One thing I thought was interesting in the reading was how we can have implicit biases against ourselves.  I’ve commented on several posts about having the implicit bias about men and women in the workforce, and although I don’t believe that men are more fit to be working and that women should be caretakers, I also show the implicit bias for this.  I know this is the idea of knowing vs endorsing, but I would call this a type of mindbug because our active brain knows one thing but our passive brain thinks another.  Our same brain is thinking about two different and contradicting thoughts at the same time and sometimes we are not even aware of it.  What makes this mindbug even more of a bug, in my opinion, is that our passive brain can have implicit beliefs that limit ourselves or are harmful to ourselves.  In the example of women and men in the workforce, I wonder how my implicit bias on this subject affects my everyday life and actions.

I took the skin preference test which tests if you have a bias towards light-skinned or dark-skinned people. I thought that mine would be biased towards dark-skinned people since I consider myself to be dark and I prefer dark- skin aesthetically. However, my results say that I have a slight automatic preference for Light Skinned People over Dark Skinned People.

I took the age IAT test and I was not surprised by my results. I got that I have a “moderate automatic preference for young people over old people”. I do not find this surprising because I had a feeling going into taking this test that I would have a preference to young people over old people. I do not think that I respect old people any less than I do young people, in fact, I think that it is the opposite for me. What is interesting to me is the fact that I moderately prefer young people, because the majority of people who took this test strongly prefer young people. I think that I just resonate more with young people and when having to do the fast responses I recognized the young people faster. I think that one reason as to why I prefer young people over old people is the fact that I am just not as exposed to older people in my everyday life. I think that the IAT tests are so interesting because you really do not know what your results are going to be beforehand, because it all comes down to how your brain categorizes the things you are looking at based off of previous experiences and exposure.

I thought the Hoyt & Murphy reading brought up really good points about women in leadership roles that are often left out when we talk about the ways stereotypes impact leaders. The reading explained that female leaders are double-binded by the stereotype threat, “highly communal women are criticized for being deficient leaders, and highly agentic women experience backlash for not being female enough” (Hoyt & Murphy). Female leadership as a concept is not even about leadership styles or the ability to do the job well, it is about being able to survive the stereotype threat. AND most often: underperformance is caused by stereotype-based expectations. The article also pointed out the important link between self-identification and one’s career. When women encounter gender-based stereotype threat, they begin to disengage and/or disidentify with entire professions. This leads to the clearly lacking number of women in leadership positions in fields across the board. Society has really created this perfect storm of discouraging female leadership across the board, creating this weight that leads to underperformance and dissociation, and blaming the woman in the end. I did really like the researchers’ approaches for reducing negative effects of stereotype threat, especially  “making employees, and senior leaders in particular, aware of unconscious biases and unwarranted stereotypes that affect their evaluations of others” (Hoyt & Murphy). This should be applied in workplaces but also schools and universities, and also applied to racial stereotypes as well as gender.

I found this reading to be very interesting, in particular the section about the Male and Career, Female and Family IAT test since that was the IAT test I did. When analyzing the results, the researchers found that 75% of males had a strong automatic association between males with careers and females with families, but what I found even more shocking, was that there was a stronger association for females, as 80% of females had a strong automatic association between males with careers and females with families. (115) I think the findings from the reading demonstrate the power of implicit stereotypes; despite our best intentions to view everyone as equal, there are still underlying societal stereotypes that are ingrained within our minds. While there have been recent societal shifts, with there now being more women than men in the workforce, the vast majority of people still have a strong automatic correlation between males and careers, and more women had this association than men. These shifts in the workforce suggest why the automatic correlation between male and career decreases in younger populations, however, I still find it interesting that more women had this association and I am curious as to why. 

I was fascinated by the correlation between taking my Implicit Bias test and the tests described in the reading. I chose the Female and Family, Male and Career test, and was surprised to find I had a strong automatic association between males with careers and females with families. I suspected I would have a correlation between males and careers but was surprised to find it was as strong as it was. I think our society has ingrained implicit stereotypes within our brain, where we will respect those that are different than us, but still, these stereotypes are embedded in our perceptions of others. Additionally, I questioned the full validity of the results. When conducting the Implicit Bias test, there were 7 trials, and I did recognize that I became faster the more times I pressed the keys. Since the males and careers correlation was the last trial, it made me wonder if I were to take the males and careers component before I took the females and careers component if the association would have been as strong.

I have taken the IAT in previous leadership courses, and for this course I decided to try a new one and take association of Male and Females in Liberal Arts and Sciences. Before I tell you what my result was, I want to explain why I took the test.

I was expecting to have no preference or at least a slight preference for males in liberal arts (which is what society dictates). I went to a STEM Early College high school and earned my Associate’s degree in Engineering. Throughout my time in the engineering, advanced science. and advanced math classes I was the ONLY GIRL in the class about 90% of the time. I had grown used to studying a “male-dominated” field but also hoped I would have developed a stronger mindset by the end of that experience. I had accomplished the same degree as my male counterparts, in addition to leading their robotics team.

My IAT suggested I have a moderate automatic association for Male with Liberal Arts and Female with Science. 🙂 I have spent about 6 years associating females in male-dominated career fields, because I am aware that females do, in fact, have the same skill sets and ability to be successful in these fields as males.

Implicit bias and stereotype is one of my favorite topics I have studied since joining Jepson, so I really enjoyed these readings. I had never read about the distinction between knowing and endorsing, but it made it easier to understand the concept of implicit bias (I wish I had learned it last semester). One thing I was unaware I agreed with was on page 107 when the authors stated, “First, it is well known that people recognize faces from their own racial/ethnic group more easily than other faces.” I never realized that! I began to think and found it applied to all intial group interactions I’ve had. It was easier for me to recognize people of Latinx background when I ran into them again versus non-Latinx. Also, for those intrigued by the pitbull section, watch the show Pitbulls & Parolees on Animal Planet. They do amazing work to rescue this wonderful breed and also work to remove the biases and stereotypes society has of them.

One thing this Blind reading and Hoyt’s reading make me think of was how stereotype threat can be applied to any population in any context. I am currently working with a professor on developing an experiment that will test stereotype threat within heritage speakers of Spanish. Heritage speakers who are 2nd and 3rd generation tend to have higher insecurity of their Spanish compared to those who grew up with it as a first language and are extremely comfortable. We would be interested in studying how this negatively self-stereotyped group is affected by stereotype threat in multiple aspects of their life, especially because “experiencing threats to one’s identity can have wide-ranging and meaningful effects beyond the most studied outcome of academic underperformance” (Hoyt & Murphy 2015)

The implicit bias test I took was on a topic that I see both sides of. It was an example of: my parents believe concept #1, it is a generational view, something that I grew up with so I understand. Concept #2 is generally more popular with my generation and demographic. I believed that since high school with my evolving views that are my own, separate from my parents, I would hold a slightly stronger preference for concept #2 over concept #1. That was not the case, the test showed that I hold a slight bias for #1. This was not the result I was expecting, this surprised me greatly and got me thinking about the power of the environment we grow up in, the way parents unknowingly mold their children. We never talk about where our beliefs came from, we just firmly state “I believe x,” and then fight about it, I feel like it is a huge loss that we, as a society, don’t take the time to breakdown where our beliefs come from. I feel like this would lead to finding more common ground among people and a stronger self-awareness.

I was surprised by my test results.  I have taken two other implicit bias tests in the past which have both given me a bias towards one side that I was testing myself on.  I find these tests very difficult because of my learning differences and have not always thought of them as accurate results for myself because I make so many mistakes throughout the whole test and get very confused when taking them.  However, this was the first time that I got no bias results and had equal implicit association.  This is not to say that I have no implicit biases and maybe my past results have been accurate, I just get so confused during these tests I don’t feel like my results are representative always.