Project Implicit: Do You Really Think What You Think You Think?

Today, I am really feeling the love for New Scientist magazine. NS is a cutting-edge science publication out of the U.K. featuring breaking discoveries and opinions on all sorts of intriguing topics, from technology to biology to physics. It seems like in every issue, there's something that leads me to think, hmmm, if that's true, then what about this? What might this suggest about that other thing?

For a recreational thinker like me, NS is like a big box of Godiva chocolate truffles. Yum!

Unfortunately for me, the weekly publication comes a bit too fast-and-furious for me to keep up, so every so often I visit the website and browse the content there, just to see what strikes my fancy. Last night I used my subscriber ID to read a very cool article called Mind Tricks: Six Ways to Explore Your Brain by Graham Lawton. Thanks to this article, I was sucked down the rabbit hole until 2 am.

Lawton's article was innocent enough, full of "that's cool!" and "no way!" results that you can get from brain experiments, such as how the brain fills in gaps in information, sometimes with amazing accuracy. Yeah, that's cool, but you'll be thinking 'no way' when you find out how your brain can be tricked into thinking that a rubber hand is your very own.

The most fascinating part for me was about how we hold implicit assumptions that may, in fact, be contrary to our conscious beliefs. For example, we may believe that it is wrong to be prejudiced against a certain group. And yet, at the same time, our subconscious may be operating on implicit assumptions about that group - assumptions that our conscious mind would find completely at odds with its beliefs.

Ya gotta wonder - or, at least, I do - what assumptions are you holding? Well, lucky us, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, we have a chance to find out!

You see, the good researchers at Harvard University have set up Project Implicit to analyze and explore our implicit assumptions about a huge array of topics. Through online testing of reaction times and accuracy when sorting words and images, they know how to reveal just what your subconscious associations really are on a specific topic.

For example, say they are exploring how we associate the old vs. the young. They start out by showing you close-up photos of old faces and young faces. Throughout the test you have two keys to press, one which sorts into the left category and the other into the right. In sort of a calibration round, you identify which photo is young and which is old, one after another. Next, you are shown words that you sort into categories of good and bad. These are words like agony, joy, happy, painful, glee, and tragedy. None of the words are ambiguous; is straightforward which would be considered good and which would be bad. (Well, unless you are into pain, in which case it is YOUR fault for skewing results!)

After this you've sorted each set of information alone, they start combining the categories. For example, now you may be sorting both old faces and good words to the left, and young faces and bad words to the right. (Or any combination of that). So for this round, if you see an old face, it goes left, if you see the word failure, it goes right, and so on. Another round will mix it up again.

The deal is, though, that you are supposed to go fast, with the assumption that you probably will get some wrong and that's okay. Even with mistakes, the test is able to detect the ease with which you make certain associations over others. There's no time to mull things over or strategize; you have to keep moving.

Within ten minutes, it's over. You are asked some multiple choice questions about your beliefs relating to this topic and then you are told what the test revealed about you. You also get to see how your responses compare with others tested in a convenient bar chart. I am guessing it's not uncommon for your results to be different from what you expected.

For the young vs. old test, my test showed a "moderate automatic preference for old compared to young." In my case, kind of expected this, because I have an admittedly strange fondness for shopping at the drugstore mid-day on Tuesday, which is when all the older people shop for senior discount day. I just like to hang out with them. What I didn't know, though, was that my response jived with a mere 2% of the population tested! A full 30% of people show a strong automatic preference for young compared to old.

Gosh, explains a lot about our society, doesn't it?

Because I registered for ongoing research testing (yeah, and I always did extra credit in school, what's your point?) the tests were presented to me randomly rather than having me select them. The ones I took measured the following associations and automatic preferences:

• White Americans and Black Americans with harmless objects vs. weapons
• Asian-Americans and European-Americans with 'foreign' or 'American.'
• Native Americans and White Americans with 'foreign' or 'American.'
• Automatic preferences toward abled vs. disabled persons, gay vs. straight, Judaism vs. other religions, Arab Muslims vs. other people, and lucky or unlucky people

Some of that was pretty controversial stuff and I confess I found the tests a bit stressful. I was sure they'd reveal horrible things I didn't know about myself. After all, my culture is undeniably prejudiced - how can I grow up in that and escape unscathed?

But even though I was nervous, I found that taking the tests was a lot like eating potato chips. I'd keep glancing at the clock and saying, "okay, just one more..." as I'd poise my fingers over the E and I keys. Finally, at 2 am I knew I was tired and had to call it a night, or I'd start revealing that I was prejudiced against everyone alive and had an automatic preference for nobody.

So, what did I learn about myself? Other than the fact that I'm a test junkie, I'm not sure. In general, I tended to indicate a preference or association that reflected a small percentage of the tested population. To me, Asian Americans and Native Americans were American while European-Americans and White Americans were foreign. (I'm white, of European descent.) I was just okie-dokie with Judaism and Arab Muslims. I warmed to unlucky people. I didn't see how skin color and weapons related. And the test showed me as neutral on abled vs. disabled.

Not what I expected. Given that I still assume I must have secret prejudices hidden deep inside me, I think my results are attributable to one of the following:

• My ability to use my stunning IQ and spy-like response times to trump test instruments and make them say what I want them to say
• Having watched way too much Underdog as a kid, which programmed me to always root for the persecuted group!

Quite honestly, I'm betting on the Underdog theory.

Okay, so you want to try this out, too? Oh, please do, and let me know what you find out! You can take a demonstration test at Project Implicit or do like I did and register to participate in the research so you can stay up all night analyzing yourself.

But if all that sounds just too intellectual given the way your day is going, I recommend that you find out what color crayon you are, instead.

I'm red, just in case you were wondering. ;-)

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