Implicit Association Test

The Implicit Association Test is used as a tool to determine people’s roots of thinking and feeling. The Implicit Association Test that I took was Race-Weapons one. At first I was told to categorized two groups of people, which is African Americans and Caucasian by pressing button “i” or “e”. The instruction was given by the test, and I had to follow which one should we press, between “I” and “e” depending on what I was told to. After that, I was told to categorized two groups of things, which was “weapons” and “ harmful thing”, which was given in the same instruction. Then I had to connect both of the categories into one activity. At the end of the test, there are questions about what I think about Caucasian and African American in general, followed by questions about my personality. The result I got from the test suggests me that I have a moderate association of African Americans with weapons compared to Caucasian American.

Racial profiling often happens in real life, effecting people’s decision making. For example, a police officer who stops people because he or she belongs to a certain racial group. Some people do racial profiling consciously, but some don’t. Since I was little, I was taught to hang out with people who come from different race and to see them through their personality, not from their race. So I basically always try not to racial profile people. However, the test shows that I moderately associate African American with weapons compared to Caucasian American, which reveals how I feel unconsciously about the idea. I personally think that the result is related to an incident that just happened to me a couple years ago. When I was waiting at the bus stop with my friends, five African American came towards our direction. We thought that they were also waiting for the bus.  Slowly, they came near us, started to ask for our wallet, while showing us a gun that one of them had inside their pants. When we refused hand out our wallets, they brutally took our bags and ran away. So even though I have tried not to have negative impression as such towards African Americans, because not all African Americans have the same rude attitude, the test shows that I am affected by that particular experience. From this experience, I learn that the test really helps to reveal how people feel unconsciously about a particular topic.

After the Race-Weapons test, I decided to take the Gender-Career one. In this test, I was asked about my general view about the topic first, such as how important is family or career to me, what is my family’s income, whether I am planning to have children, and who my caregiver was when I was a kid. After that basically the same thing was done like on the first test regarding the “I” and “e” part, except this time, the group is between female and male names, with family or career. The result suggested that I moderately associate male with career and female with family, compared to female with career and male with family.

Looking at the result, I think this test does not really reveal to my own condition, but also reveals about what kind of environment I am exposed to. Both of my parents are working, so personally I think that working females are very normal. My father and mother both equally work hard and try the best they could on their field. So since I was little, I have always wanted to work in the office just like my mother and grew up with Oprah Winfrey as my role model besides my mother. I envy her hard work and her accomplishments, which really brings out her charisma. However, as I grew up, I am exposed to the environment where most of my friends’ mothers are housewives. So I began to absorb the thoughts that most of women stay at home to take care of their family. Even though until now, my goal is to become a successful businesswoman, being exposed to other kind of environment really affects me unconsciously about certain topic.