I Choose Not to be a Racist

I do not think that automatic responses (as we discussed in class on Friday) are an indicator that all our behavior is predetermined.  I understand that we have automatic processes.  I think that these exist in order to help us sort through the massive amounts of data and stimuli that enter our senses and minds every day.  We need these automatic responses in order to sort and respond to information quickly—sometimes these responses are even used to help us in life and death situations when it is imperative that we act without much thinking.  That being said, I believe that we have the capacity as humans to choose not to accept or act upon these automatic responses.  If we know that we are responding due to an automatic thought process, we can make a different choice.

I found the studies that Dr. McAnulty presented to us on Friday to be interesting.  I would like to proffer another example of an automatic response test.  When I was in my social psychology class, we took an implicit association test.  This test is supposed to measure whether a person prefers one race (white or black) to another race.  In this test, the participant has to perform four tasks.  The first task is to identify European American faces or African American faces as quickly as possible.  Secondly, the participant is asked to identify “good” or “bad” words (such as “glorious,” “awful,” etc.).  Next the participant is shown faces and words; “bad” words and African American faces are identified with the same key stroke and “good” words and European American faces are identified with the same key stroke.  Finally, the previous step is reversed.

Every time I have taken this test, I have scored “strongly prefers European Americans.”  If I believed that only automatic or implicit associations informed my actions, I would be very upset.  Instead, I know that I form opinions about people based upon the people individually.  I like African American people and I like white people.  I also dislike some white people and some African American people (although I can think of more white people I dislike than African American people.

If you would like to try out the implicit association test (and I would strongly recommend taking a few minutes to try it out) the link follows.  It only takes a few short minutes and the results are interesting.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1

PS: one of the flaws I find with the test is the order in which things are presented.  First you are asked to associate African Americans with negative words, then, when you are used to that set of information, you are asked to change and associate African Americans with positive words.  I think that the order may influence the test results–but that is just my opinion.