There are a lot of characteristics that differ between all of us, like race, political affiliation, and even favorite color, but one thing that is present in all of us are biases. According to the Oxford Dictionary, biases are “prejudices [either] in favor of or against a particular person, thing or group compared to another” and arise from social interactions and personal experiences.
I am currently in a psychology and gender class, and as an assignment I had to take two Implicit Association Tests or IATs. The tests come from Harvard’s Project Implicit, which aims to bring awareness to the attitudes or beliefs that we hold and may not be able to recognize. The two tests that I took were “Gender-Science” and “Sexuality” but there are several other tests available such as “Disability” and “Race”.
The “Gender-Science” IAT results suggested that I associated men with science and women with liberal arts. Next, the “Sexuality” IAT suggested that I favored heterosexuality over homosexuality. Both were really surprising to me because 1) I am a woman pursuing a career in science, and 2) I believe that people should be able to openly love whomever they want.
However, I now have to acknowledge that I have some underlying biases that I think are due to societal “norms” and practices. As surprising as my results were, the experience did force me to think a bit more about how I think about others and how I treat other people. I really urge you to take at least one IAT to uncover some biases that you may hold.
If all of us took a little more time to reflect on how we act and how we are perceived by the world, it would promote a much healthier and more peaceful environment. If you are interested in taking an IAT or just want to learn more about Project Implicit, visit implicit.harvard.edu. Sources: http://www.tolerance.org/supplement/test-yourself-hidden-bias https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/