I'm on vacation

And I just whiled away a pleasant 15 minutes doing the Implicit Association Tests Malcom Gladwell linked on his blog. Gladwell did a lot of research on snap judgement for his book "Blink," and while I often find his conclusions a little glib, the IATs were interesting. They're designed to uncover unconscious prejudices about hot-button topics through some fairly standard psych-test techniques, and if you look at the overall result scores, they certainly seem to succeed.

However, what I found most interesting was that they didn't work for me. I'm not a fool; I know I have unconscious prejudices, ones that fall right into the nasty little traps of a bigoted wider society. I went into those tests expecting to have them showed up, to have to own my shame a little harder, to feel a little more sick at myself. And each of the three tests I took showed that I either am neutral or that I have a slight unconscious prejudice toward the group I know I have a slight unconscious prejudice against.

I wasn't "gaming" the tests and deliberately slowing/speeding my clicks to garner the desired results. So what gives? Can one really become less racist/sexist/homophobic/prejudiced just by wanting desperately to reject the subconscious shit of a divided society? Or do these tests only work if you are not savvy about how the tests work, or not a speed-reader, or not a visual learner, or what?

Curious, anyway.