One more for the road

I've long been a sucker from quizzes, placement tests and any other kind of test which tries to define the person taking the test. I'm most fond of political/ideological placement quizzes. So much so that I created a list of them over at Preemptive Karma. It's down a ways on the right-hand sidebar.

So anyway I was surfing around the blogosphere the other day and I ran across a link on Future Geek to a series of unusual tests called Implicit Association Tests which are supposed to test your implicit assumptions. I only took one of them. It was the closest to being about politics out of the list. The test is supposed to determine what, if any, preference the person has for George W. Bush v. a previous president. My test pitted Dubya and Clinton head-to-head and the results said that I have no discernable preference for either of them. Which suprised me a bit. I'm lukewarm about Clinton - he has his good points and bad points, IMO. But, I have a hard time concealing my contempt for Dubya. But see... that's my conscious mind speaking. These tests are apparently designed to bypass the conscious to get at what boils underneath. And apparently underneath it all I really don't prefer Clinton to Bush.

The tests are...

• Gender - Science. This IAT often reveals a relative link between liberal arts and females and between science and males.


• Weapons ('Weapons - Harmless Objects' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to recognize White and Black faces, and images of weapons or harmless objects.


• Religion ('Judaism - Other Religions' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to recognize religious symbols from various world religions, especially Judaism.


• Gender - Career. This IAT often reveals a relative link between family and females and between career and males.


• Arab-Muslim ('Arab Muslim - Other People' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to distinguish names that are likely to belong to Arab-Muslims versus people of other nationalities or religions. It frequently reveals an automatic preference for other people compared to Arab-Muslims.


• Age ('Young - Old' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to distinguish old from young faces. This test often indicates that Americans have automatic preference for young over old.


• Skin-tone ('Light Skin - Dark Skin' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to recognize light and dark-skinned faces. It often reveals an automatic preference for light-skin relative to dark-skin.


• Presidents ('Presidential Popularity' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to recognize photos of George W. Bush and one or more previous presidents. The results revealed by this test provide a new method of appraising public support for the President of the United States.


• Disability ('Disabled - Abled' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to recognize symbols representing abled and disabled individuals.


• Native American ('Native - White American' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to recognize White and Native American faces in either classic or modern dress, and the names of places that are either American or Foreign in origin.


• Sexuality ('Gay - Straight' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to distinguish words and symbols representing gay and straight people. It often reveals an automatic preference for straight relative to gay people.


• Weight ('Fat - Thin' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to distinguish faces of people who are obese and people who are thin. It often reveals an automatic preference for thin people relative to fat people.


• Race ('Black - White' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to distinguish faces of European and African origin. It indicates that most Americans have an automatic preference for white over black.


• Asian American ('Asian - European American' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to recognize White and Asian-American faces, and images of places that are either American or Foreign in origin.