Implicit Association Test

I took a Gay-Straight IAT as part of the reading assignment for my Law & Psychology class next week. The results:

Featured Task Try a Study Take a Demo Test Background Tech Support The Scientists Project Implicit You have completed the Gay - Straight IAT. Your Result Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Gay People and Straight People. Thank you for your participation. Just below is a breakdown of the scores generated by others. Most respondents find it easier to associate Gay people with Bad and Straight people with Good compared to the reverse. Attitudes vary in the degree to which their expression is socially acceptable. For example, to express liking or favorability toward one's school or local sports team is socially acceptable just as it seems to be acceptable, in the appropriate circumstances, to express negative attitudes toward a rival school or sports team. In recent years, it has become less socially acceptable to express negative attitudes toward some groups, for example groups defined by race or by physical disability. In this context, attitudes toward gay people are of special interest because laboratory studies show that the social acceptability of negative attitudes toward gays has changed relatively little in recent years. We also know that anti-gay attitudes are observed on measures of implicit attitude such as the IAT, and that a person's conscious and implicit attitudes toward gays are more often in agreement with each other than they are for some other socially significant domains. Many of the questions that you answered on the previous page have been addressed in research over the last 10 years. For example, the order that you performed the response pairing is influential, but procedural corrections largely eliminate that influence (see FAQ #1). Each visitor to the site completes the task in a randomized order. If you would like to learn more about the IAT, please visit the FAQs and background information section. You are welcome to try additional demonstration tasks, and we encourage you to register (easy) for the research site where you will gain access to studies about more than 100 topics about social groups, personality, pop culture, and more. FAQs || Research site || Demo site || Project Implicit Home Copyright © IAT Corp.

Find this IAT and many others at http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit.

Fall 2008 Grade Report

I set an uncomfortable precedent for myself in the fall of 2006, receiving the highest grade in my Legal Practice section. The onus fell on the next semester to repeat the feat, but was ultimately unrealized. Then, the focus became to repeat it the following fall--an event again unrealized, albeit much more narrowly. The final permutation of this precedent coalesced into a desire to reflect my mastery in my chosen--I like to think of it as "sovereign"--area of law with the highest grade in Intellectual Property, or at least the first A+ final grade of my law (or, in fact, my entire) school career. (This was due in part to the grading scales applied in college and high school, but the emblematic nature of the "A+" grade, I think, mitigates those niggling factors.)

Also, on a smaller level, I hoped to get at least an A- in my Child Law class, as I had opted to take it for a letter grade in an attempt to bolster my overall GPA into more solid cum laude territory. (My whole matter-of-pride preoccupation with graduation honors I will reserve for another day and entry.)

Today, the grades for these two classes were reported:

Children and the Law: A
Intellectual Property: A+*

*highest grade in class

Ergo:

"Victory is mine!"

Mood: tired, but pleased