🚀 go-pugleaf

Anybody here watch Scientific American Frontiers?

I saw something in a recent episode that I thought was a little bit
dodgy. One of their previous episodes actually rebukes it. You can
view the episodes online, so bear with me here. Look at this one
first:

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1302/video/watchonline.htm

Click on "Play Video" under "Why Kids Don't Get It".

The general gist of it is that children have trouble switching over to
different categorization tasks when the rules change on them. The
segment also shows that the same phenomenon is present in adults, but
it takes a little more to fool them. However, when adults are exposed
to very fast paced categorization tests where the rules change on them
they have trouble.

What this shows is that when we get our brain used to handling a
categorization task one way, it becomes hard for it to switch over
quickly to a new way.

Now have a look at this piece:

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1507/video/watchonline.htm

Click on "Play Video" underneath "Hidden Motives Part 2 - Hidden
Prejudice".

The idea that these guys are trying to put forward is that they can
administer these tests that will detect if you have hidden prejudices
or notions dealing with age, race, gender, etc...

They have a website where you can take these tests for yourself here:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/index.jsp

I think if you'd been paying attention during the first video you'd
see immediately that there's a serious flaw with these tests. For
example, I took the age test on their website, this is what they did:

The first two sections of the test were easy enough. They asked me to
categorize pictures of old people and pictures of young people (For
young people I had to choose the left, for old people I had to choose
the right).

Then they asked me to categorize words into categories of "good" and
"bad". Good words were words like "Peace" and "Love", and bad words
were words like "Pain" and "Hate". (For good words I had to choos the
left, for bad words I had to choose the right)

Are you seeing a pattern here yet?

Then, they put them together. They would show either a picture or a
word. If what I was shown was a good word or a young person, I chose
the left. If what I was shown was a bad word or an old person I chose
the right.

So far, not very hard... most people will be getting almost perfect.
But the next part is where it gets difficult.

They switched it up, and suddenly "Old" is associated with "Good" and
"Young" is associated with "Bad". So now your brain's used to the
previous categorizations and it gets all messed up. But they don't
take this as just a natural consequence of their experiment.

They actually tell you after it's done that you "have a severe
preference for young people" because you messed up on that last part.
But of course you messed up, it's a self fulfilling prophecy!

You've trained your brain throughout the first 3 tests to associate
the left side with "good" and "young" and the right side with "bad"
and "old". We know that the brain can't make the switch to a different
categorization very easily once it's been re-inforced that way. (see
1st video I mentioned)

In essence, these researchers are creating these "prejudices" that
they're testing for.

They even tested themselves and found that they have these prejudices.
Instead of thinking that there might be another explanation, they just
thought "Oh well, I guess it just shows how much of an unconcious bias
I have that I didn't even realize!"