Although controversial among psychologists, these little demos are interesting nonetheless.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
Dale
Hell, it’s from Harvard. You are sure not to agree with the results.
I only spent time doing the black vs white test. I found it so generalized in its choices as to leave room for all sorts of possible interpretations. Either you is or you isn’t, and their interpretations couldn’t deal with anything outside of that. It seems I am 27% likely to not care for blacks. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but the game itself was fun to play.
djm
What are warm and cold feelings?
It’s an intriguing model looking at, for lack of a better word, unconscious processes. The results turn on the ease/difficulty with which one processes the pairings of various kinds of “good” and “bad” associations with Blacks vs. Whites, Obama vs. McCain, etc. It’s being challenged by some psychologists because of psychometric problems (how the scores are derived and how labels are assigned to the scores), but not so much the basic concept.
I’m not a qualified anything, but it was pretty obvious from the start of the BvsW game that they were trying to trip you up over the meaning of the words when coupled with the visual images. As soon as I realized they were trying to manipulate me, it was pretty easy to just go with the left/right values and bang them in. The only thing that screwed me up at all was changing the value of the left/right columns halway through the games. That slowed me down a bit and made me create a few mechanical errors. I still don’t know how that can be considered a valid clue as to my feelings on others based on race/ethnicity.
djm
I did a couple (so far). One was where you had to hit the spacebar when they flashed an image of a pokemon on the screen. They were also flashing other images, and various words in type.
Then they asked you to rate different pokemon, as how likeable they are. They expected you to associate according to the words linked to the specific pokemon.
The pokemon I rated as “most likeable” was the one they said they had flashed only with words indicating dislike.
I’m not sure whether they were measuring something different from what they said, whether the test failed absolutely, or if my Aspergers “tunnel-vision” disabled the test for me.
The other, about how you view people with disabilities, gave results that tallied with my initial assessment. Odd. But I’ll try a few more when time permits.
I don’t like the concept. I felt my “video game instincts” kicking in, and I was using different strategies to try to play quicker and more accurately. I can think of many reasons one could play the game differently. Maybe over a large sample, the unconscious impulses they’re looking for predominate. Which I guess is fine, if you use the test as a general interest item, and never apply the results of any one particular test seriously.
That’s a good way to put it. It’s like they are doing a clumsy job of creating a subliminal message with the word/image associations, and then you are supposed to fall for it and vote according to whatever the current word/image assocaitions are tending towards. By giving no personal value to the words or images, just mechanically slotting the game’s pre-arranged values into the right column (game mode) I think you disqualify their “results”.
djm
One thing that I remember from my pop psychology classes at the University is that whites can recognize white faces better than black and the opposite is true. Basically, the people you live around causes you to be able to distinguish more subtle features. Why am I mentioning this? Because if this is about response time, I wonder how they account for all of the other variables. Guess it is time to read the methods.
It seems that I slightly associate whites with weapons over blacks. I have no idea what that means.
Interesting perspective. Actually, I think if you look at the introductory material, there’s no tripping up whatever. As psychology experimental methods go, it’s remarkably transparent. (Most psych studies involve deceptions in premise or method–this one is not at all deceptive.)
The experimental variable here is NOT whether the subject pairs favorable word with this category or that category. In all cases, there’s really no ambiguity at all about the correct response: The right and wrong answer is clear to anyone who takes time to process the item. If the instruction is to put all pictures of Obama AND all “good” words in this category, then there’s really no question about what goes where.
The key is the instruction to work quickly as possible while minimizing errors. That’s supposed to cut down on thinking, revealing more of automated or “unconscious” responses. The variables here are the errors and response time. Do I answer more efficiently (faster and with fewer errors) when I’m forced to associate good words with white people vs. good words with black people, or bad words with white people vs. bad words with black people, etc. And, these are demos and not full research projects. I suspect when they do actual studies, they do longer trials with more permutations to get more reliable results. I paired good words with white people more efficiently, and with thin people. I more efficiently paired science/math terms with men and liberal arts words with women. Interestingly, I didn’t show any difference in gay vs. straight.
But that’s exactly what they’re hoping for. If your conscious mind is so
wrapped up in being fast and accurate, they hope your subconscious
will modify your response times because of certain associations.
I’m surprised when they were no questions about being a gamer when
they were taking the background info.
I agree with djm’s take on this method, completely.
It does feel very manipulative, and, like others, I find that recognizing how they’re trying to get me to make certain stereotypical associations tends to overthink the stupid thing.
It may be a measure more of whether you recognize the system’s categorizing scheme more than an actual gauge of your personal feelings.
Thanks for understanding the concept, even if you don’t like it. I had the same experience, especially after I got the hang of the paradigm. I tried to sort of expand my peripheral vision so I could keep the categories straight. And, I had a little of that joystick-button-finger thing going, too.
But, all said, I think it’s a smart approach.
I don’t get the manipulation concern. Help me.
What’s subliminal about the message? It’s right there on the screen.
Well…maybe I’m just a little p.o.'d that I think it “wants” me to (for example) associate women with family and not career, or associate blacks with weapons or what-have-you. Consequently, because I think it “wants” me to do that, I feel extraordinarily compelled to succeed at doing the exact opposite.
I realize, in laying this out, that if I came from Kerfuffleland, where all social conditions were the exact opposite of what they are in my world, I might be annoyed at the test for exactly the opposite reasons. Consequently, it is likely that what I perceive as manipulation is merely a mind game I’m playing with myself.
Luckily I said it feels manipulative, rather than being so silly as to say it is manipulative. 
Sorry, I don’t know the right words for this. I felt that mixing a bunch of negative words with images of blacks was somehow trying to manipulate me into responding by making errors, while perhaps trying to get me to subconsciously start associating the negative words with the images of blacks. This in turn made me angry with them for being so obvious at trying to distract me from the purely mechanical aspect of lining up positive and negative words (their terms) with inmages of blacks and whites. This is where “gamer mode” kicks in to eliminate the distractions. Does that really create a valid result of my inner values? I think not.
djm
Not to persist too long here, but the protocol for this method is to pair up, for example, blacks with good words and whites with bad words, and then in another data run, blacks with bad words and white with good words. Then reaction time and errors are measured for each combination. So, this manipulation, subliminal something or other, the test “wanting” you to do something…I’m not getting it. Actually, the fact that it seems to generate resentment and maybe a bit of paranoia may be a whole other research project for these guys!
It is simple. You have group A and B. You have a hypothesis that C and D correlate. Show A with C and B with D and gauge the delay because they do not seem to fit in the person’s mind. Then show A with D and B with C and measure the same delay. Using the delay, find which paring the participant is most comfortable with.
It makes huge assumptions, but shows correlations.
It seems that some people noticed one and not the other. In the tests that I saw, everything was reversed and whites were given the same associations as blacks, yet people seem comfortable with one and only notice the associations that they are uncomfortable with instead of being uncomfortable with all of the associations regardless of the “race”.