1. 3. Do you agree with the argument that we are completely oblivious to our unconsciously motivated
behavior? Is this just a convenient excuse to justify our biases?
I disagree, because we have some notion of when these unconsciously motivated behaviors are at
work. For instance, I often disregard the elders’ comments in computer technology, because I
unconsciously have formed a generalization that the elders are not familiar with the volatile computer
technology and thus disregard their comments. I am somewhat cognizant of this happening, so we
are not completely oblivious to our unconsciously motivated behaviors.
IAT
This is the result from the IAT test I took on race. I have always believed that I do not form bias on a
person with his or her race. However, my results showed me that I have a moderate bias against the
African Americans. According to their standards, this is two markbands away from my expected result.
I think that one external factor that have affected my score is me watching an episode of a TV series,
“Mentalist”, in which the criminal was an African American just before I took this test. A theory that this
experience can be labeled under the “seeing is believing”, because by seeing an African American
person having done a crime, I was made to believe and generalize that all African Americans are bad.