re: #552 avanti

Unconscious stereotype got past my ‘couth’ filter.

Avanti—ouch. I hear you.

There is a very cool research study currently being run by the psych dept at harvard, called “project implicit”. All lizards can go here and take the tests and take part in the studies, and you get to see all your results right away.

implicit.harvard.edu

It measures unconscious biases by making you perform certain tasks. I guarantee that everyone would be shocked to find out how they score—(everyone always is). For example, one test is called the Weapons Test: You’re asked to imagine that you are a police officer in a threatening situation, and you see a series of short images of different people holding small objects. They’re deliberately blurry and half concealed in everyone’s hand.
You have like a split-second window of opportunity to decide for each whether you should choose an option saying “disarm them” or an option saying “no threat”. Real racists will automatically identify every black male pictured as holding a weapon even when he isn’t (for example). But even nonracists and folks who like to think they have no such biases will show bias.

For example— when I took it, my results showed that while I didn’t ever incorrectly identify a black male as holding a weapon when he wasn’t— I DID still take longer to identify black males as harmless, as compared to when I was shown a white guy without a weapon. (the timing in measured in miliseconds, I think, but my result still was statistically significant).

Long expo, but anyway, people should participate in Project Implicit. It’s a cool way to help science and also find out a little about yourself, potentially.