Does Race Affect Your Vote?

It is well known that people don’t always ‘speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology.

The study presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods. This new method is called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short.

I took the test not knowing what to expect and it was straightforward. I was told that I have, "a moderate automatic preference for White people over Black people and a moderate automatic preference for Barack Obama over John McCain." I am not sure what that really means but, oh well.

The test claims:

"The tasks that you tried attempts to assess how strongly you associate the concept "Good" with presidential candidates and racial groups. The assumption of the task is that it should be easier to categorize the words and pictures if the two "focal" groups are associated in your memory.

A majority of respondents find it easier to categorize Good words and images of White people together compared to categorize Good words and images of Black people.

In the domain of political preference, Democrats may find it easier to sort Barack Obama images and Good words together, whereas Republicans might be faster sorting John McCain images and Good words together.

Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic associations may be described as ‘slight’, ‘moderate’, ‘strong’, or ‘little to no preference or difference in association’.

How implicit associations affect our judgments and behaviors is not well understood and may be influenced by a number of variables. As such, the score should serve as an opportunity for self-reflection, not as a definitive assessment of your implicit thoughts or feelings."

If you are intrested in knowing how race affects your views on the election then check out Project Implicit conducted by Harvard University.