I thought I would finish up the remaining chapters of "The Hidden Brain" by Shankar Vedantam by myself. We had been so captivated by the book and so enthusiastic that it seemed unwise to let much of the ending go by without reading it. It got a little repetitious and boring about chapter 8 and we agreed to stop reading it aloud. I was just going to finish it quickly and silently on my own.
It didn't work out that way. Chapter 9 is about the IAT, the Implicit Association Test. Maybe you are familiar with the Stroop Test, the one with color names printed in colors but the name and the color don't match. That test is about reading the color you see instead of pronouncing the name of the color shown by the word. Like this:
We each spent 30 minutes or so on the IAT. I started with the test of my bias for associating young faces with words about good things, such as joy, beauty and pleasure while putting old faces with negative words. It is a difficult test but it only takes about 10 minutes to take. You get confused and that is the whole idea. Only when your rational, in-control mind is over-occupied can the hidden parts of your brain show up.
Vedantam reports that when the psychologist Mazarin Banaji was first asked to take the test, it convinced her that she herself had unconscious biases about race that she didn't know she had. She was amazed, flummoxed, irritated and depressed since she is a Havard professor who researches racial prejudice and teaches about trying to neutralize it.
More than 300,000 people from all over the world have taken the test. It is free and gives your results at the end. There are short tests about age, race, gender, body weight and sexuality.
(Copyedited by L.S.Kirby)
It didn't work out that way. Chapter 9 is about the IAT, the Implicit Association Test. Maybe you are familiar with the Stroop Test, the one with color names printed in colors but the name and the color don't match. That test is about reading the color you see instead of pronouncing the name of the color shown by the word. Like this:
Blue
For the test, you say "red" and ignore the fact that the letters say the name of a different color.We each spent 30 minutes or so on the IAT. I started with the test of my bias for associating young faces with words about good things, such as joy, beauty and pleasure while putting old faces with negative words. It is a difficult test but it only takes about 10 minutes to take. You get confused and that is the whole idea. Only when your rational, in-control mind is over-occupied can the hidden parts of your brain show up.
Vedantam reports that when the psychologist Mazarin Banaji was first asked to take the test, it convinced her that she herself had unconscious biases about race that she didn't know she had. She was amazed, flummoxed, irritated and depressed since she is a Havard professor who researches racial prejudice and teaches about trying to neutralize it.
More than 300,000 people from all over the world have taken the test. It is free and gives your results at the end. There are short tests about age, race, gender, body weight and sexuality.
(Copyedited by L.S.Kirby)
