What was your experience like completing the Implicit Association Tests? Did you feel stressed? Anxious? What were your thoughts while reading your results? Were you surprised? Upset? Or, were your results what you expected? Taking the Implicit Association Tests requested made me feel anxious and uncomfortable. I'm familiar with these types of tests and having that knowledge alone made participating in them unsettling. My results were not too surprising to me though they definitely are a good reminder of implicit association and bias. For example, almost two years ago my home was broken to and one of the men identified via fingerprints in the crime was a young black man. After learning that information I found myself more suspicious of black men walking in my neighborhood. While I worked through the event with a therapist, it was unsettling to me to have that bias and consciously recognize it for what it was. I try hard to overcome implicit biases that I've been socialized with but it is more of a conscious effort than I think most individuals recognize.
