular, but because

I constantly see it at school, on the subway, and at work, as opposed to being surrounded by people who

look like me, light skin is sealed in my head. I think that if I was born and raised in Jamaica like my

parents, the results might have been significantly different.

Implicit attitudes can influence people subconsciously. An example of this can come from

watching TV. Many people watch TV. From TV shows, such as The Game, or television channels such as
BET, or movies such as Boys in the Hood and Stomp the Yard, we are developing opinions and beliefs.

We might not think about belief formation specifically at the time, but believe it or not, those very things

are helping form our prejudices, and influencing us in a secondary way. The majority of channels on

television feature light skinned people. We often see a certain life style for these people, in contrast with

that of the dark skinned.

I certainly think that we all have attitudes, beliefs and prejudices that we are not directly aware

of. We are human, and we don’t have time to constantly analyze everything. But it is in our nature to

judge, whether we intend to or not. Sometimes we might pass judgements on people, subconsciously

based on what they look like, but according to the race exhibit, people develop beliefs about religion and

language based on who raised them. The IAT doesn’t measure these, and there is a lot that is not taken

into consideration in the IAT.

It’s hard to say what I learned from the IAT. I’d like to say that I had no distractions, and that

I wasn’t truly thinking about my answers when I listed them. That’s what makes this IAT interesting

though, if it truly did tap into my conscious, and the biases that I am not openly thinking about. It was

also interesting and shocking to learn that only a mere 2% of people actually strongly viewed dark

skinned people as more favorable than light skinned.