Activity 2.5

I took an IAT on race, on sexuality, and one on weight. I have some issues with the way the one on sexuality was created but I really thought the IAT on race was really interesting. For the IAT on race, I was first told a story about an apocalypse and then shown pictures of people who were my friends and allies who were also black. After this, I was given the IAT. I thought perhaps that I'd have to recognize these people later because I've read research that says you are able to recognize individuals of your own race better so I really studied them. Clearly, this was a priming activity and I wondered how strong of an effect it had on my results. While completing the IAT on weight I considered how the effects would be different for plain negative words like “angry” versus words that are frequently associated with being overweight like “lazy.”

I believe, as James states, that “the more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more of our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work” (James, 1983, p. 34). If we are able to turn over some of our thinking to habit it frees our mind to add on to those bases and continue to learn and think about more difficult and complex things. Gladwell discusses how though this implicit learning can be negative “sometimes we’re better off if our mind makes the decision for us.” Most importantly, these associations that we make throughout our life might dictate our behavior Gladwell, James, and the video with Alan Alda all let us know that just because the learning might be outside of consciousness does not mean it is outside of our control. Therefore, our future behavior is changeable and within our ability to modify.