Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Project Implicit is a research project between scientists/researchers at Harvard University, the University of West Virginia and the University of Washington. The study is full of different test that “explore the unconscious roots of thinking and feeling.”(Implicit Association Test Home) For my interaction, I asked a variety of people to complete the Gender-Career test and/or the Weight test. The Gender-Career test asks the volunteer to choose between a connection with men/career and women/family or men/family and women/career. The basis is to figure out whether or not someone believes women are more family driven than men and vice versa. The Weight test is the same way. The test taker is asked to choose between a fat person’s relation to bad words (ex. horrible, terrible, ugly, etc.) and a skinny person’s relation to good words (ex. happy, pretty, loving, etc.); compared to a skinny person’s relation with bad words and a fat person’s relation to good words. Results can vary between slight, moderate, strong and little to no preference. For the Gender-Career test, my volunteers’ results varied from little to no preference between men and women with a certain “job” and a slight association with women and careers over men and careers. The results of the Weight test was between a moderate preference of thin people to fat people and a little to no preference.


This was a really cool test to me. The people that ended up taking it relayed back to me how hard it actually was based on the way it’s set up and everything. And I completely understand. I took it too and there’s no way to actually describe how they like trick you. The only real option would be to go take one yourself. It’s not as if their goal is to trick, but to more so make you reevaluate in a way. I really like the fact that they have demos for you to try. It’s not one of those things where you have to sign up to get your answers or anything like that. It’s very straightforward and informational. I believe that they are just trying to get the information out there for people to read. However, I don’t really think a large amount of testing will give very much information. Anybody who takes the test is going to have a certain view based on how they’ve grown up, what kind of people they interact with, and even just who they are as a person. So I don’t really think the results are very helpful in a mass majority type of way. Other than that, I would recommend trying a test to anyone who thinks they treat everyone the same. These tests definitely show that there’s more under the surface in your own mind than you may think.

"Implicit Association Test Home." Project Implicit. IAT Corp, n.d. Web. 28 April 2010. .