Male.......Female

.....John.....

.....Bob......

.....Amy......

.....Holly....

.....Joan.....

.....Derek....

.....Peggy....

.....Jason....

.....Lisa.....

.....Matt.....

.....Sarah....

That was easy, right? And the reason that was easy is that when we read or hear the name “John” or “Bob” or “Holly,” we don’t even have to think about whether it’s a masculine or a feminine name. We all have a strong prior association between a first name like John and the male gender, or a name like Lisa and things female.

That was a warm-up. Now let’s complete an actual IAT. It works like the warm-up, except that now I’m going to mix two entirely separate categories together. Once again, put a check mark to either the right or the left of each word, in the category to which it belongs.

Male or Career....Female or Family

....................Lisa..........................

....................Matt..........................

....................Laundry.......................

....................Entrepreneur..................

....................John..........................

....................Merchant......................

....................Bob...........................

....................Capitalist....................

....................Holly.........................

....................Joan..........................

....................Home..........................

....................Corporation...................

....................Siblings......................

....................Peggy.........................

....................Jason.........................

....................Kitchen.......................

....................Housework.....................

....................Parents.......................

....................Sarah.........................

....................Derek.........................

My guess is that most of you found that a little harder, but that you were still pretty fast at putting the words into the right categories. Now try this:

Male or Career......Female or Family

...............Babies..............

...............Sarah...............

...............Derek...............

...............Merchant............

...............Employment..........

...............John................

...............Bob.................

...............Holly...............

...............Domestic............

...............Entrepreneur........

...............Office..............

...............Joan................

...............Peggy...............

...............Cousins.............

...............Grandparents........

...............Jason...............

...............Home................

...............Lisa................

...............Corporation.........

...............Matt................

Did you notice the difference? This test was quite a bit harder than the one before it, wasn’t it? If you are like most people, it took you a little longer to put the word “Entrepreneur” into the “Career” category when “Career” was paired with “Female” than when “Career” was paired with “Male.” That’s because most of us have much stronger mental associations between maleness and career-oriented concepts than we do between femaleness and ideas related to careers. “Male” and “Capitalist” go together in our minds a lot like “John” and “Male” did. But when the category is “Male or Family,” we have to stop and think—even if it’s only for a few hundred milliseconds—before we decide what to do with a word like “Merchant.”

When psychologists administer the IAT, they usually don’t use paper and pencil tests like the ones I’ve just given you. Most of the time, they do it on a computer. The words are flashed on the screen one at a time, and if a given word belongs in the left-hand column, you hit the letter e, and if the word belongs in the right-hand column, you hit the letter i. The advantage of doing the IAT on a computer is that the responses are measurable down to the millisecond, and those measurements are used in assigning the test taker’s score. So, for example, if it took you a little bit longer to complete part two of the Work/Family IAT than it did part one, we would say that you have a moderate association between men and the workforce. If it took you a lot longer to complete part two, we’d say that when it comes to the workforce, you have a strong automatic male association.

One of the reasons that the IAT has become so popular in recent years as a research tool is that the effects it is measuring are not subtle; as those of you who felt yourself slowing down on the second half of the Work/Family IAT above can attest, the IAT is the kind of tool that hits you over the head with its conclusions. “When there’s a strong prior association, people answer in between four hundred and six hundred milliseconds,” says Greenwald. “When there isn’t, they might take two hundred to three hundred milliseconds longer than that—which in the realm of these kinds of effects is huge. One of my cognitive psychologist colleagues described this as an effect you can measure with a sundial.”

If you’d like to try a computerized IAT, you can go to www.implicit.harvard.edu. There you’ll find several tests, including the most famous of all the IATs, the Race IAT. I’ve taken the Race IAT on many occasions, and the result always leaves me feeling a bit creepy. At the beginning of the test, you are asked what your attitudes toward blacks and whites are. I answered, as I am sure most of you would, that I think of the races as equal. Then comes the test. You’re encouraged to complete it quickly. First comes the warm-up. A series of pictures of faces flash on the screen. When you see a black face, you press e and put it in the left-hand category. When you see a white face, you press i and put it in the right-hand category. It’s blink, blink, blink: I didn’t have to think at all. Then comes part one.

European American.....African American

........or Bad...............or Good

And so on. Immediately, something strange happened to me. The task of putting the words and faces in the right categories suddenly became more difficult. I found myself slowing down. I had to think. Sometimes I assigned something to one category when I really meant to assign it to the other category. I was trying as hard as I could, and in the back of my mind was a growing sense of mortification. Why was I having such trouble when I had to put a word like “Glorious” or “Wonderful” into the “Good” category when “Good” was paired with “African American” or when I had to put the word “Evil” into the “Bad” category when “Bad” was paired with “European American”? Then came part two. This time the categories were reversed.

European American.....African American

........or Good..............or Bad

And so on. Now my mortification grew still further. Now I was having no trouble at all.

Evil? African American or Bad.

Hurt? African American or Bad.

Wonderful? European American or Good.