BLOG#3

Title: Can We Really Measure Implicit Bias? Maybe Not. 

Date: 5 January 2017

URL: http://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Implicit/238807 

Summary: 

Implicit bias or unconscious bias is a concept of thinking that we have, or a preference for a certain type of people or groups, without any conscious knowledge. The implicit Association Test (IAT) is one of those popular tools that catch people's attention and circulate widely since its first published in 1998. In fact, the IAT has been published in website, online, and millions of people wanted to try it on. The test measured and explained the implicit bias that you have. As facts, the IAT’s purpose is that it assesses how people think toward certain types of people, that work with human brain and behaviour, normally the test consists of ‘good words’ and also ‘bad words’, it can also include two certain things and appeared of  ‘blacks and bad word’ and ‘white and good word’. 

One of the psychologists, Blanton Hart, who stated that the IAT was unclear, had inadequate evidence and untrustworthy, so he came up with his findings. During his research, the correlation between unconscious bias and biased behaviors has been debated, the testing was not effectively measured and provide the accuracy of biases. The IAT just only tracks the number of mistakes and measures the speed that we take on each question, it’s uncanny, he said. He also claimed that IAT cannot predict itself, then how it is supposed to predict biases? However, Greenwald and Banaji disagreed on Blanton's points and they intended to report back on Blanton’s mistakes over time. Apart from that, Forsher, who considered to think beyond the IAT problems and implied that we should focus on the root of discrimination and how to combat them, not how IAT could cause biased behaviors. 

Response: 

Personally speaking, first I don't think that I am racist, prejudiced or biased against a certain group of people, I think I have an egalitarian approach to everybody equally (First assumption). However, after I took the test, the result came to me that I am more biased against thin people than fat people. I think this test help me to uncover those unconscious biases for some reasons, but still need more proof that am I really that bias towards a fat person? do I need to take multiple times to make it clear?. As I said, personally the IAT test might tell something about an individual, even though the testing does not know more about our everyday life, but I believe that it tells us something, that I don't really know (sounds mysterious hah!). I also believed that behaviour prediction is much more complex than is it, so I think the IAT won’t fully influence individual’s behaviors. 

Question: 

How to avoid for being resulted as implicit biases/prejudiced? How can the IAT measure whether we are biased or not? Do I need to take IAT multiple times to ensure the accuracy of results? and how many times should I take that might be effective enough?