Posted by Amanda Marcotte February 16, 2008 in Uncategorized, Asides, Election, Fun stuff
From Jeff, an Implicit Association Test on the candidates. This measures not who your rational brain wants you to vote for, but the knee jerk emotional preferences. My associative brain liked, in order, Clinton the best with Obama right behind her, both really high. And then I loathed McCain and couldn’t have been more loathing of Huckabee.
71 Responses to “Who gets your lizard brain vote?”
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Wow, that was weird. although I experienced the most consistent pleasure in looking at Obama’s face I wound up scoring him, somehow, on a level with huckabee. First preference was clinton, second huck and obama, and dead last mccain. I can’t quite grasp what is being tested–I made “mistakes” and hesitancies on some very straightforward set of situations that I can’t quite figure out. I’ve only ever taken one similar test and I really felt like I wasn’t quite grasping what I wa s to do with the keys to do it right. But they must control for that. Weird. I must not associate Huck with words like anger and hate, even though I find his policies awful. Of course, one other weird thing, I don’t find anger a problematic feeling in this election. I’m *pro* anger.
aimai
Ditto, aimai, on not associating Huckabee with pure evil. I think this is because he resembles a chipmunk to an astonishing degree.
Clinton and Obama were dead even in my lizard brain halfway in the positive side, with Huck about halfway down the negative side, and McCain below that.
Huckabee I hated. Which doesn’t surprise me. He’s got the smug face and blank eyes that are endemic to the Bible-thumpers. Maybe I just have had a lot of direct experience with them and have developed a deep prejudice?
Surprisingly, I felt the most positively about Clinton, with the fellas all tied just above the middle of the line.
I was a little surprised that I didn’t dislike McCain more, but my numbers were close to what I would expect. Huckabee was satisfyingly low on the scale, McCain less far down than I would have thought (my lizard brain still buys him as a ‘maverick’ apparently…stupid brain) under the relatively close-together two people I’d actually vote for.
Barack a little ahead of Hillary, with Huckabee way down the tree and McCain at the very bottom.
You can take other IATs and see if you have racist prejudices, etc. that you aren’t consciously aware of.
That’s cool. I got Obama>Clinton>Huckabee>McCain and I think the main reason for that is I’m a lot more used to what McCain looks like, whereas my brain doesn’t do the automatic “warning: evil!” association with Huckabee’s face. It’s weird that they only used photos of the candidates - I wonder how the results would be different if they also had sections using the candidates’ names instead.
I had Barack Obama way ahead of everyone else, at like 80% of the way up the scale. The other three were all clustered together - I think Clinton was about 5% higher than the other two, who were basically tied. I didn’t really loathe any of them - it was like Obama 80-85%, Clinton 55%, Mccain and Huckabee 50%.
Huh. Huckabee was almost at the bottom for me, which wasn’t surprising–dude creeps me right the fuck out. I didn’t expect Clinton to come out so far ahead of Obama, though, nor McCain to be so far ahead of Huckabee.
So far, not bad. My association of black people with violence is much lower than average for Americans.
Apparently, I’m really hot for Clinton, medium for Obama, and then really negative for Huckabee and McCain, with McCain dead last. But I’m really rooting for Obama. Go figure.
That was a little surprising. I had Clinton WAY UP high, Obama and Huckabee kind of tied and low, and McCain way down on the bottom. I knew I had a gut attraction to Hillary, but I was surprised at the tie.
I was very surprised at how far I had Obama ahead of Clinton, followed somewhat closely by McCain, and then Huckabee way down at the bottom.
But I don’t understand what’s being measured. Is it that if you make “mistakes,” they’re like Freudian slips, showing that you have some kind of unconscious association between a face and a feeling?
I don’t think that this test is really designed for people like me. While it certainly put the candidates in my logical order of choice (Obama, Clinton, McCain, Huck), I was more concerned about getting everything ‘right’ than doing it super fast. While I made a few mistakes, I was more concerned about properly answering the question than allowing some subconscious urge to take over. Perhaps that contaminated my results.
What I’m getting at here is that, as an avid gamer, I’m probably more used to having to make snap decisions of this nature when words/buttons/etc. are flashed up on a screen than your average Joe, and may have somewhat suppressed my initial feelings on a particular candidate in favor of instinctively pressing the right button.
Clinton ranked way above the others. Not at all surprising.
Obama only slightly ahead of McCain in the middle. Very Surprising that McCain would be anywhere near Obama. Huckabee way at the end again not so surprising, but I expected McCain to be behing him.
I had Clinton ranked way ahead of the others with McCain leading Huckabee leading Obama I suspect that McCain got bonuses because I volunteer with seniors and Obama reminds me of the guy who used to cheat off my papers and get me in trouble in high school.
Apparently my lizard brain and the part I’m aware of are quite in sync. Clinton came out near the top of the scale with Obama right behind her. Then a LONG space where I had to scroll all the way down, and McCain and Huckabee way at the bottom. As in, Huckabee was about to fall off the scale but McCain was holding out his hand to keep him on, and if McCain were any less stubborn they’d have both fallen into the abyss.
Amanda writes,
I just took the test and got exactly the same result. I have taken a few of these tests before, including one with Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and Richardson. So I was used to the task and made only 2 errors, but I could feel my brain jamming up when I had to pair Huckabee with Good–does. not. compute!
Interesting that my positive feelings towards Clinton are ever so slightly higher even though I am leaning towards voting Obama on April 22 (I’m in PA). When I took the IAT with all of the Dem. candidates, I had Clinton and Obama side-by-side in an exact tie (that was a couple of weeks ago). Either my feelings are slightly different this week, or ties are not allowed in this particular IAT.
What is being measured seems to be:
How easily can you throw a presidential candidate into the same group as a bunch of nice fluffy words? Is it easy for you to put Clinton in a group with “love, friend, pleasant,” is it easy to put Obama in a group with “hate, enemy, etc.” and so on. They are measuring how quickly you respond, how many mistakes you make, and how quickly you correct mistakes. Making too many mistakes, or stalling too often, screws up the results.
I scored Clinton=Obama=about 70% up the scale>McCain about 40% up>Huckabee way way down at the bottom.
I wonder how much their choice of photos influences the results, though.
I wonder how much their choice of photos influences the results, though.
That’s a good question. I know that I felt at least one picture of both Clinton and Obama was unnecessarily unflattering, and that made me twinge a bit while taking the test. I don’t really remember if the same was the case for Huckabee and McCain, but it really didn’t matter, because a bad picture would have only reinforced my negative feelings for them.
Not to derail the thread but I find these tests fascinating.
I’d never heard of it before.
I’m finding that for the most part my results are what I think they will be.
So either:
A. I’m good at fudging the results or
B. I tend to be fairly honest with myself about my prejudices.
I’m wondering if other people are finding unexpected results.
My top positive choices were as I expected– Clinton and Obama ranked equally at about 75% on the scale. The negative results were a bit surprising though– Huckabee at about 50% and McCain at about 25%. Though I find Huckabee the more repugnant on his stated policy goals, apparently I feel greater antipathy to the pretend “maverick” “moderate” conservative McCain. At least with Huckabee, you know you’re voting for an obnoxious, misogynist theocrat. McCain (like Ron Paul for many) seems to maintain a glamour that facts cannot budge.
Clinton came out way ahead, then Obama and McCain tied(!) and Huckabee down but not out.
I’m wondering what my results would look like if I had taken this a few weeks ago. I’ve been a fan of Obama for a long time and saw Clinton as too conservative, too establishment, too compromised, etc. But recently, I’ve started to feel really bad for her and kind of bad for not supporting her (after I voted in my state’s primary, which she won anyway). In examining why I feel bad, I decided it was a reaction to the glee some significant portion of the commentariat seems to feel in seeing the bitch get put in her place. So I wonder if my new found sympathy helped her out here.
I was pretty surprised to see Obama and McCain tied. I do think that McCain would be less bad than the other Republicans, but I definitely would not put him even, preference-wise with any Democrat.
Chin: Probably. The test tends to measure prejudice, and we are generally more open-minded to people we know and like. The abuse of Clinton has humanized her for you, it sounds like.
All I learned is that I don’t have the attention span to take an IAT.
This was interesting. When I was taking it I didn’t THINK I was really doing any differently from candidate to candidate, and was sure I’d get a meaningless result, and yet when the results were scored they were almost exactly where I would have put them if I were making a chart of how much I liked the candidates — Clinton and Obama tied at middling-high, McCain low, Huckabee scraping the bottom. The only difference is that I would have given Obama a slight edge over Clinton - I guess while my conscious is evaluating how I feel about their positions, my lizard brain is dancing a merry jig at the thought of the mass Republican head explosions at the inauguration of President Hillary Clinton, and that brings her up to even.
I’m also a little surprised that my negative feelings about Huckabee carried over so well when I really didn’t know what he looked like going in. (I’m sure I’ve seen him a few times, but I couldn’t have conjured a mental image in any detail.)
The only photo that really jumped out at me as ‘unflattering’ in the whole collection was one of the McCain ones where his head was tilted back, giving us a view up into his neck-sac and toothy maw.
That was interesting. It had me liking Barak more than i thought , Hillary less than i thought, really hating McCain, and disliking Huckabee not nearly as much as i think i do.
I’ve taken both a racism and homophobia IAT, which found that I had (fairly strong) white-over-black, gay-over-straight preferences. I’m very skeptical of the idea that the IAT actually measures real biases, though; you’d think motor dexterity and familiarity with the task would have more to do with it.
I have pretty crappy motor skills, and as such I went much more slowly at the beginning of the test than near the end. I wonder how much that influenced my results!
My results did match my real preferences pretty closely: Obama at the top, Clinton only a little bit below him, McCain some distance below her (but still fairly high) and Huckabee way down at Pure Evil. This matched my existing thoughts on the candidates, and how I felt while looking at the photos during the task.
I’d still like to see some research on whether the ordering of the tasks affects the results, though.
That was really weird. Although I’m a UK citizen and therefore don’t have any kind of input into the election, I thought I wanted Obama to win the Democratic nomination. However, my results came out with Clinton waaaay top, Obama and McCain kind of tied and Huckabee right down the bottom.
I have been thinking it would be good to have a female President for once, even though I have severe reservations about the dynastic Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton message it would send.
Am now wondering if I have unconscious racial prejudice, which means I put Obama on a par with a Republican I don’t like much - I’ll have to take one of the other IATs and see…
For the curious, a FAQ about IATs is here.
This includes answers to questions about stuff like “does it matter which pairings go first” and so on.
As for me, I took it three times, and all three times, Huckabee was rock-bottom, McCain was middle to low, and Barack and Hillary were bouncing back and forth as to who was highest, over a large range from McCain to the top.
For those of you who got “weird” answers, try taking it again and seeing what you get!
Apparently I do have a moderate preference for white faces over black ones, which might explain the Clinton/Obama placings. I’ll have to work on that!
I only vote for shaggamuffin pretty people, yeah that’s it.
Clinton came out on top, with Obama right behind her.
In other news, did you hear that the KKK has endorsed Obama???!!! WTF? You know sexism is bad in the U.S. when the KKK endorses a black candidate.
I’m getting hooked on these! Just did the race and gender tests. Surprisingly i had a slight preference for African-Americans, and unsurprisingly had a slight association of career with male and family with female.
I got Clinton at the top, followed closely by Obama. At the other end was Huckabee and dead last was McCain.
And oddly enough, my test on race came up as a moderate preference for black faces.
I’m still undecided as to who I’m going to vote for in my primary, and it’s on Tuesday.
“In other news, did you hear that the KKK has endorsed Obama???!!! WTF? You know sexism is bad in the U.S. when the KKK endorses a black candidate.”
Maybe it’s like that South Park episode where the KKK publically supports the reverse of its actual position, on the grounds that people hate them so much they’ll do the opposite of whatever they say.
Though, while I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything official to support this, I’d be pretty surprised if the KKK wasn’t ragingly sexist, so it’s probably just what it looks like.
For skin-tone and race I came out no preference but I had a slight association of African-Americans with violent objects. Pretty much what I suspected about myself.
I had a slight preference for youth and a slight preference for thin people. The fat/thin one seemed a little strange because even though I know it’s wrong I often feel I have a strong prejudice against fat people.
I strongly associated men with science and women with liberal arts. Another prejudice that I hate but I’ve always known that I have. Before I took the Home vs Career one I thought, “Well I know I’ve internalized alot of patriarchal gender roles and I’ll probably more strongly associate female with home.” But then I thought, “But on the other hand, being a hetero female, when I think about myself forming a family and a home I think about doing that with a male.” It came out a wash just I suspected.
I was moderately more likely to associate Native Americans with America and Whites with foreign places, not at all surprising. I showed a strong preference for Judaism, which I think is a little off. I think if it was simply Judaism vs. Christianity then that’s probably correct. But if it was Judaism vs Buddhism or Judaism vs Atheism then Judaism would have been less prefered.
All and all I thought they pretty well said what I expected them to.
ataralas, that link you posted just goes back to this page.
While Googling around for articles critiquing the IAT, I found a lot of interesting stuff, particularly this article analyzing both the race IAT and those clinical-psych rating scales that try to assign a number to how angry or depressed you are.
Among the things it says about the IAT is that, yes, your reaction time does have a lot to do with your results. And, as is often the problem with tests that try to coax psychological information out of physical measurements, there can be a lot of reasons for slower or faster reaction times.
I think that, based on everything I’ve read so far, the reasons my results on this IAT matched my real preferences so closely were 1. I went slowly, and 2. I’ve taken IATs before, so I might well have been fudging somewhat.
“Maybe it’s like that South Park episode where the KKK publically supports the reverse of its actual position, on the grounds that people hate them so much they’ll do the opposite of whatever they say.”
Maybe if Jonah Goldberg ran it. He’s the living embodiment of “unclear on the concept”.
Of course, that would never happen - not because of Jonah’s ethnic heritage, but because in his (illegal substance induced?) alternative universe, the KKK is a radical leftist organization…
I had Obama and Clinton exactly even, McCain below 50%, and Huckabee in the basement. G. was surprised that he had Hillary on top, Obama a little below her, then McCain and Huckabee at the bottom. No huge surprises.
As far as the KKK endorsing Obama over Clinton, I think they’re making the same assumption that most racists do: they think that white people are too racist to vote for a black man, so if Obama gets the endorsement, McCain will win by a landslide. There’s a danger that they might vote for a white woman over a white man, though, so the KKK is endorsing the Democratic candidate most likely to lose.
I think they’re wrong. At least, I hope so.
um…I don’t think the KKK has really endorsed Obama.
Was that a joke?
lindsay
thanks for the link. that was really interesting.
lindsay
The most damning criticism I found in that article was that the tests aren’t linked to any significant social phenomena. They merely compare deviations in your reaction time.
Sorry I apparently had a case of too many browser tabs open. Real link is here.
damn. I took that because I honestly cannot decide who I am more in favor of, obama or clinton. And they came out exactly ties, both at about 80% up the scale. I guess that’s good, that there are two such great candidates.
McCain was at about 40%, and Huckabee was way down at the bottom, because he creeps me out, too. Smoothtalking snake.
Clinton, then Obama, then McCain, then Huckabee.
Even though I am for Obama, I am not surprised by the results.
If it didn’t seem so likely that McCain would choose Huckabee as his running mate, I bet McCain would’ve scored a little higher up for me, but now I’ve sorted mutated McCain and Huckabee into one being of pure evil in my brain, so, predictably, they were way, way, way at the bottom and both Clinton and Obama way, way, way at the top.
Heh. I had Obama and Clinton in a tie way up high, like 90% or so, and Huckabee and McCain tied so low I had to scroll to get to them. Apparently I am, as I’ve said all along, happy enough with either Dem, although my non-lizard brain gives Obama a slight edge, and I REALLY REALLY LOATHE the Republican candidates.
I did notice I had to go slowly with the McCain/Huckabee images/positive words, because I compulsively hit EVIL BAD NO and had to keep reminding myself how it was supposed to work before I could get through them, and went quickly and accurately through Obama and Clinton.
Somebody above mentioned being happy to get confirmation their lizard-brain isn’t buying the McCain maverick crap, and I had that feeling as well.
This was fascinating, Amanda. I was surprised to find that I liked Obama more than Clinton, and more than a little dismayed to find I didn’t loathe either McCain or Huckabee as much as I thought.
Is it our lizard brain, or our fishy brain?
I can tell that the Benedryl is hitting me (been in a daze the last two days), because I just couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do (that plus my connection being futzy tonight so things just took too long).
“Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for African American compared to European American.”
Makes sense, I guess, between growing up in the Bronx and teaching. When I went off to LittleLiberalArts College, I spent the first few months constantly feeling a little weirded out because there were all these white people all over the place. Which is a bit funny, since I’m white, but . . . .
The candidate IAT was interesting - ended up with Obama around what would be an 8.75 and Hillary a 7, McCain down around 4 - lower than I would have said - and Huckabee barely above the very bottom. Didn’t realize how much I dislike him.
When I went off to LittleLiberalArts College, I spent the first few months constantly feeling a little weirded out because there were all these white people all over the place. Which is a bit funny, since I’m white, but . . . .
I felt that way when I interviewed for a job at Ball State about 15 years ago (shit, it has been that long). It was soooooooo white that it freaked me out a bit.
I thought it seemed like McCain and Huckabee had way more smiling photos than Obama and Clinton, but it was still hard to click E/bad for the Dems even when they looked grumpy and even when I was supposed to click E/bad. Both Dems rated high for me, exactly equal with each other.
McCain was quite a bit lower.
And Huckabee? He was wa-a-ay at the bottom. Super-easy to click bad, bad, bad for him, and very hard to click I/good when I was supposed to for him. This came as no surprise.
Dan and Jeff, add me to the list of white folks who find it off-putting to be surrounded by too many white people at once. (It feels better when they have foreign accents.)
Since other people have guessed about the effects of playing video games on their results, I’m a little curious about that too. Lately I’ve regularly been playing the Nintendo DS game Brain Age, which has many games which encourage you to be make snap judgments, but penalize you for mistakes.
Taking the IAT felt very much like playing the game, especially the mental distress after making a mistake. You’re cruising along, pressing Yes or No, and suddenly you get one wrong and your rhythm is completely destroyed and you start doubting yourself and you can feel yourself slowing down and you have to tell yourself to think less.
Not that I expect it has an overall effect on the results. My guess would be that it might make reaction times faster across the board, but with the same differential between candidates.
Since we’re sharing results, I ranked Obama and Clinton highly, but I did not expect Obama to be slightly higher. I dislike Huckabee, but rank McCain about as low as Obama and Clinton were high. I would have guessed Huckabee would be down below McCain.
I had them very evenly spread with Obama right on top, Clinton about a third down, McCain another third down and Huckabey hugging the zero at the bottom. Interesting.
Clinton and Obama were both tied at the top, and McCain and Huckabee were both tied at the bottom. Apparently my lizard-brain likes Hillary more than my Ape-brain does.
Also, I had never spent that much time looking at Huckabee before.
I had Obama and Clinton, Huckleberry in the middle, and McCain near the bottom. I have to say, I am genuinely surprised how high Huckabee ranked—I guess I don’t take him seriously enough to really hate him.
I also find my apparent “moderate automatic preference for African American” bewildering. Where the hell did that come from?
Well, I got all four exactly equal. My lizard brain apparently doesn’t care.
Now I actually have some lizards here, so I’ve taken the liberty of asking them which candidate they would vote for, if they lived in America and could hold a pencil.
The answer was moths.
(Which, considering the usual standard of presidential candidates, isn’t such a bad idea. Policy advocates could save a lot of money in political donations by switching on strategically located lightbulbs. And you’d need a new president every few weeks, so the election fun would never stop! Wouldn’t that be great.)
My brain fogged while reading the directions. Once I got off the page with instructions, I couldn’t remember what I and E meant. So I knew I shouldn’t even try the test.
I don’t like being where everyone is white, either. My guess is because I am non-mainstream in spite of being white, so when there aren’t racial minorities around, I start to suspect that I wouldn’t be welcome, either, with my non-Christian feminist progressive ways.
I had Clinton way at the top, with Obama pretty close behind. The Huckabee very near the bottom and McCain behind him, just barely even on it.
And all of that seems about right. I like Obama and Clinton pretty equally, but I’m leaning Clinton because I really want to vote for the woman. I strongly dislike Huckabee on policy and religion, but he seems like a somewhat likable guy aside from the pure evil, and McCain just scares the shit out of me.
Huckabee scored higher than I thought he would for me, too, and I think it’s because (in these pictures) he’s a pleasant-looking man whose face I don’t associate with his beliefs.
Keep in mind that with the full-blown IAT, we have no idea what it’s doing (and plenty of reasons to believe it has nothing to do with implicit or unconscious attitudes), and about this new, truncated IAT, we have almost no knowledge whatsoever.
Still, it’s fun, and I came out with Obama on top, Clinton down a bit, and Huck and McCain way down at the bottom.
By the way, while you’re playing with the IAT, you can also ddetermine whether you’re alive (Dead Implicit Association Test, and you can also discover whether you (and your loved ones) are aliens via the Human -Alien Identity Implicit Association Test.
Huckabee at the dead bottom with Mc Cain directly above.
Clinton and Obama side by side just below the top.
Phew!! I’m not an alien. What a relief. Thanks Chris!
I got Obama at the top, followed pretty closely by Clinton, McCain about in the middle and Huckabee at the very bottom. That about sums up how I feel- I’m leaning Obama, would be perfectly happy with Clinton and would rather see McCain than Huckabee, who I believe is evil incarnate. Which annoys me, because I’ve actually enjoyed some of the things I’ve heard him say, until he starts talking policy and I want to vomit.
Huh. Apparently I don’t hate Huckabee as much as I expected; I just love him a whole lot less.
Obama narrowly ahead of Clinton, and then a bit of a gap before Huckabee and McCain, tied. But all four were well in the positive side of things. I guess my lizard brain is mostly apolitical, and my distaste for the GOP is reality-based.
The story about the KKK endorsing Obama was indeed a joke.