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Cultural Pluralism Course At The Harvard Implicit Association Test ( Iat )

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The first assignment in our Cultural Pluralism course was to take part in several individual studies as part of the Harvard Implicit Association Test (IAT). Each of the studies measures a person’s attitudes and beliefs that they may not be willing or unable to express and to write about our experience. For some individuals, taking these types of tests would be possibly a little unsettling. As for myself, I was very sure that I had a strong understanding of who I am and what I believe, so I thought the results would not be very surprising. Since bias can occur at any phase of research, including data collection I allowed the program to randomly choose three individual studies so I could avoid the issue of potential bias by selecting only the ones that I had a personal interest in. Allowing the program to choose would also ensure that I would get my “true” results regarding how I really looked at issues because I wouldn’t have any way of knowing how I would answer the questions prior to the study. The first study measured my automatic association of the concepts “female” and “males” with the concepts of “lead” and “support.” The data suggested that I had a strong automatic association of Male with lead and female with support. No surprise there since I have always association lead or leadership with the males in my life such as my father and husband. They were the strong ones, who directed the family in all matters of importance. My father was the “head” of the household and

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