PO: I love to love equally

I, like many others, am opinionated. I know where I stand on a multitude of issues and I am aware of my attitude toward a specific concept. My attitude can sometimes be “on the fence,” but for the most part, I have a positive or negative reaction to a stimulus whether that is a person, object or idea (Ajzen, 2001). Well, at least I think I know my attitudes.

I have a desire to be unbiased and fair to individuals around me, yet I may have implicit, unconscious and unintentional, negative or positive attitudes toward one group that in turn, may influence how I act and feel about them. This concept, known as implicit racism (and implicit attitude) can have profound effects (Eberhardt et al, 2006).

In an attempt to measure and detect how much implicit racism I may have, I decided to take the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT was designed by Anthony Greenwald and others (1998) in order to measure covertly, implicit attitudes and inner unconscious thoughts. The tests measure the association between to subjects. In the case of the Dark Skinned-Light Skinned IAT, the test is measuring an association of “good” and “bad” with “dark skin” and “light skin” (Greenwald et al., 1998). This specific skin tone IAT test takes about ten minutes and asks the participant in different blocks to first sort pictures of light skinned and dark skinned people as quickly as possible and then to sort words into good and bad categories as quickly as possible. Once these two blocks are complete, the pictures and words are paired together. After this block, the pairings are switched. It has been found that people are faster at categorizing liked pictures with liked, positive words and individuals are also faster in sorting disliked pictures with more negative descriptors (Greenwald et al. 1998).

I took the aforementioned skin tone IAT. The results of the skin tone IAT suggested that I have a slight automatic preference for light skin compared to dark skin. This score, when compared with those of others is common. It reveals my own, unconscious tendency to prefer someone of a light skin tone. Consciously, I believe myself to have no greater association between any one particular group, but these results suggest that my unconscious attitude does hold some implicit bias. I hope that my behaviors and attitudes, aren’t affected by these implicit attitudes, but I can recognize that being aware of my unintentional preference, will help me diminish my implicit attitude. I can also recognize that this slight preference for light skinned people may be do to my own status in this group. Light skinned tone is my ingroup and I may show some tendency to discriminate, unintentionally, in favor of my own social group, known as ingroup favoritism (Capozza & Brown, 2000). I do believe in the accuracy of this test and my association, but I also know that knowledge and awareness of the unknown can help me change my unconscious attitudes. Though, these results are slightly discomforting, I know that my desire and attitude to love all people equally will help override this implicit attitude in my actions.

I also decided to take the Sexuality IAT that measures a preference for straight or gay people. I, once again, expected to show no preference for either group; if anything, I expected to show some favoritism for heterosexuals, my own ingroup. Surprisingly, I have a moderate automatic preference for gay people compared to straight people. To be honest, I’m not too surprised. I am a Catholic Christian in the United States, but despite that fact that my religion and my country discriminate strongly against homosexuals, I tend to avoid and fight against this form of (and all forms of) discrimination and injustice. I, like many others, have a goal to not be prejudiced towards those different from me (Brodish & Devine, 2005; Sommers & Norton, 2006). As a result, I am sure, as this sexuality IAT suggests, that I create the opposite bias: I am low in prejudice toward gay men and lesbian women and may show a bias toward stereotype disconfirmation when gaining information about homosexuals (Wyer, 2004). My close friendships with many gay people, may also lead to this implicit preference of gay people.

In an attempt to change my results for the sexuality IAT, I took the sexuality IAT a second time. This second time around, I spent a couple of minutes familiarizing myself with the good and bad category vocabulary words. I also associated the straight and gay vocabulary with names of close friends corresponding to that orientation. In completing these changes, I was able to change my IAT results. My second results suggested little to no automatic preference between straight and gay people. I was glad to see, that with some effort, I could change my implicit attitude. It gives me reason to hope that I will treat all human beings equally, regardless their sexual orientation, skin tone, race, religion and many other aspects of our individual identity.

The IAT did make me think about my stereotypes and implicit prejudices and I’m glad to know, as I mentioned previously, that with knowledge, time, effort and motivation I can reduced my negative implicit attitudes and live out my life with respect and love for all.


I love to love equally. I have friends of different shapes and colors and I love them all the same (I even love Susie, who has eyes made of carrots and a mouth made of cranberries)



Ajzen, I. (2001). Nature and operation of attitudes. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 27-58

Brodish, A. B., & Devine, P.G. (2005). The dynamics of prejudice, stereotyping, and intergroup relations: Intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. Social Psychological Review, 7, 54-70.

Capozza, D., & Brown, R. (2000). Social identity processes: Trends in theory and research. London: Sage.

Eberhardt, J.L, Davies, P.G., Purdie-Vaughns, V.J., & Johnson, S.L. (2006). Perceived stereotypicality of black defendants predicts capital-sentencing outcomes. Psychological Science, 17, 383-386.

Greenwald, A.G., McGhee, D.E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicity cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.

Sommers, S. R., & Norton, M.I. (2006). Lay theories about white racists: What constitutes racism (and what doesn’t). Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 9, 117-138.

Wyer, N.A. (2004 ). Not all stereotypic biases are created equal: Evidence for a stereotype disconfirmation bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 706-720.