Sexist? Who? Me?

            The Implicit Association Test (IAT) assesses individual’s unconscious and unintentional stereotypes (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998).  To do this, the IAT measures how quickly the individual pairs different constructs with their respective cultural stereotypes (e.g., females and family-related words; Project Implicit, 2011).  For example, to detect implicit racism, the test would first present faces of African-Americans and of European-Americans.  The individual must “sort” the faces into two categories: Black and White.  Next, the individual would sort Black faces and “good” words (e.g., joy, love wonderful) into one category and White faces and “bad” words (e.g., agony, terrible, horrible).  Then, the good and bad words would switch, so the individual would sort Black faces and bad words into one category and White faces and good words into the other.  The program would then compare how quickly the individual paired good words with either Black or White faces.  If the individual sorted good words paired with White faces more quickly than good words with Black faces, then that individual is said to have an implicit preference for White faces.  The associations can be labeled, “no association,” “slight association,” “moderate association,” or “strong association” (Project Implicit, 2011). Take the IAT here!  

            I took the two Gender IATs (i.e., Gender- Career and Gender- Science), which tested my association of both genders with either careers or family and either science or liberal arts.  I was surprised by my results.  For the Career IAT, I slightly associated men with career words and women with family words.  The results for the Science IAT were even more surprising: I strongly associated women with the sciences more and men with the liberal arts. 

I admit that I was a little disappointed in my results; I thought that I was not sexist!  I was less surprised by the results to the Gender & Careers IAT.  I think that I was socialized (from media, teachers, peers, etc.) to associate women with family words and men with career words.  For example, my parents gave me Barbie dolls, whereas they gave my brother toy cars.  Nevertheless, I thought that I no longer associated women with family words and men with careers words.  Yet, it appears that I am still affected by the culture in which we live, given that 76% of people who took this IAT made the same association (Project Implicit, 2011).

            I was more surprised by the Genders & Sciences IAT. I think my results were driven by two things.  First, I took the Genders & Careers IAT before the Sciences IAT.  After receiving results implying that I had some sexist stereotypes, I think I may have unconsciously tried to prove that I was not sexist, thereby giving much more weight to associating women in the sciences.  Second, I am currently pursuing a major in Biology (in addition to my major in Psychology).  One of the Biology classes that I am in this semester has one male student and previous Biology classes have had very few male students, in relation to female students.  Although the gender ratios can probably be attributed to the broader university gender ratio (60 women: 40 men), perhaps I now associate women more with Biology (or sciences in general) just as a matter of the number of women biologists with whom I interact daily, illustrating the contact hypothesis.  The contact hypothesis states that direct contact between two groups will reduce prejudice (Allport, 1954).  Because I do not interact with as many male biologists, I have more gender prejudice against associating men with science. 

  

            Completing the IAT made me realize that I am probably more influenced by media and our culture more than I would like. Obviously, I would prefer to have no associations between gender and careers or science because women and men should have equal opportunity to compete in the sciences (whether or not that is actually the case is a different story!). Nevertheless, I only slightly associated women with family words and men with career words; thus, there is hope that I may be able to eventually overcome this association!

References

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in 

     implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social 

     Psychology, 74(6), 1464-1480.

Project Implicit (2011). About the IAT. Retrieved from:     

     https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/iatdetails.html