«Check your Stereotypes!» Test

The human brain has the habit of allocating things and people to specific categories. By doing that, situations and humans can be assessed better. But because of this so-called «pigeonhole thinking» unconscious prejudices can arise, which can easily lead to discrimination.

The tests of external page«Project Implicit»call_made, designed by scientists of the University of Harvard, Washingtion and Virginia, can help to uncover these unconscious biases. The implicit association test (IAT) measures the extent of unconscious stereotypes by measuring the reaction time needed to allocate different categories. For instance are the participants asked to allocate «Man» or «Woman» with an academic field as «natural sciences» or «social sciences» and «family» or «career».

A working group of the University of Harvard provided a simplified version of the IAT concerning «gender & family/career» and «gender & social/natural sciences» for the interacitve part of the exhibition «Check your Stereotypes!». The tests were conducted at two computer station in the exhibition area. The Downloadevaluation of the IAT (PDF, 301 KB)vertical_align_bottom indicates, that gender stereotype come into effect for men and women participating in our experiment to the same extent. Both groups tend to asociate «career» and «natural sciences» rather with «male» and «family» and «social sciences» rather with «female».

Do you make the same associations? Test yourself!