Reflection Statement 2-Science of Race
<:od>Your reflection statement for next week, which is due by 1700 on Tuesday, is to take the Arab-Muslim IAT, the
Race IAT, and the skin tone IAT.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
What are your preferences?
Why do you think you have these preferences concerning race and skin color?
Do you think the results of these tests are valid and reliable? Why or why not?
Make your argument within the context of the readings and lectures thus far.
Race IAT, and the skin tone IAT.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
What are your preferences?
Why do you think you have these preferences concerning race and skin color?
Do you think the results of these tests are valid and reliable? Why or why not?
Make your argument within the context of the readings and lectures thus far.
According to Implicit Association Test my data suggests a moderate automatic preference for other people compared to Arab Muslims, a strong automatic preference for European American compared to African American and a slight automatic preference for light skin compared to dark skin. My preferences were suprising if Im honest. I thought I would have had no preferencies at all. I consider myself equal to all people. I can’t help wondering, how the test works and are the results reliable or valid. Based on a 10 minute test you can’t really categorize people into classes whether they have preferencies to some group of people or not. Maybe it’s possible to reveal some uncounscious thoughts or prejudices but I can’t stop wondering if they are random based on the mood the person have while doing the test. If the test can reveal some deep down thoughts then it’s excellent and everybody should take the test and then look in to the mirror if necessary. As far as I understood, most of the people do have quite strong preferences concerning race and skin colour.
As Stanley Lieberson wrotes in his article “A Societal Theory of Race and Ethnic Relations”, conflict and assimilation are not inevitable outcome of racial and ethnic contact and it is relevant to pay attention to that, which of those two alternatives different populations will choose. As I understand Lieberson, he means that when people with different backrounds come together, it is not defiened in advance how they encounter. Lieberson talks mostly about migration, but I also think that his idea works in an everyday life too. Are two people or two groups going to end up in an conflict or are they going to adjust to one another despite their differencies? Racism is socially constructed as we learned at the lecture - so should we look in the mirror if we have prejudices or should we just look around in our life? I think that it is definitely true that racism is socially constructed, but before we can change the world, we have look in the mirror. A good start is doing the Implicit Association Test and after that seriously think about whether the results are true or not.
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I have just finished my Implicit Association Test and I am really astonished because of the results.
If you are asking me “What are your preferences” I had at first some problems because I automatically felt some kind of racist when I thought about white people are my preferences (even now I am not sure what you mean my “preferences” but I think it is about how I wish my longtime companion to be). The reason for my preferences is not difficult to understand. I live in Germany, I have been at a catholic school where nearly nobody from foreign countries studied – my socialization is the reason for my preferences. But on the other hand I think about myself as a tolerant person and I think that I don’t judge about somebody because of his ancestry or the color of skin. The result of the IAT showed me that I have a strong automatic preference for other people compared to Arab Muslims and a strong automatic preference for Light Skin compared to Dark Skin. The preference for white people compared to black people is moderate.
If I now have to say whether I think these results are valid and reliable or not I have to say that I think that they are but this shows me that I am not the person I think I am or better the person I want to be. I am really interested in the other results. If they are also “negative” this does not say, that we are racist but it shows that there are hidden stereotypes in all of us and it is difficult to get rid of them. I think a test like this is good to make us aware of this fact and in my case – I am looking forward to think and talk about the results.
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My IAT-tests suggest that I have a moderate automatic preference for Dark Skin compared to Light Skin, little to no automatic preferences between Arab Muslims and Other people and a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American. These results somewhat surprised me. I was sure, that I would get results showing that I have no preferences at all or, to tell you the truth, seeing I come from a culture that is constructed and habituated mostly by white people, I might slightly prefer light skin to dark skin and so on. But these results say that I’m unwilling or unable to recognize that I do slightly prefer African American and darker skin to European American and lighter skin colour after all. I’m not sure if this is totally accurate. I wonder if I could test the reliability of these tests by doing them again? They might give the same results or perhaps not, seeing I now know what the tests are going to be like and doing them again wouldn’t be the same as doing them the first time. Just based on these results I somehow doubt the validity of these tests seeing the results were so different to what I expected them to be. Then again, the results aren’t very dramatic and I seem to only slightly prefer dark skin and African American so the tests might truly be accurate.
Perhaps these results are only a part of the unpredictability and the lack of “the classical cycle” of competition, conflict, accommodation and assimilation. In his article “A Societal Theory of Race and Ethnic Relations” Stanley Lieberson talks about how different ethnic groups when, in a way, forced into interaction and contact result in different kinds of situations. He says that “groups differ in the conditions necessary for maintaining their respective social orders”. When the conditions are different is also the process of assimilation or conflict different. The process of the type of interaction depends on not only the existing political, social and economic institutions but also on the status of the migrant population compared to the status of the indigenous people; weather contact involves subordination of an indigenous population by a migrant group or subordination of a migrant population by indigenous group. So, as we have come to realize before, race is socially constructed. I also think, especially after reading the article by Lieberson, that the race means a lot of different things to different people in different societies and in different ethnic groups. Race is socially constructed and it is renewed in all the situations that concern race. And when different ethnic groups come together race is again redefined as a sum of the parts of the existing situation that is never the same twice. Perhaps our preferences and prejudices differ more than we thought? At least my preferences according to the IAT-tests really surprised me and got me to thinking, weather I truly know what my preferences are. Maybe these results reveal more about my unconscio
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My preferences concerning skin colour and race are quite balanced. The IAT suggests that I have little to no preference between dark skin and light skin and also little to no automatic preference between African American and European American. In contrast to this the IAT suggest that I have a moderate automatic preference for other people compared to Arab people. This was very surprising because I never had the feeling that the general panic about Arabs could infect or influence me and I also never made bad private experiences with Arab people. The only explanation I have for myself is that I had some difficulties during the test to assign the names correctly to Arabs or no Arabs. This is also a point I would criticize on the test. It is very depending on your abilities to classify items. All the more I was positively surprised about the other results. I think the reason for this are first to find in my childhood. I grew up in a very rural area with nearly no black community. So I could collect neither positive nor negative experience. All I learned about Blacks was from the Cosby Show which imparted me a picture of black people’s lifestyle and behaviour that differed not very much to my own or rather people around me. My parents and my teachers supported this picture Of course I had also real contact to black people and these were mostly positive. It took a long time until I came in contact with the negative stereotype about Blacks and I have never really believed in them. So in general I would say preferences to a race or a skin colour is dependent of your own background, what you were taught by your parents or teachers for example and also your own experiences are very important for your picture of the environment. In my opinion the IAT does not really reflect the irrefutable truth. As many psychologist criticize the intern validity is not very high. The ability to change tasks is decisive for the results but in reality not constant (independent variables are for example age or cognitive resources) and can even be intentionally or unintentionally influenced by the subject to get the desirable result (Social-Desirability-Response-Set and which results I wish to get). It is also possible that the reaction time is not dependent of like and dislike but of the grade of the familiarity of the item. For me there was also an other problem: the language. I am not sure if the test does work if you make it not in your mother tongue, because you need some time (just a split of a second) to translate the English word. So the association implicit effect might be gone. Otherwise I tried one of the test (a little bit modified) also in German and it brought the same result. But is this an evidence? This problem occurs also in connection with the reliability. I took the Race IAT two times under nearly same circumstances and it brought the same results. But this is just one case. I am very interested in the experience the others made!
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My results from the IAT test were that I had a slight preference for darker skin tones over lighters skin tones, Arab Muslims over other people, and people of African over people of European origin. I feel that my personal results are more or less accurate. I grew up in a very culturally diverse area of South Florida and my parents fostered no biases or prejudices in me. In high school I travelled to South and Central America, as well as East Africa and gained an appreciation for cultures completely different from my own. I currently attend the University of Miami which is one of the most ethnically diverse schools in the country. Many of my friends at home are of a different ethnic origin such as African American, Hispanic, or Indian. The city of Miami itself is made up of 60% immigrants. For these reasons and more, I think that my results more or less reflect the way I really feel, but I believe it to be mostly coincidence that my results came back that way. To me the test was elementary and easily manipulated. After the first time I took the tests, it was clear to me how they work. They want you to match negative words with darker skin tones, Africans, and Arab-Muslims so that they can create statistics that say most people are somewhat racist. I think that simple things such as being right or left handed, or eye hand coordination, can have a considerable effect on people’s results. Also, once you figure out how the test works, (which isn’t hard) all you have to do is purposefully mismatch words to faces in order to manipulate your results. Despite my dislike for the test itself however, I think that the overall results are not entirely inaccurate. But this is not necessarily because people are racist or harbor prejudices against black people or Arab Muslims. People gravitate towards familiarity. What is familiar is safe, what is familiar makes people comfortable and happy. It is largely because of this that there are areas in big cities where different races and cultural groups live together, particularly immigrant populations. In many cases it has less to do with racism and intentional segregation that it has to do with a simple desire to be surrounded by familiarity. This is not to say that people don’t have unfair biases against people of different skin colors, in fact much of the world would do well to learn and understand more about different cultures as well as mix with different races in every day life. However, the idea of comfort in familiarity helps to explain how people can have an automatic preference for one group of people without necessarily being a racist, and I think that this idea has a lot to do with the test results.
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Before I started the IAT I thought about how my preferences might turn out, because I already knew the way it works. And, to be honest, I supposed them to be somehow racist because I know all the stereotypes and prejudices against Blacks and Arab-Muslims whereas I hardly know Blacks and Arab-Muslims in daily life. It doesn´t make me happy but thats how the IAT works.
So, finally, I went through the test and was surprised. I have indeed automatic preferences for White and Other People according to Blacks and Arab-Muslims, but these preferences are "only" slight. And I believe that they can be explained, as one of my fellow students already wrote, by my socialization in Germany. I had three "German-Turks" (their families were in Germany in the third generation, I don´t know if you can call them "Turk" and define them as foreigner any longer) in my class during my whole school history and none of my classmates was Black. So I never really socialized with people with darker skin and from different cultures. A second explanation might be some language problems. I knew all the good words, but had some struggle with the bad ones. But this problem disappeared after a while...
On the other hand I had a strong automatic preference for Dark Skin compared to Light skin and I have to admit: I was surprised again. I know that I always try to be unprejudiced towards all people but I also know, that human mind tends to stereotype and categorize groups and situations which do not come across them often in daily life, and so I thought results will be the same as in the two tests before. But maybe this can be explained as written in the Drake excerpt. Many white people like black skin and the other way around. There is this fascination and maybe "positive stereotyping" we know about people with darker skin, too.
To speak about reliability concerning the IAT I´m not sure about that. I already knew the procedure, did one one year before and once understood it can easily be fooled. Secondly there was the language barrier and, even more important, the IAT operates by stress and implicit reactions. But exactly this situation tends to provoke simplifying structures of cogitations as stereotypes and categories.
To sum it up: I don´t want to make excuses for my results, but I think it is once again no matter of how we score in an IAT but how we try to overcome these preferences every day and in every social situation. If we think about this, stereotypes will be not more than a mind-discharge in stressful situations.
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I just took the IAT-Test and it was really interesting. My results showed that i have a slight preference for Arab Muslims, light skin and European Americans.
These results didnt surprise me. I know that I dont think different of people with light or dark skin, I can actually say that I´d prefer darker skin. But here in Germany most people are white and not many people with a darker skin live here. There weren´t even any other than white students in kindergarten, elementary school or high school. That is different from France or the U.S. where many african americans or french live. So when I´m going to a grocery store and I see a black father with his son then they´re more salient and I will remember them longer than any other strangers. I am actually from Berlin and there live even more muslims or turks then here in Mannheim. You travel with them every day in the same train and so I´m used to them and I dont differ them from other people. I can explain these results but I still have to admit that it is kind of disappointing to know that I am still thinking in stereotypes even though they are automatic. I already knew before taking the IAT-tests how they work, even though I´ve never done it before. Maybe that also influenced my scores because I might be trying harder to do the right thing. So I think the results are valid, but I can´t be sure.
I, for myself am trying to treat and think of everyone equally and since I am little my parents taught me that you never should judge people by their appearance.
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My results of the Implicit Association Test left me thinking for a while. I consider myself a person without any specific preference towards people and I treat everyone the same way. Then why did my results state that I have a moderate automatic preference for light skin compared to dark skin people, or a moderate automatic preference for European American compared to African American. These results, with the exception of the Arab Muslim test, which stated that I have little to no automatic preference between Arabs Muslims and other people, made me question many things.
Before anything I questioned the validity and reliability of my test results. I believe the results are affected by the persons´s knowledge of how the test works, the test taker concentration level, mood, and many other variables, but at the end the results seem to show some unconscious preferences of each person. I probably have these preferences due to my level of familiarity with one race over another, or the exposure to many stereotypes of each race.
Although my results do not determine how I treat or interact with different people they do somewhat bring to light some of my unconscious preferences, which I am not pleased with.
As an immigrant myself, it is very easy to observe and be part of the conflicts and assimilations that take place in the relation of races cycle described by Stanley Lieberson´s article "A Societal Theory of Race and Ethnic Relations". Lieberson also describes the two types of ethnic relations, as either "Indigenous Superordination" or "Migrant superordination". Hence, as a Peruvian immigrating to The U.S. "Indigenous Superordinatiion" would describe my race and ethnic relations. Thus, I agree with Staleny when he states that when populations migrate to situations of subordination, the immigrant has the capacity and willingness "to become an integral part of the on-going social order" (909).Also as he explains the "subordinate migrant group is under pressure to assimilate" (910). This assimilation process varies in difficulty for each ethnic group and for each individual, but as the reading states such assimilation comes mostly after conflicts and culture clashes. It Is the culture clash that was the hardest part for me personally and it is the stereotypes that one ethnic group holds over another that make the assimilation of one culture with another much harder. Thus, realizing that my test results are affected by the stereotypes that I hold of each race, makes me feel upset.
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My feedback concerning the IAT suggests little to no automatic preference between Dark Skin and Light Skin, a moderate automatic preference for Arab-Muslims compared to Other People and a moderate automatic preference for African American compared to European American.
In my opinion it’s hard to explain these preferences since this test has been criticized from many sides (- compare the following question). Of course, however, you can try to find explanations for why you have achieved a certain result In my case it is conspicuous that all tests that have been performed show mostly an automatic preference to “non-Caucasian”-categories. I think this is very surprising if you pay attention to my European being. Until now, I spent my whole life in Europe and mostly in small towns. Correspondingly, I just have had sporadically contacts to people with dark skin or African Americans. Hence, I guess my “preferences” – if they’re really existent – were rather formed by my environment (parents, teachers, literature or other media) than by personal experiences.
However, the positive discrimination seems to be marginal and considered as whole I suppose, the results perhaps demonstrate something like an “over compensation” or an “over political correctness”? Whose roots can maybe located in my petit bourgeois (german) socialization which is also conditioned by history, first and foremost the National Socialism and its refurbishment.
As already noted above, you have to discuss the validity and reliability of the results of the test. You have to ask what the IAT is measuring. As far as I can remember it only quantifies differences of response time between the categorization of various stimuli. From my point of view it’s questionable if genuine preferences can be measured like this, so I doubt it’s valid. Further, I don’t know whether the test results are reproducible and, thus, reliable. I did the “Race-IAT” a few months ago and the result was the same – but that’s just one example and truly not representative. Furthermore, you have to consider that we have done the test in a foreign language. I suppose this fact also influences the response time as well as potential avocation.
In addition, I envisage that previous knowledge about the operating mode of the test can lead to manipulate the experiment - consciously or unconsciously? Thus, “social desirability” which is intended to be cut off in the test, is going to be “restarted”.
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After the Test I show little to know no automatic preference between other people and Arab Muslims but I do have a moderare preference for African American compared to Eurpean American. On the other hand the test suggested a moderate automatic prefernce for light skin compared to dark skin. Regarding the last two results, I was honestly suprised because in my eyes they contradict. However, I had a strong friendship to an african american in the states, which might has influenced my thinking and feeling toward african american. I am not suprised that I prefer light skin over dark skin. I was socialized in a "white" environment. Light skin people are familiar to me and most people prefer the known to the unknown.
The Arab Muslim Test results didn´t suprise me. The oriental culture facinates me and I never felt unconfortable among muslims. Mannheim has its own muslim culture, we all profit from.
I learned about the IAT test before in a social psychology class so I was familiar with it and see the test as a valid an reliable instrument of meassure. However, I noticed about myself that I did not have any images of Black people or arab muslims in my head doing the test. I was more concerned trying to get a system in my tabbing. This might be another explantation for my mixed results.
I do believe that most germans have prejudices but they are not "institutionalized" as it is in countries like africa, where europeans tried to force their law, their institutions on the indigenious people who had no choice than to surrender or to fight. In europe, the governments finnally understood that immigrants belong to our society and that we need them. This has an affect how immigrants are welcomed and integrated into society. althought we still habe many problems to face integration gets more and more institutionalised and as Lieberson said: I is a huge difference if people get in contact with other ethnicies out of own will or if they are forced to.
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My data in the IAT- test were all the same, saying I have little or no automatic preferences between other people and Arabic-Muslims, African American and European American, dark skin and light skin. To be honest I was a bit surprised that I got these results, not because I have any prejudices against any of those groups but simply because I did not trust the test. I also study psychology, so I heard several times of this test, knew how it worked and even tested it about a year ago. Probably I was influenced while doing the test by this previous knowledge. I actually expected the test would rather measure socially shaped associations then individual ones. Therefore I expected to have some preferences concerning to light skinned people as I am a white European. I spent some time overseas in different countries and became friends with a lot of people with different ethnicities but anyway, I spend most of my live in Germany with other white Germans, so I actually thought this would influence my results. Another critical factor concerning the IAT is the phenomena of priming. I remember from some former studies that people had preferences towards white or black people depending on photos of famous black or white actors which they looked at before doing the test. So maybe even my not existing preferences are a result of some priming. I spent the weekend in Barcelona which is a pretty international city with lots of different people and ethnicities. Don’t get me wrong, I do not believe that I am in any case xenophobic or racist but I know that stereotypes are a result of the society we live in and appear automatically depending on several factors, like shortage of time, which I experienced while doing the test. Finally I want to criticize the difficulty for me as an European to distinguish between the Arabic and American names. Neither the one nor the other was quite familiar to me, expect few names. So I am wondering whether I would receive the same results when doing the test again with German and with Arabic names.
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My results in the implicit association test were the following: a slight automatic preference for Arab Muslims compared to other people; little to no automatic preference between African American and European American; moderate automatic preferences for dark skin compared to light skin.
There are probably different factors which influenced my results but I’m not sure which ones have really an explanatory value.
I took a test like that before which probably influenced my results. Furthermore I thought and talked about the test before I took it in class and also with a couple of friends. I’m very concious about racism, xenophobia, antisemitism or sexism and I’m doing a lot of political work against that which could also influence the test. Before I started I wanted to reach no differences in my preferences between different groups of people because that would be my political ideal.
If somebody takes this test the first time and without knowing about the “idea” behind it and how it measures our preferences, I would consider the test as valid, because it can show automatic associations which people have in their minds. As we for example saw in the “ a girl like me” video, already small children have spesific ideas and images about “white” and “black” people in their head which influences their lifes. In this video we saw a small child who was supposed to choose between a “white” and a “coloured” doll and the child also answered questions like “which one is ugly and which one is pretty; which one is like you etc.”. The answers were quite shocking and showed the early presence of negativ associations with “black” skin colour.
Most societies are full of stereotypes and images about different social groups. I would claim that nobody is free from this stereotypes and images because everybody is socialized with them. I would als state that we don’t live in a “political correct society” in Germany where this stereotypes are not important anymore. For example a range of opinion polls show that more then 30% of the German society has a racist attitudes toward foreign people.
I’m sure if I would have taken this test without knowing how it works I would had also much “unnicer” results because I’m also socialized with a lot of racist stereotypes.
The question is if it is possible to conclude from the test results to attitudes which people have. I think it would be important to distinguish between socialized associations and actual attitudes because people can have the images in their head but they don’t have to believe them. I would still suspect a strong correlation between the test results and attitudes of a person.
The problem of the test seems to be more the reliability. When a person already took the test and knows the results he or she could be motivated to change the results in further tests and they could figure out how it works. But I’m not really informed about the results of reliability testing.
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My results of the Implicit Association Tests displayed a weak automatic preference for Whites compared to Blacks. In the same way the results showed a weak preference for Lighter Skin Tone compared to Darker Skin Tone. The third IAT pointed to a moderate preference for Other People compared to Arab-Muslims.
I think I have these preferences concerning race and skin color because I am “a product of my age”. So I am socialized with the societial “cultural knowledge” of ethnicity: common ethnic prejudices and vertical ranges of different ethnicities a society build up. In the lecture we sum up these points (amongst others) as the “social construction of race”. I think another aspect is frequency. During my whole life my social environment has been predominated by so called Whites and people with lighter skin tones – my “in-groups” can be characterized in this way, too. Consequently my whole systems of (cognitive) categorization, heuristics (and so on) have much more detail information about “Whites” (related to the ascriptive dimension of skin color). So the other way round there is an (un-)consious ignorance (absence of knowledge) to the (cognitive , more or less unconscious) “out-group” of poeple with darker skin tone.
Stanley Lieberson´s article “Theory of Race and Ethnic Relations” (1961) underlines the social construction of race through the “migrants-indigenous” and “superordinate-subordinate” group distinction. Also he emphasizes the groups´ distribution among each other related to the exclusive power of defining as well to the authority to act.
I have known the principle of the IAT before (it is discussed in Social Psychology) so I do know that an IAT is a rather well, valid and reliable measuring instrument, generally. But there are also a few problems and potential biases, e.g. through language barriers, previous knowledge and previous IAT-practices, current mood, individual “bio-rhythm” (early riser versus late riser) and measuring times et cetera.
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