I took the implicit test on mental illness and found that I had moderate automatic association with mental illness and danger and physical illness and harmlessness. I was both surprised and not surprised by these results. On one hand, I was raised my whole life not to view mentally ill people as dangerous. My mom spent years volunteering at a mental health home and working with mentally ill patients, and the lessons and ideals she took from that she taught to me. On the other hand, I grew up in an era of mass shootings where the culprit was often mentally ill, which almost certainly influenced my implicit view of them. I do my best to continue my mom’s ideals, and I don’t automatically assume mentally ill people are dangerous or that its unsafe to be around them, but at the same time I wasn’t surprised by these results.

Hoyt’s piece on the implicit biases that work against women is highly representative of the world we live in. When she discusses how stereotypes against women contrast with the stereotypes of leaders, this is most evident. Implicit biases that leaders should be white and male have forever dominated our society. In recent weeks, I have found this to be extremely clear within the democratic primary. Passionate female politicians are frequently called stubborn, angry, and argumentative. When they actively try to work against these stereotypes, they are thought to be weak and overly idealist. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar have faced plenty of criticism of this nature, and it is certainly not all coming from individuals aware of their policies. Females wishing to lead the country always face this paradox as a direct result of implicit leadership biases. They are discriminated against in this way, and such an obstacle is extremely difficult to overcome. I personally believe that once a female wins the presidency, these biases will gradually fade, but until then, women face an unfortunately difficult uphill battle.

In this first part of this piece, the author classifies people who say “I know these stereotypes quite well, but I don’t for a moment endorse them”. I related this back to the last article we read about mindbugs in the way that it is important to recognize the implicit biases one has but to also control them. Similarly, the article mentioned IAT tests. The author stated that the constant unintentional propaganda such as commercials, stories, and jokes is what propels many people’s unintentional biases, even if they don’t consciously hold these harmful views. Similarly, the self-defeating stereotypes are a product of societies views on specific groups that one is a part of.

Another thing about the mindbug experiments that stood out to me was when the author talked about the test takers  “total lack of awareness that the gender of the name played any role in their decision about fame”. I am curious how to hold people accountable for their biases and these mindbug tests that can come off as insensitive even though they don’t know the implications of their actions. I for one would be nervous to take a test like this in front of a group of people. Then again, I took the Black Americans/ Harmful Weapons test they mentioned and revealed no correlation.

In my IAT test, I found that I had a strong automatic association between Shameful and High-fat Food and Acceptable and Low-fat food. I do not find this information surprising to me because I am a health nut who enjoys fitness, healthy foods/clean eating, and living a healthy lifestyle. However, after craving junk food such as Oreos, ice cream, or any type of dessert I feel somewhat upset at myself for giving into a weakness like that. After eating junk food I do not feel as physically alert/awake as opposed to when I eat healthy food. In addition, my performance in athletics also drops when I put unhealthy food into my body. There is of course nothing wrong with indulging yourself in unhealthy food every once in a while but when I eat it too often is when I start to get upset with myself and try to deny those cravings.

In the Hoyt & Murphy reading it discussed in depth what stereotype threat is and the effects that stereotype threat has on people. Stereotype Threat is a situation in which they feel at risk of falling into stereotypes about their in-group. The example that was discussed in depth in this reading was that of which black men were distributed a test by a while male and they were told that blacks typically do worse on these types of assessments as opposed to whites. When they told them this they performed much worse. Whereas when they were not told this information they performed much better on the test because they did not want to fall into the trap. Another example of this. Another example of this was shown at a STEM event in which the event discussed how masculine traits would foster more success in this field/how it was a male-dominated field.  What they found is that many women dropped out of the program/felt discouraged to attend the event or enter into a STEM field. This also plays into this idea of implicit biases in which you have unconscious feelings towards a specific gender, race, or ethnicity. In positions of leadership, there is an implicit bias against women and implicit bias for men because leadership roles are associated with masculine traits that most men possess.

The Names study the authors tested in the reading was particularly interesting as it revealed how men’s names were more likely to be viewed as famous than women’s names. I actually watched a video about a month ago on directing movies, where they noted that while we can often list plenty of famous male directors with ease, even coming up with five famous female directors is a challenge for most people. This discrepancy is common across the board of many famous careers, though in the case of directos is a combination of stereotypes found in the study and the fact that there are less big name female directors.

I was surprised by the results of the inference test. I know that everyone has inferences but I was shocked that it also included me. I think that moving forward I need to be cognisant of  how I am thinking and processing information. I think that these are helpful tools that allow us to have eye opening moments with ourselves for reflection.

Stereotypes create blindness. The case study of the woman who wasn’t examined for a blood test shows how stereotypes create deadly biases. A similar study led by Dan Battey has found that white teachers in majority-black classrooms have more negative behavior than white teachers in majority-white classrooms and black teachers in either majority white or black classrooms (Battey et al., 2018). For the study, the researchers observed student-teacher interactions from twenty – five middle schools with three different levels: white teacher and predominantly white class, a black teacher, and predominantly black students and a white teacher and mostly black students. Then they examined the way teachers handled and talked to their students regarding lessons, discipline and day-to-day interactions (Battey et al., 2018). Their results showed that all teachers, despite race, were more likely to discipline bad behavior than to applaud good practice. However, white teachers of black students reprimanded their students four times more likely than the other two groups who were the same race as their students. This behavior though implicit is deadly and blindly behavior. 

Prior to this test, I have taken one or two other IATs, and I have learned about them in-depth in Dr. Hoyt’s 102 class. I was proud of my first IAT, as I was found to have no bias on any side. However, for this test, I received a slight bias towards the more societally “better” group. I expected as such, but I do feel frustrated that I hold this within me. But, considering that I felt like I knew I would have some bias, I can’t help but wonder if I came into the IAT with an explicit, self-fulfilling prophecy type thing. Either way, I know that I need to do better.

I found this reading to be very interesting as I have taken the IAT in a previous leadership course and enjoy this topic. For my IAT test I took the Weight (‘Fat-Thin’ IAT). It required the ability to distinguish faces of people who are obese and people who are thin. It often revealed an automatic preference for thin people relative to fat people which is what my results from my responses suggested. I was not surprised by my results. This may particularly be because fitness and staying in shape is such a huge part of my life and so I already had a feeling going into taking this test that I would have a preference for thin people over fat people.