For this assignment, I am reflecting on my experience with the IAT test, as well as the video by Binna Kandola. For the tests, I partook in the Gender – Career test, as well as the Arab Muslims one. Those two test the degree to which I am biased towards one group or ideology over another. My results for the tests weren’t entirely unsurprising. For the Gender – Career it measured the degree to which I associate Male/Female with Career/Family. The results show that I moderately associate males with careers and females with family. I believe this is to be expected given that I see this commonly in my environment and country in general.

The previous image shows the average results for people in the Gender-Career test. The highest majority in this case would be the moderate association, and the distribution spreads out from there in a normal curve fashion. Although, I may have concerns about the test, the results themselves are worth expanding on. It is true that around the world this ideology exists; partly because of the classical belief that men provide, while women stay at home. But there has been a push against this lately, and this can be clearly shown in how women represent a much larger sector of the workforce than they used to. The real issue would exist if the beliefs shown in the image above weren’t just a reflection of the current state of the world, but also influencing the future. Women are not being given the right chances because someone’s beliefs get in the way of them being fair, or men evading their duty towards their family; such circumstances would be the real issue. Of course, this test only measures the bias, and not the degree by which people act with it, however, there is no denying that there are people that may oppose women in careers or men evading their role in families. I also find it interesting that the common phrase is always referred to in such a manner that, women are not given the chance such that it is out of their control, while men evade their family roles. Almost to say, it is only the men’s fault.

The other test I partook in was the Arab-Mulsim test measuring the degree to which I associate with Arab Muslims over others in general. Given that I am an Arab and a Muslim, I expected to associate more with them than not. Naturally, I found the result to be that I have a strong preference for Arab Muslims over others. This is a natural result, given that the massive majority of my community are Arab Muslims. That is not to say that I don’t like or have any ill feelings toward non-Arab Muslims.

The previous image is the common distribution and results of the IAT for this test. Unlike the Gender – Career test, the distribution is far more balanced. This would make sense as Muslim Arabs have spread around the world, and most countries have them, so it would be astonishing if more people swayed against them due to not knowing any. I also don’t believe that attempting to force the distribution further towards the no association zone is preferential, and rather that this distribution is as good as it gets. Instead, it is not the preference that matters, but the acts based on which that may not be just. This is particularly true for people in power. Preference is a choice, and there should be no reason to judge people based on which, however for instance if someone were to hire or fire someone based on said preferences that would be unacceptable. This naturally goes both ways, whether that is an Arab Muslim preferentially treating another since they are also an Arab Muslim or a non-arab Muslim negatively treating an Arab Muslim.

Expanding on both of these topics can be very difficult in one essay. Both topics are very complex and can be elaborated on across many pages. However, another concern of mine has to do with the validity of the IAT test. The idea of the test is to ask the test taker to press buttons associating words with their categories. The hope is that under the speed of the test, people’s natural instincts show. Perhaps the speed by which one picks answers can also be an indicator. The issue arises in two points: one is the language barrier, and two is the lack of value in the results. The language is in English, however at such a speed, only what people are accustomed to shows which is different from the instinct and bias. For example, I would pick arab names faster as I am more used to seeing rather than non-arab names since they are less familiar to me. This is different from saying that I dislike or do not prefer non-Arabs or even that I prefer Arabs. Similar to male vs female names as they were mostly western, and thus unfamiliar to me. The other factor is the degree of relevance to bias this test has. The test only shows an association relation, which doesn’t particularly translate into bias. Associations could naturally arise due to one’s upbringing or the environment one lives in. However, if one associates then no issues arise. As such, the lack of drawable conclusions from the test result is a major flaw. Furthermore, the test asked some general questions about where you think you lie on the test results scale. One would expect that these last few questions should have little to no effect on the results: saying I don’t or do associate may be a lie and the actual test is expected to be more accurate. I would have liked to test this idea a bit more, though difficult to test, where I repeat the exact same answers and hopefully with similar speed, yet provide a different response in the last few questions. Aiming to see if the test is a scam relying on those few questions, or actually relying on the speed and validity of the response. Lastly, most physiology tests tend to be far more expressive and ask the users to respond after careful thinking. This test, on the other hand, only relies on one idea of speed and accuracy with little to show for one’s beliefs. As such I would expect this test to be less decisive than other more renowned tests usually are.

In terms of the video by Binna Kandola, I found much of what he said relating to things I have researched before. In a physiology course I took in the past, I learned that humans tend to see not what’s there, but what they want to be there. Our brain naturally fills in the gaps and attempts to cluster information so as to avoid overworking since there is a lot of information around us. Such mechanisms are there to help humans. However, the issue would be the underlying ideas that shape our thoughts and lead our brains to fill in the gaps as such. If the ideas are flawed, then correspondingly our brain sees a flawed reality. It is rather difficult to change one’s ideologies, however acting rationally to ensure end results aren’t biased is something everyone should aim to ensure.