Dissociation–the state in which a person possesses conflicting attitudes, one reflective, the other automatic–is a hard concept for me to wrap my head around. Similar to the mindbugs from the last reading, it is hard to understand that my brain makes decisions and judgements that I do not have control over. However, the mystery behind dissociation makes it all the more important to be aware of. People do not have to endorse racist or sexist ideas to possess them. It is a problem that society must address. Some implicit biases are extremely harmful and potentially deadly, like the black=harmful and the American=white stereotypes that the author talks about.
The Managing to Clear the Air reading delves into specific ways that stereotypes, implicit or explicit, are damaging. If a person feels like they are negatively stereotyped, they are more likely to perform worse or underperform. I learned about this in my 102 class as well; it’s called stereotype threat. There are several other aspects of stereotype effects that are startling. Take, for example, reactant response. It is upsetting to think about a person changing themselves to fit in, then being ostracized in other parts of their life because of it. It is the definition of a lose-lose situation. It is so important to learn about these threats and try to find ways to combat them. I expect that they will be obstacles for me in the future, so I want to be as prepared and aware as possible.
I find the concept of stereotype threat to be so interesting because I would expect the total opposite of it to be true. If I am actively trying not to act in a stereotypical way, I would expect myself to be successful in not fulfilling that stereotype, but since this is not true, it makes me wonder, then how are we supposed to outperform our stereotypes and break them?
I agree, I feel that it is very hard to learn that even when you are trying your hardest not to be stereotyping people in every day life, when you take an IAT test you realize that even though you do not believe in the stereotypes your mind has been conditioned to believe these things. This is very hard for me to deal with because even though I find myself to not believe stereotypes, I have no idea if they are actually ingrained in my mind or not, if I have not taken an IAT test.
I agree with everything you said, I think the idea of reactant response is hard to wrap my head around. There are so many stereotypes in our society that we constantly feel pressure to deal with and conform to. The IAT tests are hard to deal with because they force you to deal with stereotypes in your mind that you may not have known you possessed, but it’s important that we are made aware of them. I hope that if there is more awareness around these problems that we can find ways to combat them.