Response to IATs

Implicit Association Tests are worldwide famous tests for the purpose of detecting people’s unconscious or automatic cognition and attitudes towards certain subjects.  I was so impressed when I first experienced these tests years ago, and I believe it is an ingenious and tenable approach for interpreting people’s unconsciousness, although sometimes the results are not delightful.  This time, I took Gender-Science and China-USA IATs.  One of my research interests is how to motivate young people to study science, so I was wondering how is my “real” attitude towards the gender differences in science learning.  I took the China-USA IAT once at the beginning of last semester, so I was also curious that whether my cognition about China and USA had changed after I began to adjust in the life in America. 

The results of these two tests are illustrating.  Consciously, I fervently believed that boys and girls have the same opportunities to succeed in science.  However, the result told me that I am just similar to the majority of people in terms of holding this idea, which is males are more associated with science area and females are more associated with liberal arts area.  As a female and a student who chose science as major since high school, it is difficult for me to recall how much pressure I was bearing when I competed with other rivals and my self-contempt at the same time.  This result further reminds me that I need to be more careful in my future research in order to avoid the negative influence from my unconscious prejudice.

The result of China-USA IAT is not so surprised because I had experienced it once.  Although I began to know more and more about the advantages of the States as a developed country in higher education, human rights, and political democracy, it is almost impossible for me to associate China with bad automatically.  However, I do not believe my national pride should cause my blindness to the weakness of Chinese social status.  I am still being criticized about the unfairness that happened in my country.

I like the title of NBC video: pride and prejudice.  These two elements are natively rooted in our mind, and keep influencing our behaviors and cognition towards circumstances.  Although implicit bias is a common phenomenon, it does not mean people are controlled by their unconsciousness.  As long as people are willing to and strive to view and treat others equally, the influences of implicit bias would abate gradually.

Implicit bias might not be positive, but implicit association as a broader concept could have some incredible positive effects on people, especially in the learning process.  James (1962) wrote an interesting description in the chapter of habit: one may allow herself to discount one exception in building a habit consciously, but “down among his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up…” (p. 39).  Although this paragraph was not talking about association directly, I believe it could be viewed as an interpretation of how implicit association of ideas and behaviors (habits) happen to people, and how inevitable this procedure is.  James highlighted the role of association in learning or education by saying “the more copious the associative systems, the completer the individual’s adaptations to the world,” (p. 41) which suggests that association is a fundamental factor for education whose purpose is to gain “organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to be behavior”.   The “diverse and multiple” (p. 61) associations would increase students learning interests, improve their concentration, and their memory capabilities.  Interest, attention, and memory are three key elements in learning process, the development of those three elements would promote learning process for sure.  Hence, teachers should “impress the class through as many sensible channels as he [they] can” in order to make the subject matters being “well recognized” (p. 68).