After class I took the IAT test to see how I view religion. The results were was very surprising to me. I am an atheist and I don’t believe in any religion, but I was schooled in Christianity. When I took the test I was very annoyed with the colors, and I honestly don’t understand the purpose of having it in the test but besides that the test went by fairly quickly. The results of the test was that I was most keen to Buddhism (even though all my result where on the deeper end of the scale), which is not surprising since it’s more of a lifestyle than religion. In the middle I paced Islam and Hinduism and all the way at the bottom was Christianity. I found it interesting that I placed the religion that I’m born into as the most disliking of them all. Perhaps it is due to the fact that that is the religion I know the most about?!

I decided to take the IAT today. I chose to do the skin color experiment where it shows whether you have a preference for people with light skin as opposed to people with dark skin.  My results showed that I have an automatic preference for light skin rather than dark skin. This was based on the fact that I responded quicker with association good words when it was paired with light skin faces.  I honestly don’t agree with the results.  When I first took took the exercise it was harder for me to remember which side of the screen was for good and which for bad, and that happened when the word good was paired with dark skin faces.  In the second part of the exercise i had gotten the hang of it, and since all they did was switch sides, it was a lot easier for me to remember.  I know this because I was consciously aware of it while it was happening lol.  All in all, it is an interesting exercise. I would take the other tests just to come up with more reasons why it isn’t accurate lol.

I did the IAT test 2 days ago and I found it interesting how the test is structure. At first it lets you know which words are associated with what category, religion was blue so whatever word that were associated with religion was blue and good was yellow, whatever words were yellow, they associated with good. I took the religion IAT because I wanted to know what it was going to show at the end of the result because in my opinion, I think every religion says the same thing except in a different way. I believe in every religion, it just depends on how people interpret it everyone has there on point of view. The result of my IAT was just i expected it to be, all of the religion were in the middle..1. buddhism 2. hinduism 3. christianity 4. islam. I think all these religions were in the middle because I didn’t make that many mistake. The test was structure to see if a person makes rational decision when they have to make it in the fast situation. I found it interesting that at first when I took my time I didnt make any mistakes and as soon as it asked you have to do it fast I made few mistakes because it gave you everything that were associted with that religion and good and then all of the sudden it gave you words that weren’t associated with good or that religion. Once you started to press on “i” again and again when you saw the words that weren’t asscoaited with good or that religion you would still press on “i” even when you meant to press on “e” and get that wrong, and that’s what happen to me.

I took the same IAT test that Stephanie and Joey took in class and was highly amused; my results showed all four religions (one was Hinduism rather than Buddhism) more or less in the middle of the chart, but Christianity was in the highest place and Buddhism/Islam tied for the lowest. This annoyed me immensely because I am consciously very critical of Christianity and would have said that of the four it is the religion I like least!

I’m not sure what to make of this result. Do I simply disagree with the test and argue that it demonstrated nothing of any relevance about me? Do I agree that the result is meaningful, and therefore question what I consciously think about Christianity? Or does the test mean nothing more than this (and this was a point Stephanie brought up): because I was raised a Christian, the vocabulary of Christianity is familiar to me, even if I disagree with it. Was the test really only revealing the fact that Christian words are slightly more familiar to me than Islamic, Jewish and Hindu terms?

I tend to think that the answer to that last question is yes. Therefore the IAT on religions isn’t actually testing for prejudice or bias against one or another religion, but for familiarity — I’m not anti-Hindu, just less familiar with Hinduism and the terms associated with it. This  justifies the test that was given in the article by Ogunnaike et al.: that test was measuring the ways in which the language one uses affects one’s  perceptions, and in that context,  the degree of familiarity one feels, the degree of community bond, is highly relevant.