Test Your Bias! Digital Cultures of the Implicit Association Test, 1998-present

• In Event: Transforming Subjects into Objects

Abstract

This paper explores the entanglement of psychology, statistics, subjectivity, and computation at stake in the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a popular online psychological test that purports to measure implicit racial biases. Created by two cognitive psychologists in the late 1990s, the IAT operates by measuring test-takers’ reaction speed and number of errors as they rapidly associate positive or negative words alongside pictures of white or black faces. Based on their speed and error rate, test-takers receive their results as a statistical category indicating a “strong,” “moderate” or “slight” preference for white or black faces, alongside a chart comparing them to other test-takers—comparative data based on the millions of online visitors. Proponents of the IAT champion it as an empirical, quantitative, and accessible measure of implicit bias that can materialize our hidden biases into conscious awareness, through the aid of algorithmic scoring and statistical tallies. An entire corporate industry of “unconscious bias training” has sprung up around the IAT, while courtrooms have adopted the psychological theory of implicit bias to conceptualize racial discrimination. This paper situates the IAT in the broader history of psychological techniques to assess—and change— racial prejudice, while also contextualizing it in the novel digital culture that makes the IAT possible. In a format akin to a video game, scored using algorithms that calculate latency and error rate, the IAT has created a massive data-gathering infrastructure. Through its easy online availability, the IAT has become a powerful truth-telling technology, generating “data doubles” by which people encounter their own attitudes towards race and racial differences.

Author

• Kira Lussier, University of Toronto Mississauga