Module 1: IAT

If you subscribe to James’ definition of education as “the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior” (p. 15), then measures such as the Implicit Associations Test (IAT) and Malcolm Gladwell’s conceptions of thinking are a measure of how “educated” we are. James (1962) notes “an educated memory depends on an organized system of associations; and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first on the persistency of the associations; and, second, on their number” (p. 60). Memory is the sum of our associations, the store from which we can draw upon when it comes to making quick decisions. This sum of associations is made up of our past experiences, the native reactions and acquired reactions. As humans continue to develop, the possible reactions to given situations are further narrowed down according to previous successful and unsuccessful interactions with the environment. The way in which we connect our ideas and experiences (and the results of those connections) can influence how we will react in future situations. Similarly, how we associate ideas with one another will influence future encounters with people, places and things that we connect with these previous experiences.

I do not know the exact name of the of the tests that I took (I participated in the Research section of the site, so it did not tell me the title of the study before I began), but the first test looked at associations between Anger, Sadness, and the Self, and the second test examined associations between Security, Freedom, Good and Bad. While I am familiar with the IAT and how it is used, this was my first experience taking the test. I was not surprised by my results, but at the same time I wonder if the Implicit Associations Test creates associations with the individual as a result of their participating in the study. For example, in the second task I was asked to associate Freedom and Security with good and bad, first Freedom and good were on one side and security and bad on the other, then the two items switched sides. I found that it was difficult to associate one with the other once they were reversed, and while the research would dictate that I found it difficult because I am primed to associate freedom with good and security with bad, I think that it could be just as likely that I was used to grouping those two words together as part of the task and so ungrouping them was difficult. It would be interesting to see if my results would have been different if I had begun the task with freedom and bad grouped together instead of freedom and good.

The IAT and the selections we read/listened to from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink both emphasize the fact that our body of knowledge and experiences that we acquire through our everyday experiences as well as education are what we draw from in making snap judgments. Gladwell (2005) uses this premise to challenge the idea of free will: “[Studies on priming] suggest that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act, and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize” (p. 58). In considering James’ theories on education and the will, and more specifically his use of free will as a turning point in his own life, this contention by Gladwell highlights one of the larger distinctions between these two readings. To use James’ example, are we truly exercising free will when we get out of bed in the morning, or are we simply making a quick unconscious judgment to get out of bed based upon the sum of our experiences and observations about what happens when we either get out of bed or do not get out of bed when the alarm goes off?

References:

Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

James, W. (1962). Talks to teachers on psychology and to students on some of life's ideals. New York: Dover. (Original work published 1899)