African American-European American Iat Essay

The version of the IAT, that I chose to take is the African American – European American IAT. There were a few steps in order to complete the test; the first step was to fill out information about myself. The questions that I answered were related to my age my educational status, nationality, religious beliefs and my current state of employment. The next step of the test was to choose either ‘E,† or ‘I,† to indicate my choice of African American for a picture of a African American or European American for a picture of a European American. The next series of questions asked me to select either African American grouped with â€Å"bad,† or European American with â€Å"good’. Another series of questions was visually posed this time with, African American grouped with good and European American grouped with bad. The results show that data suggests a strong automatic preference for European American’s compared to African Americans. My automatic preference was toward European Americans. The results of this test aren’t very surprising to me. In class we were told how the test would go, so I already knew what to expect. There was a small bit of doubt whether or not the test would indicate a strong preference for one or the other at all though, because I am Hispanic. I would have speculate that based on the fact that I grew up primarily in white suburbia in a private school that almost exclusively consisted of all white students, that my preference is a subconscious choice. I am most familiar with European Americans therefore I chose them over African Americans. There is a distinction between implicit attitudes and explicit attitudes, that distinction is simple. Implicit attitudes are the attitudes that we don’t think about, they are automatic. Explicit attitudes are the attitudes that are consciously controlled. According to Gawronski and Bodenhausen, in the text, Social Psychology,†Our automatic implicit attitudes regarding someone or something often differ from our consciously controlled, explicit attitudes†(p.51). From the results of the IAT that I took, I would have to say that my implicit attitudes towards African Americans, do not match my explicit attitudes about African Americans. The reason that I believe that my implicit attitudes are different from my explicit attitudes is that I usually make a conscious decision to be friendly and welcoming to any person that I come in contact with regardless of gender, race, age, or sexual orientation. The results are mildly surprising, however, I believe that I am more accustomed to being in the company of European Americans, and therefore I show a distinct implicit attitude favoring them. Implicit attitudes are a dangerous thing; we should pay particular attention to how we label people explicitly, so that with time, we can manipulate our unconscious attitudes and impulse reactions to certain people. A good example of problems that people run into with their improper mind set comes to us from our text, Social Psychology. Age is the example Bugental and Hehman used in 2007, when they discovered that people treat the elderly differently than they do people whom are younger, they explain that â€Å"People’s perceptions of the elderly- as generally kind but frail, incompetent, and unproductive- predispose patronizing behavior†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (p. 308). It’s that attitude that people hold about the elderly that according to Bugental and Hehman, â€Å"predispose patronizing behavior, such as baby-talk speech that leads elderly people to feel less competent and act less capably’ (p. 308). It is important that we change our thinking, because if we continue to have the same biases, we not only do our selves a disservice in being implicitly and or explicitly inappropriate in our attitudes, but we also risk the chance of hurting others in our actions. Works Cited Myers, D. C. (2010). Social psychology (10th ed. ). New York: McGraw-Hill. Pages 51,308 Psych 312 Extra Credit 10pts 5-8-13 Eli J. Guymon Gender – Career IAT The second test that I took was the gender – career IAT. Before the test began, I was asked to report my beliefs about women versus men in the work force and women versus men in the home life. The second set of questions asked me to fill out information about myself. The questions that I answered were, what is my age, my educational status, nationality, religious beliefs and my current state of employment. Following those questions were questions about my family growing up, they wanted to know if I had a mother as a primary care giver, and if she worked outside of the home, specifying what she did for a living, and if there was a secondary caregiver, such as a father or step father, where they employed outside the home, and what their occupation was. The next step of the test was to choose either ‘E,† or ‘I,† to indicate my choice. The groupings in the first series of visual concepts to match were men’s names with the word men and women’s names with the word women. The next step was to match men with career minded words and women with household related words. Finally in the final sets of matching words the groupings were reversed so that men and household related items were a pair and women with career minded words belonged together. According to the results, data suggested little or no association between male and female with career and family. I did not have a automatic preference. My explicit and implicit attitudes match, I do not consciously nor do I subconscious place anyone in a group that favors either individual in the work place or family. I am not surprised by my results because I was raised in a home where my mother was a primary care giver but I also received care giving from my step father. Both my mother and my step father worked outside of the home. Both my mother and my step father shared responsibilities equally except where one person seemed to enjoy a task more than the other, that partner would assume say a specific domestic role that the other was happy to not have to do. For an example of a domestic role that both of my parents needed to be done but one seemed to favor it over the other, grilling outside, was my step fathers domestic role because my mother did not enjoy doing that work, and my step father rarely did his own laundry, because it was a task that my mother felt comfortable doing by herself.