Reflection on the video: “Day of Learning 2013 – Binna Kandola: Diffusing Bias”

A few things stood out to me while watching the video. Firstly, when he mentioned at the beginning that people can’t be unbiased, we are just aware of it or not. This made me realize that maybe I’m not as judgmental as I think because I hold myself accountable for my behavior with people, but it is true that if I felt I wasn’t, nothing would have made me reconsider how I act. Another thing was when he said that to prevent bias, it is already good enough to tell ourselves not to judge before meeting people. I thought that it would be useless to do that since it has to come from within, but the speaker (Binna Kandola) made me realize that it could be useful as a reminder. Lastly, he said at the end that some people have a phobia of buttons, but that this phobia doesn’t reflect anything wrong with the buttons but with the person fearing them. This shows that before being so quick to be biased against someone, we should look at ourselves first by self-reflecting on our perceptions.

Source of the IAT tests: https://www.projectimplicithealth.com/selectiat_desktop.html

I chose “Eating shame IAT: Do you implicitly associate eating high-fat food with shame?” and “Loneliness IAT: Do you implicitly associate yourself with being lonely or socially supported?”

Test 1 results:

“You have completed the Eating Implicit Association Test (IAT).

Your implicit association may be described as “weak”, “moderate”, “strong”, or “equal”. This indicates the strength of your implicit association.

Here is your result:

Your data indicate what we call a moderate automatic association between Shameful and High-fat Food and Acceptable and Low-fat food.

You received this result because you were moderately faster to respond when “Shameful” + “High-fat Food” and “Acceptable” + “Low-fat food” were paired together than when “Acceptable” + “High-fat Food” and “Shameful” + “Low-fat food” were paired together.”

I honestly was surprised by this result because I thought I worried about food more than average. However, it is true that it doesn’t affect my food choices that much, so I understand my result came out moderate.

Test 2 results:

“You have completed the Loneliness Brief Implicit Association Test
(BIAT – patent pending).

Your implicit association may be described as “weak”, “moderate”, “strong”, or “equal”. This indicates the strength of your implicit association.

Here is your result:

You were equally fast to respond when “self” was paired with “Supported” as when “self” was paired with “Lonely.”

We call this an equal implicit association between self and Supported and Lonely.”

For this test, I feel that the result is accurate. I sometimes feel lonely, but it is true that if I really need someone to help me, there are always a few people in mind whom I could reach out to.

Research on the credibility of IATs:

According to an article published by the National Institute of Health in 2021, “IATs have only modest reliability.”. After researching, I now understand that IATs are useful for measuring unconscious associations or biases. However, these tests don’t take into consideration the fact that results vary depending on the situation (results may vary because of mood or recent experiences, for example). Since they don’t take in consideration all outside factors that may influence results, the test can only be considered partly reliable. IATs can be considered partly credible as well because they do reveal general biases, but they shouldn’t be relied on for predicting specific individual behaviors.