As I was reading the post prompts, I found the opportunity to test my own unconscious bias/prejudice intriguing. The process for taking the IAT was very straightforward, simply pressing the 'e' or 'i' keys to put given words into designated categories.
While I was reading the description of the test in the textbook, I wondered if it created biases rather than measuring them. After taking it, though, I can see that this would not be the case. I do question whether or not one can truly measure an unconscious prejudice based on the amount of time it takes you to categorize the given words. As the book pointed out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the two, and using the lack of correlation as proof makes the test's hypothesis difficult to falsify.
Below is the screenshot of my test results and a summary of the test itself.
It's very interesting that the test could detect that I preferred the policy option that I did. One might suspect that because the test asks you your preference outright and then uses the categorization to report your preference that it would simply retort back the selection that you clicked as a preference. Because the test is not administered by humans, but by computer instead, I highly doubt that the test is that subjective. I encourage you guys to click the IAT link above and try it yourself. From my understanding, test prompts vary, so you may not get the political policy one.
I doubt the validity of the test as well. When taking it, I couldn't help but wonder if how quick you pair the words is more associated with how you really feel about them or how fast you become habituated to pairing the words they asked you too. When taking tests like that, I feel like it's very possible that people could be taking the meaning out of the words and just focusing on trying to pair the right words together.