Provacative item in the Washington Post:

For their study, Nosek, Banaji and social psychologist Erik Thompson culled self-acknowledged views about blacks from nearly 130,000 whites, who volunteered online to participate in a widely used test of racial bias that measures the speed of people’s associations between black or white faces and positive or negative words. The researchers examined correlations between explicit and implicit attitudes and voting behavior in all 435 congressional districts.

The analysis found that substantial majorities of Americans, liberals and conservatives, found it more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts than white faces — evidence of implicit bias. But districts that registered higher levels of bias systematically produced more votes for Bush.

I remember taking this test a while ago. When I saw this on Drudge, I decided to retake them. Here are some of my results:

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for White American compared to Black American.

Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for George W. Bush compared to John F. Kennedy.

Your data suggest a moderate association of European American with American and Asian American with Foreign compared to Asian American with American and European American with Foreign.

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Other People and Arab Muslims.

Your data suggest a moderate association of European American with Harmless Objects and African American with Weapons compared to African American with Harmless Objects and European American with Weapons.

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Straight People and Gay People.

Check it out. It’s a nice little timewaster. I’m not so sure that I completely agree with their interpretation of the findings, but it’s interesting nevertheless. Or maybe I’m in denial:

“If anyone in Washington is skeptical about these findings, they are in denial,” he said. “We have 50 years of evidence that racial prejudice predicts voting. Republicans are supported by whites with prejudice against blacks. If people say, ‘This takes me aback,’ they are ignoring a huge volume of research.”