The Demographic and IAT Study
Christiana I. Orji
@02642493
Dr. Jamie Barden
Hoard University

Gaertner and McLaughin (1983) conducted a study by using a word association task to assess the relativity racial terms and positive and negative words. For example, racial terms like black and white, and positive or negative words like friendly, mean, lazy, or dumb. To conduct the research effectively, Gaertner & McLaughlin paired a variety of words together, which were shown on a computer screen. The participants in their study had to decide in a timely fashion if the words that were paired were real words or not real words. For instance, such words like white/friendly, black/rude, black/ambitious were paired to test the association of race and positive or negative adjectives. As a result of their study, Gaertner and McLaughlin (1983) found that African American stereotypic words were categorized words more quickly when they were paired with the group label “black” than the label “white”. However, participants responded faster when positive words were paired with the label “white” than the label “black”.
For this study, the two research questions were as follows: Do individual’s responses on self-report measures align with their performance on the Implicit Associations Test? How do the individual’s responses align with a group pof undergraduate college students? Before conducting research for the Demographics and IAT Questions study, I wrote down two possible hypotheses in response to the research questions: based on the study conducted by Gaertner & McLaughin (1983), the individual responses on self-report measures align with their performances on the Implicit Association. The individual responses align with a group of undergraduate college students by their gender and preferences.
29 Experimental Psychology students (25 females, 4 males) were selected to participate in the study. Among the sample, there were 3 freshmen, 15 sophomores, 10 juniors and 1 senior. The average age among the students was 20. Two versions of the Implicit Association Test was administered The paper-and-pencil version of the Implicit Association Test is used in the event that computer administration is unavailable or not necessary. In this version, stimuli are listed in the center of each page of the test, with two categories, (usually positive and negative adjectives), one category on each side of the page. This version is timed, but can cause participants to make mistakes on their responses. The online version of the Implicit Association Test is more commonly used to conduct research. Participants are given a certain amount of time to categorize two target terms with an attribute such that easier pairings. The focus is to find out if certain pairs of words are more strongly associated in the participant’s memory than more difficult pairings. To further conduct this study, a web link was sent to each student. That web link led to a questionnaire, which each student was advised to complete by a certain date before midnight. After completing the questionnaire, each student completed two online IATs (Implicit Association Tests), specifically Skin-tone and Gender-Science.