Transcript Race and Weapons: An IAT Experiment

Race and Weapons: An
IAT Experiment
Julianne Dietz, James Gentry, Erin
Huntington, and Karin Schubert
Literary Review
 (Smith-McLallen, Johnson, Dovidio, &
Pearson, 2006)
 Positive associations to the color white, while
negative associations to the color black
 Previous IAT: White names/faces with positive
words, Black names/faces with negative words,
paired faster
Research Question

Will this trend continue when harmless
objects are used as positive things and
weapons are used as negative things?

It is hypothesized that participants’
reaction time will be faster when
responding to African American faces
paired with weapons and Caucasian
faces paired with objects.
Method

N = 20
 11 female
 Ages 19-22
Online study through John Krantz’s
“Cognition Laboratory Experiments”
 Stimulus

 Two sets of images: harmless objects and
weapons, African American and Caucasian
faces
Procedure
 Students
agreed to participate in
study
 Completed 5 conditions of study
 Testing conditions were
randomly assigned
Results
 Main
effect for race
 African American weapons,
Caucasian weapons
 Main effect for thing
 African American weapons, African
American objects
Dependent t-tests
1200
Reaction Time (ms)
1000
800
600
400
200
0
African
American
Weapon
Caucasian
Object
African
American Object
t(20) = 6.083, p < .001
Caucasian
Weapon
Discussion

Hypothesis was supported
 African American weapons and Caucasian
objects had faster reaction times

Similar to results from previous research
 (Smith-McLallen, Johnson, Dovidio, &
Pearson, 2006)
Limitations
 Lack of diversity in sample of
participants
 Future direction
 Run study at a larger university with
more diverse sample
 Possibly test only African American
participants
 Greater age variation
