I decided to take the Implicit Bias Test that measured my implicit bias for exercise. The end result was that I associated exercise with “good,” which is honestly what I figured. However, what surprised me was the word association part that asked me to sort particular words by clicking “i” and “e” on my keyboard. I was supposed to hit “i” if a word reminded me of having to do with exercise and the words “good” and “bad”, and “e” if it didn’t. If I got it wrong, I got a big old red “x” for incorrect. I found myself often hitting “e” when the word “sitting” came up, associating it with bad. This was incorrect, of course, because sitting doesn’t have anything to do with being inherently bad or anything necessarily to do with exercise. It made me realize that I’ve been taught that being still, sitting, and not doing something constantly was automatically “bad” because I was being lazy. I’ve been raised to believe that not doing something is doing something bad, which of course isn’t true and there are plenty of benefits to things like meditation and personal reflection.
Overall, I think the exercise was really interesting. To be honest, I had no idea how the test was going to gauge my bias towards exercise, but after it gave me my results and talked about how it timed me, it all made a lot more sense.
I thought this was a really interesting takeaway on your results from your exercise test. Of the bat, I wouldn’t think of any negative connotations with sitting, but once put into the context of a test regarding exercise, it makes so much sense that you would associate it with being bad. I appreciate that you took the time to think of ways in which sitting is positive, such as meditation or mindfulness, because our society prioritizes cardio exercise as better than other forms of health.
I think this says a lot about our working culture and how much shame can be put on relaxing and giving our bodies space to recharge and be at rest. I remember a few years ago when standing desks became incredibly popular because they optimized blood flow and allowed you to work your muscles while you did your work. Although I can see why this might be helpful, I think that our society should put less emphasis on optimizing every part of our lives to work better and harder.
This is a cool test! I am going to have to check it out. It is also so interesting how sitting can be seen as bad as we often spend a lot of time sitting when it comes to doing work and going about our daily lives.