{"id":42848,"date":"2012-03-20T12:34:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T17:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=42848"},"modified":"2013-11-08T04:46:55","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T09:46:55","slug":"the-stroop-effect-measuring-our-unconscious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/03\/20\/the-stroop-effect-measuring-our-unconscious\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stroop Effect: Measuring Our Unconscious"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How does a scientist measure your unconscious mind? \u00a0It turns out, it can be done. \u00a0With a technique called the Implicit Association Test, psychologists can measure your unconscious beliefs about anything: whether, deep down, you associate Black men with weapons, Asians with foreigners, fat people with laziness, men with science, and more. \u00a0You can test yourself on all manner of implicit beliefs <a href=\"https:\/\/implicit.harvard.edu\/implicit\/demo\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It works by putting a pair of words on each side of a computer screen. Sometimes the pair matches your unconscious mind; like (for most of us, unfortunately) <em>young <\/em>and <em>good<\/em>. \u00a0Sometimes the pair challenges your unconscious mind; like\u00a0(for most of us, unfortunately) <em>old <\/em>and <em>good<\/em>. \u00a0You&#8217;re asked to do a timed test focusing on just one of the pair; we&#8217;re all quicker when the terms match than when they don&#8217;t. \u00a0For more, read up about it <a href=\"https:\/\/implicit.harvard.edu\/implicit\/demo\/background\/faqs.html#faq7\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, it turns out the phenomenon has a name &#8212; the Stroop effect &#8212; and the best illustration of it I&#8217;ve ever seen was featured on <a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2011\/12\/05\/how-to-find-out-if-someone-who.html\" target=\"_blank\">BoingBoing<\/a>. \u00a0It involves colors and color names. For a lifetime, we&#8217;ve been taught to associate certain colors with certain names. Accordingly, our brain fires faster and more confidently when we see the name in the color, compared to when we see the name in an opposing color. \u00a0See for yourself: can you read both lists of colors equally comfortably, un-self-consciously, and quickly?<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/12\/111.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-42849\" title=\"\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/12\/111.png\" width=\"283\" height=\"174\" \/><\/a>Probably not. \u00a0So, for better or worse, scientists see this same effect when they try to get our brains to process paired words like Asian\/American and men\/science. \u00a0The results of these experiments are depressing (both abstractly and often personally when we take the tests ourselves), but it&#8217;s pretty amazing that we&#8217;re able to delve that deeply into the mind with such a simple task.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How does a scientist measure your unconscious mind? \u00a0It turns out, it can be done. \u00a0With a technique called the Implicit Association Test, psychologists can measure your unconscious beliefs about anything: whether, deep down, you associate Black men with weapons, Asians with foreigners, fat people with laziness, men with science, and more. \u00a0You can test [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,274,283,675,37],"class_list":["post-42848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-psychology","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42848"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58436,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42848\/revisions\/58436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}