The IAT Demonstration Tests - Essay Example

My experiences with the IAT demonstration tests were interesting. Although I knew I would probably have a preference for people similar to myself (inage, gender, skin tone and race), I did not necessarily think that this leads to an in built prejudice. This is just something I have assumed from learning about prejudice and the way that we look at the world (we prefer familiar things). In the end, the preference I had expected was only “slight”, which made me happy because apart from the preference of familiar people and things, this suggests I have a high level of tolerance and low level of prejudice.

However, it is hard to know if this actually measures what it says it measures, as the responses were so quick and I made a few mistakes because I got confused about which button corresponded to which category. It was interesting to complete the tests, however, and I am definitely pleased with my results. The Understanding Prejudice links were surprising in a way because it completely categorized every type of prejudice, and it is sometimes hard to remember that there are so many different types in the world.

When I think of prejudice my mind automatically goes to racism and homophobia, but the links about genocide, anti-semitism and stigmatization were definitely interesting. Some of the links about sexism were troubling particularly because this seems to be a type of “hidden” discrimination, as women are generally considered to be equal, but when we really think about it and use the information in the links, this turns out not to be true. It is interesting to see how often homophobia and related prejudice is linked to religion, but this type of attitude is also a type of prejudice (grouping all religious people together) in itself.

Overall, there is a lot of value although I would have liked to have more information about treatment of disabled people, people with mental illness and those from other “sexualities” that were not often mentioned in the links.