Name: _____________________________________
Course: ____________________ Section: ______ Professor: _____________________
York College Research Pool – Alternative Assignment
Gender Bias in the Media Assignment
General Instruction: This is a research pool alternative project. Alternative projects are not to
be done to meet your research pool participation requirement. Alternative projects are to
be done only if you have ethical concerns which prevent you from participating in one (or
more) of the research pool studies. If you have these ethical concerns, please inform your
instructor that you will not be participating in the research pool, but you will instead be
completing the alternative projects. Each alternative project is equal to participation in one
research pool study. Please print out this sheet, follow the instructions and turn it into the
research pool coordinator’s office (Room 4E-06) before Friday of the 10th week of the
semester.
For this alternative project, you will examine the concept of implicit attitudes by reading
about implicit attitudes and then taking several tests of your implicit attitudes on the web.
Academic Integrity Information
This is an individual project. Thus, students cannot help each other with this
assignment. The data about your IAT results and the answers to the questions must
represent your original cannot be copied from another source, such as another
student.
Instances of students making up fictitious data or copying data or answers from other
students will be taken very seriously. Such cases will be reported to the students’
course instructors.
Test #1
People have implicit associations with a variety of things. By implicit, we mean that people
are not aware that they have (or are exhibiting) those associations. To complete this project,
you will need access to the web with a computer that can support Java applets. Computers
in the library generally cannot run these tests, but computers in the computer lab (2E03) can.
Some home computers will be fine, but you may need to use a computer on campus so plan
accordingly. Go to the following web site:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit//demo/
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After reading the information, click on “go to demonstration tests”
Choose one of the implicit association tests: Age IAT, Sexuality IAT, or Race IAT
Follow the instructions and take the test
When the test is over, record your results. You will see something like this:
You have completed the Old-Young IAT.
The line immediately below summarizes the results of your task performance.
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Young relative to Old
Which IAT test did you take? (circle one)
Age IAT
Sexuality IAT
Race IAT
What were your results [these appear in the beige box (“Your data suggest a slight automatic
preference for Young relative to Old”).]
Read General FAQ answers to questions #1, #2 & #3
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/faqs.html
What is an 'implicit' attitude?
What is an 'implicit' stereotype?
Test #2
Besides the three tests mentioned above, there are 11 other tests. Look at the list of tests
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html
and choose a test that has a personal interest to you. Take it.
Which test did you take?
Briefly describe your personal interest in this topic.
What were your results [these appear in the beige box (“Your data suggest a slight automatic
preference for Young relative to Old”).]
Does this finding surprise you, considering your personal relationship to the topic? Why or
why not?
Test #3
Read General FAQ answers to questions #6, #7 & #8
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/faqs.html
How does the IAT measure implicit attitudes?
In this step you are going to retake the test you took in step #1 (if you took the Old-Young,
take it again). This time, we would like you to try to fake a different score for this test. If, in
step #1, you had a preference for young over old, then try to reverse it and try to fake on the
test that you have a strong preference for old over young!
In step #1 I took the ____________ IAT and scored ________________.
In this step, I will take the same IAT and attempt to score as _____________________.
Based upon what you read in the FAQ, how will you attempt to fake _______?
What were your results [these appear in the beige box (“Your data suggest a slight automatic
preference for Young relative to Old”).]
Were you successful in trying to fake? Why or why not?
Use the FAQ to answer the following questions:
Why do many Americans show automatic preference for White over Black?
If my IAT shows automatic White preference, does that mean that I'm prejudiced?
Please Answer the following questions:
Give your textbook’s definition of an independent variable.
Give your textbook’s definition of a dependent variable.
Give you textbook’s definition of an experiment and observational study.
Experiment
Observational Study
Let’s create an experiment to test whether or not people can consistently fake the IAT
test. 10 students are told to truthfully answer the Race IAT test and 10 students are told
to fake the Race IAT test. Then all 20 students take the Race IAT and we record their
results. The independent variable in this study would be what?
What would be the dependent variable in this study?
To receive credit for the alternative project, you will need to correctly and fully
complete the datasheet and the summary sheet and turn it into the research pool
coordinator’s office (Room 4E-06) before Friday of the 10th week of the semester.