Submitted by mac on 20 December, 2006 - 12:27.
Many (if not all) of the people involved in the struggle against discrimination are aware that "everybody has stereotypes" (by the way... this might be a sterotype of mines!).
Anyhow, have you ever wished to measure how strong your stereotypes are?
Harward University is currently carrying on a world-wide study called "project implicit". This project aims to measure how strong you do implicit associations between certain social categories (black, old, Jewish, Arab people...) and other items (negative attitudes, weapons, feeling of danger...).
The website background section provide extensive, simple and clear explanation of how the Implicit Association Test (IAT) works, and on what are its possible limits, so I will cut the long story short and simply quote this:
[There is a distinction] "between purposely hiding something from others and unconsciously hiding something from yourself. The Implicit Association Test makes it possible to penetrate both of these types of hiding. The IAT measures implicit attitudes and beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report."
All that I can say is that for me its results were rather surprising, and that it was easier for me to take the test until I read how the test works...
