race and gender tests - extra credit

Laura Garner
Ed Psych
Dr. Suzy Cox
December 7, 2008

Blog on race and Gender test
My results:
Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for European American compared to African American.

Your data suggest a moderate association of Male with CAREER and Female with FAMILY compared to Female with CAREER and Male with FAMILY.

Hahaha – these tests were a joke! To say that because I wasn’t fast enough with the hand / eye coordination that I was biased against African Americans or associated men with career and women with family was ludicrous. The answers for race said I slightly favored whites over blacks but I didn’t want to associate either race with good or bad and the test didn’t give me an option. I know there are both good AND bad in each race. With the gender test, if I wanted to associate another concept with male or female and family or career the answer was wrong. For example, I wanted to associate family with career and it didn’t fly. So with both tests, as soon as I figured out what answers were wanted it became, not an association of race or gender with how I perceive things, but a hand / eye coordination game to see how fast I could get the answer that was expected. It had nothing to do with my true feelings about race or gender

The quickness of my answers was also affected by the fact that my right hand is quicker than my left, so that when the categories were reversed, my left hand responses were slower.

That said, I would probably have a slight preference for European Americans because of the demographics of where I live, not because I feel either race is bad or good. This compares with the majority of people who took the race test. My feelings about career and gender depend on the family situation and the decisions couples make for their individual situations. I know the choices my husband and I made and that has worked for us. For others it might be different but I wouldn’t judge their choices. My ‘moderate’ association for men and careers went along with only 15% of the test takers.