Social Psychology (was Re: Reader sexism)

[dumbledad]

--- "Laura Ingalls Huntley" wrote:
> I have taken these tests before, and while I appreciate the
> message this website is trying to put out, I can't help but 
> feel that their methods of testing for "unconscious bias" are 
> a little..well, sketchy.

Hi All,

Well off topic now ...

I don't really agree with Laura's criticisms, but I'm no social 
psychologist so who knows. Anyway here are my thoughts on Laura's 
points

1) It's not scientific. 
The Social Psychologists I work with are very scientific (maybee too 
much sometimes). The science behind the particular implicit attitude 
experiments we're talking about is referenced from 
http://www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/tutorials/06.html

2) They just give "inconclusive" rather than negative results.
I think they give positive, inconclusive, and negative results. 
Since they are testing the difference inreaction time between an 
implicit response and a rationalised response one way to `trick' the 
test is to count to three before responding to each question. Hence 
when they detect consistently ponderous responses they have to give 
an `inconclusive' result. They may ere on the side of false 
positives for this category.

3) The training session biasses the result.
I'd be surprised if the pictures and questions used in the training 
sessions weren't randomized. The social psychologists I work with go 
out of their way to do that in experimental set-up. Did you compare 
the tutorial phase with others who had logged in from different PCs?


          Cheers,


           Tim.