User:Lbroc001/sandbox

Article Revision Plan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_Black_Woman This article is closely linked to prejudice and bias but the article needs serious work in terms of how it relates to bias and prejudice. There is a serious lack of research included in the article and doesn't represent a very neutral understanding of the topic. In the talk pages, there are have been complaints about how the article is portrayed and that it should be moved to Urban dictionary. Incorporating more social psychological research about the concept and its effect on African American women might be beneficial if done in a neutral and empirically focused way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit-association_test What this article is really missing is a better depiction of an application in real life. Further, there is little information about how this implicit bias manifests in our everyday lives. I also think that the article fails to provide a successful counter-argument as to why the IAT may not be useful. More information about its limitations are needed and significant expansions on the IAT's reliability and validity are neede

Article Evaluation
Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you? I think the different subsets of group decision making are included appropriately. I thought the inclusion of group decision making at the very end of the article provided both closure and a great description of the social effects of group decision making.

Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? The article is very neutral, focusing solely on the facts and confirmed effects of group decision making.

Are there viewpoints that are over-represented, or underrepresented? I don't think there are any viewpoints in particular that are over and underrepresented. The articles does a great job at ensuring that the different aspects of group-decision making are given the equal amounts of attention. In this way, the audience takes away a much more balanced view. Check a few citations.

Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article? I found no problems with the citations or the source link. All claims supported the article as well.

Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted? All references appeared to be from peer-reviewed articles or experts in the field. With peer review, it can be assumed that the writing is unbiased.

Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added? This is a general description of group-think that does include original information and history, but there are also more up to date information sprinkled throughout the article.

Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? Some outside editors questioned certain aspects' inclusion in the term "group decision making". In particular, it was questioned whether dictatorship should be included in the article and it was eventually removed. How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? I think it to be focused solely on facts with no true personal opinion or "human touch" included in the description. It feels very sterile.

Implicit Association Test (Possible Edits)
The implicit-association test (IAT) is a measure within social psychology designed to detect the strength of a person's automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory. The IAT was introduced in the scientific literature in 1998 by Anthony Greenwald, Debbie McGhee, and Jordan Schwartz. The test is now widely used in social psychology research and, to some extent, in clinical, cognitive, and developmental psychology research.

History and Purpose[edit]
In 1995, social psychology researchers Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji asserted that the idea of implicit and explicit memory can apply to social constructs as well. If memories that are not accessible to awareness can influence our actions, associations can also influence our attitudes and behavior. Thus, measures that tap into individual differences in associations of concepts should be developed. This would allow researchers to understand attitudes that cannot be measured through explicit self-report methods due to lack of self-awareness or social-desirability bias. In essence,the purpose of the IAT was to reliably assess individual differences in a manner producing large effect sizes .The first IAT article was published three years later in 1998.

Since its original publish date, the seminal IAT article has been cited over 4,000 times, making it one of the most influential psychological developments over the past couple of decades. Furthermore, several variations in IAT procedure have been introduced to address test limitations, while numerous applications of the IAT were also developed, including versions investigating bias against obesity, suicide risk, romantic attachment, attitudes regarding sexuality, and political preferences, among others. Finally, as is characteristic of any psychological instrumentation, discussion and debate of the IAT's reliability and validity has continued since its introduction, particularly because these factors vary between different variations of the test.

= Application and Use = Usually a computer-based measure, the IAT requires that users rapidly categorize two target concepts with an attribute (e.g. the concepts "male" and "female" with the attribute "logical"), such that easier pairings (faster responses) are interpreted as more strongly associated in memory than more difficult pairings (slower responses).

The IAT is thought to measure implicit attitudes: "introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) traces of past experience that mediate favorable or unfavorable feeling, thought, or action toward social objects." In research, the IAT has been used to develop theories to understand implicit cognition (i.e. cognitive processes of which a person has no conscious awareness). These processes may include memory, perception, attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Because the IAT requires that users make a series of rapid judgments, researchers believe that IAT scores may also reflect attitudes people are unwilling to reveal publicly. The IAT may allow researchers to get around the difficult problem of social-desirability bias and for that reason it has been used extensively to assess people's attitudes towards commonly stigmatized groups such as African Americans and Individuals who identify as homosexual.

Procedure
Variations of the IAT include the Go/No-go Association Test (GNAT), the Brief-IAT and the Single-Category IAT. An idiographic approach using the IAT and the SC-IAT for measuring implicit anxiety showed that personalized stimulus selection did not affect the outcome, reliabilities and correlations to outside criteria.

The Go/No-go Association Test (GNAT) is a variation of the IAT that assesses implicit attitudes or beliefs by measuring the relationship between between a target concept and two different extremes of an attribute. Specifically, the strength of relationship is assessed by how quickly the items belonging to the target category and specific attribute (yellow and good or yellow and bad) can be picked from surrounding distractor items that are not associated with the target concept or attribute. Respondents are required to press a key when they identify a stimulus that belongs to one of these categories, and not to press a key when they see stimuli that does not belong to those categories. The difference in ability to correctly associate the concept with the specific attributes is described to be the measure of automatic attitude. Unlike the IAT, which measures response latency, the GNAT measures accuracy in identifying the specific relationships between the target concept and specific attributes.

The Single Category IAT, also known as Single-Target IAT (ST-IAT), is unique in that it uses one target category instead of the two required in the original IAT. During the ST-IAT, respondents complete a discrimination block of the evaluative stimuli. The second block consists of sorting target concepts and positive items with one response key and negative items with the other. In the last block, respondents are required to sort target stimuli and negative items together with one key, and positive items with the other key. In comparison to the IAT, which uses contrasts in latency between two concepts and two attributes, the ST-IAT focuses on latency differences in relation to one concept and two attributes.

Valence[edit]
Valence IATs measure associations between concepts and positive or negative valence. They are generally interpreted as a preference for one category over another. For example, the Race IAT shows that more than 70% of individuals have an implicit preference for Whites over Blacks.On the other hand, only half of Black individuals prefer Blacks over Whites (cf. the earlier "doll experiment" developed by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark during the early civil rights era). Similarly, the Age IAT generally shows that most individuals have an implicit preference for young over old, regardless of the age of the person taking the IAT. The Weight IAT indicates that medical students have lower implicit biases towards obese individuals compared to the general public, but increased explicit biases, although public explicit and implicit biases remained stable. Research with the Sexuality IAT shows that homosexual individuals have an implicit preference for heterosexuals, associating them with more positive attributes, and associating homosexuals with negative attributes. ''' In contrast, bisexual individuals indicated a preference for heterosexuals over homosexuals, specifically as a result of attributing homosexuals to negative attributes. Neither of these trends of attributing more positive or negative attributes to a specific sexual identity as seen with homosexual respondents. ''' Other examples of the Valence IAT include the Arab-Muslim IAT, and the Skin-tone IAT.

Stereotype[edit]
Stereotype IATs measure associations between concepts that often reflect the strength to which a person holds a particular societal stereotype. For example, the Gender-Science IAT reveals that most people associate women more strongly with liberal arts and men more strongly with science. Similarly, the Gender-Career IAT indicates that most people associate women more strongly with family and men more strongly with careers. The Asian IAT shows that many people more strongly associate Asian Americans with foreign landmarks and European Americans more strongly with American landmarks. Some other stereotype IATs include the Weapons IAT and the Native IAT.

Self-esteem[edit]
The self-esteem IAT measures implicit self-esteem by pairing "self" and "other" words with words of positive and negative valence. Those who find it easier to pair "self" with positive words than negative words are purported to have higher implicit self-esteem. Generally, measures of implicit self-esteem, including the IAT, are not strongly related to one another and are not strongly related to explicit measures of self-esteem.

Brief[edit]
The Brief IAT (BIAT) uses a similar procedure to the standard IAT but requires fewer classifications. It involves approximately four to six tasks rather than seven, only uses combined tasks (corresponding most closely to tasks 3, 4, 6, and 7 on the standard IAT), and has fewer repetitions. Additionally, it requires specification of a focal concept in each task as well as a single attribute, instead of two. For example, although, White, Black, Pleasant, and Unpleasant stimuli all appear, participants would press one key when White and Pleasant words appear and another key when "anything else" appears. Subsequently, participants would press one key when Black and Pleasant words appear and another key when "anything else" appears. Unlike the GNAT, the Brief IAT doesn’t not use accuracy of correctly identifying the specific concept and attribute requested. Instead, the latency is used to acquire results.

Child[edit]
The Child IAT (Ch-IAT) allows for children as young as four years of age to take the IAT. Rather than words and pictures, the Ch-IAT uses sound and pictures. For example, positive and negative valence are indicated with smiling and frowning faces. Positive and negative words to be classified are voiced out loud to children.

Studies using the Ch-IAT have revealed that six-year-old White children, ten-year-old White children, and White adults have comparable implicit attitudes on the Race IAT.

Theoretical interpretation
'''Notes: I think this needs to be moved to a different section. Since it covers some controversy, it should be moved to the critique section0.'''

De Houwer theorizes that the IAT is a measure of a response compatibility effect, in which participants first learn to associate positive and negative words and concepts with pressing specific keys on the keyboard. Later in the test, when participants are instructed to sort words and concepts that are both negative and positive with the same keyboard key, De Houwer argues that much of the latency and incorrect responses that result from this change are due to the increased cognitive complexity of the task, and not necessarily a reflection of implicit bias.

Brendl, Markman, and Messner have proposed a random walk model process to explain responses in the critical portions of the IAT. They theorize that test respondents base their responses on a process of mental evidence-gathering that continues until the evidence for one option or the other (right or left key) reaches a threshold, at which time a decision is made, and action is taken. This requires consideration of both the concept and the attribute, which can be congruent or incongruent - all factors that affect decision speed. All evidence during the compatible block of the test is congruent, allowing for fast decision-making. However, incongruent concept and attribute in the incompatible task leads to longer processing time. Increased task difficulty also increases evidence threshold criterion, further decreasing decision speed.

An alternative or complementary theory from Mierke and Klauer holds that the cognitive control processes required to switch back and forth between categorizing based on concept versus based on attribute leads to reduced speeds in the critical blocks of the test. In other words, it is much less mentally demanding to sort concepts in the compatible block when only one aspect of the concept must be focused upon. Comparatively, sorting concepts in the incompatible block, which requires focusing on both concept and attribute not only takes longer to process because of the increased complexity, but also because the previous concept may have required a different cognitive effort.

Fiinally, Rothermund and Wentura propose a figure-ground model of explanation for the IAT. In essence, this theory suggests that IAT respondents simplify their task by relying on salience. For example, negative is salient for most people, so if a respondent is to press the right key for negative words, the individual will plan to press the right key for all negative words (figure), and the left key for any other (non-negative) words (ground). This leads to fast decision-making in the compatible task and two of the critical tasks, but not for the third critical task, in which two salient categories require different keys pushed.

There is empirical support for all these explanations of the IAT’s effects, but this is not necessarily evidence against the IAT’s overall validity, as these theories are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, regardless of the fundamental cognitive processes of the IAT, studies show that multiple implementations of the test validly measure their targeted constructs, and the psychometric value of each implementation varies as a function of its individual characteristics (e.g., construct measured, participant characteristics, testing environment).

Criticism and controversy
'''Notes: this entire section needs an overhaul. It's too choppy and the use of so many headings is jarring. Either each section needs to be expanded dramatically or placed into more general headings and the use of transitions will have to be used to help the writing flow.'''