Developing A Test for Implicit Stereotypes in Education: The First name Association Test (FAT)

Research on implicit stereotypes in educational settings is still in its early stages, and therefore there is a continued need to develop more specific approaches for measuring implicit stereotypes in educational contexts. The current paper aims to contribute to this need by introducing a new prototype: The First name Association Test (FAT). The FAT is a tool for measuring reaction times of teachers and other personnel working in education. First names are used as a prime in FAT followed by a simple evaluative task to determine if a word is educationally relevant or not. The idea is that reaction time is an indication of associative strength between name and word. The task used three name types as primes (high-SES, low-SES, and non-Western) to examine implicit stereotypes linked to name-based background associations. For the evaluation task we used two groups of words (cognitive and social-emotional). Thirty participants with a relevant profession in education took part in this...Show moreResearch on implicit stereotypes in educational settings is still in its early stages, and therefore there is a continued need to develop more specific approaches for measuring implicit stereotypes in educational contexts. The current paper aims to contribute to this need by introducing a new prototype: The First name Association Test (FAT). The FAT is a tool for measuring reaction times of teachers and other personnel working in education. First names are used as a prime in FAT followed by a simple evaluative task to determine if a word is educationally relevant or not. The idea is that reaction time is an indication of associative strength between name and word. The task used three name types as primes (high-SES, low-SES, and non-Western) to examine implicit stereotypes linked to name-based background associations. For the evaluation task we used two groups of words (cognitive and social-emotional). Thirty participants with a relevant profession in education took part in this research. Results of the Linear Mixed-Effects models showed no significant main effect for congruency of name-word pairs. An effect was found for Word category cognitive words lead to a quicker response time, however this was explained by a design error. The cognitive words consisted of more positive words compared to social emotional words and positive word led to quicker responses compared to negative words. The FAT succeeded in its goal of being unobtrusive to the true purpose of the test, as participants were unaware of the actual aim of the study. The FAT prototype is an example of a more specific approach to measuring implicit stereotypes in a new way, however in its current form it is insufficiently capable of capturing implicit name based stereotypes. Future research could refine the FAT prototype by adjusting tasks, selecting stimuli and incorporating neuroimaging to investigate name-based biases.Show less

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Developing A Test for Implicit Stereotypes in Education: The First name Association Test (FAT)