ABSTRACT

And then, of course, there is me. How do I fit into all this? It is one thing testing other people and hypothesising about the implications of all of this; it is a different matter when you put yourself under the microscope. What uncomfortable truths might lie here in terms of my underlying attitude? Project Implicit had already suggested that I was moderately rather than strongly biased in terms of race, but I could deal with this negative result in terms of what I see as the methodological shortcomings of that particular test and the odd images that the test used. And then again it was only a ‘moderate’ rather than a ‘strong’ bias, less pronounced, perhaps less to worry about, more likely to change when the methodological flaws are ironed out. But how would I fare on the new ethnic IAT, with fewer of these obvious methodological issues to protect me? This is an important issue especially because I feel that there may be good psychological reasons, from my own past, why I display the particular strong bias that I do seem to have (the weight bias that has already been picked up). In other words, I seem to be giving some credence to any such results by trying to make personal explanations for them.