The Implicit Association Test Plus the Political Compass Test

       The implicit association bias (IAT) test is designed to find your bias toward each issue, whereas the political compass specify on finding your general ideology.
       The implicit bias illustrates several pictures on the screen, then matches the picture with the words by pressing E and I. The political compass evaluates your bias by answering 6 pages of questionnaire in several areas such as politic, economic, society and so on.

      I took the African American-American in IAT.  The test suggested me that I slightly prefer African American to American. For my political compass result indicated that I am slightly Liberian left.

        I don’t think I either prefer African American to America or American to African American. The reason I got the result said I slightly prefer African American because I have a good rapport with African American. I went to America and met some African American people; I made some friends with them and they were nice to me, they even treated me nicer than a few American did to me. Another reason is I forced myself to turn the result into this way, because I don’t want to get same result as last time. Actually, I took this test once before Troy told us to do and I got totally different result from this time. At that time, the result told me that I moderately prefer American to African American. I suddenly realized that the result I got it was true because I was told all about negative behaviors of African American which made me had bad prospective toward Black. But after I met several Blacks and made friends with them; it made me changed my prospective. In the consequence, I agreed with the statement that said our biases can be changed over time if we encounter new situations.

           What does Liberian left mean in this term? As soon as I saw the result I was unsure what does it mean to me, I couldn’t decide whether it is true or false. After that, Troy explained all the four typical political ideologies which he did well on that. I gradually learned about Liberian left and compared to the rests. Finally, I found the result is right that I am Liberian left. I like the idea of small government but distribute some jobs to private section such as infrastructure, health care, education, etc. Rising taxation is a better way to develop the country and people also get benefit from what they’ve paid.

         As you may notice my IAT and political compass are supportive each other. They both indicate that I am liberal. My IAT shows that I am willing to change my bias when encounter a new situation instead of preserving my old bias toward African American. That means in term of economic I am willing to take risk in order to get more profit.

If you would like to take a test on IAT here is a link https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

And this is a link to political compass https://www.politicalcompass.org/test

The 1st News Article Discussion Task

On the first news discussion, I chose the news article entitled as US formally drops Cuba from terrorism 'blacklist' from The Guardian. According to the news sited Cuba was placed in blacklist in 1982 for supporting communist rebel in Latin America and Africa.   It is reported that in December 2014, Obama ordered the State Department to review Cuba’s presence on the terror list and report him back within six months. Later on, the completed review was notified Cuban government has not provided any support for international terrorism in the past six months until April. Cuba also pledged it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future. As the result, the US government has formally dropped Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism on Friday, May 29^th. This significant circumstance has two consequences such as diplomatic and economic, pointed out Christopher Sabatini, a Columbia University professor who specializes in Cuba studies.  As to restore diplomatic ties which ends decades of antagonism, alongside the restoration of bank service for Cubans in the US. However, the embargo that has been imposed by Congress will remain in place.  The news also suggested the positive of rapprochement will encourage the freedom of movement for American diplomats in Cuba, as well as the removal of embargo in the future.

    Mimi reported on the well-known news in Laos which happened a couple weeks ago. When there were approximately 40 students and 4 teachers plus a few boat drivers, were going to cross the river from a village to another one. They had to cross the river by boats to attend the primary final exam in the center school in big village. Unfortunately, the boats were leaked and led all the boats sunk into the river. Currently, news said eighteen were died, but four were still missing.

     Another new from Shin is about a gunman commit a crime in a city in the US in 2012, but the trial has been ongoing since now. The gunman suffered the mental break down when he shot audiences in the cinema. The incident resulted on12 people died and 70 people were wounded. As regards the incident, three of us wondered didn’t the cinema provide the body check before entering to the cinema? 

Cognitive biases are more interesting than then they seems to be…….. fantasy castle behind the maze!!!

Last few weeks I had a chance to learn about cognitive biases which influence our prospective. A cognitive bias is a type of error in thinking which occurs when we are interpreting or evaluating the information in the world around us. The cognitive biases are often as result of error memory, social attribution, miscalculations or holding onto one’s preference and beliefs regardless of contrary information. When we are making decisions about something; we are likely to think that we are objective, logical and capable of thinking in. However, our decisions are influenced by a wide variety of biases, which we are unaware of. Our brains are remarkable and powerful, but certainly subject to limitations.  If you would like to dig into the cognitive biases I suggest you to click on this link  “ http://io9.com/5974468/the-most-common-cognitive-biases-that-prevent-you-from-being-rational” I am sure you will answer some of your ambiguous questions to yourself.

We as a group were assigned three types out of twelve cognitive biases that Troy, our teacher, presented to us. Our group got to discuss deeply and come up with a summary for each of these three biases: status-Quo Bias, negativity bias and bandwagon effect. Among the three biases, I would like to talk more about status-quo bias; the bias that many people agree on they are having but don’t pay much attention on it in order to clarify whether it is okay let this bias influences us or not.

The status quo bias is a cognitive bias that drives people prefer things around them remain the same or they may change as little as possible; if they absolutely must be altered. These kind of people are afraid of changing; they are having unwarranted assumption that coming along with the new choices will make things worse than they are being currently. Due to most people prioritize avoiding the potential for loss over pursuing the potential for gain. In other words, they don’t want to lose the gains they have made. This cognitive bias plays a role in numerous fields such as economic, political science, psychology or even daily routine. 

In economics, the status bias explains how people make a conservative financial choice. People like to keep their deposit at the same bank even when there is a brand new bank offers a better rate of interest. They are afraid of the bank doing some deceived marketing to get their money or even worse they think new bank is unreliable and it easily to be bankrupt.  In addition, the status quo bias also plays a role in daily routines; many people eat the same food for breakfast or lunch day after day. They are stick to same routines without variation. For instance, going to work on the same way, getting to the same restaurant and order the same dish. Once they choose new way to go to work or new dish to eat and if bad things happen with them; they will blame the new decision that they made. Although, the bad things weren’t caused by choosing the new choices, it is because of their careless of driving or eating food. They will still regret the decisions that they made, so the potential to choose the new choice for next time is less.

When we think about our lives, there are many things change and many choices have to be made. At this situation, status quo bias gets in between us and decision; it can provide a certain amount of self-protection by encouraging people to make a securer choices. On the other hands, it is okay to maintain the same but we have to realize that our lives cannot always stick with the same route. The world is changing and we have to adapt as well; life means to take risk, doesn’t it, in order to improve. However, not every single decision has to be made rationally; in the deficiency time and less effort we have to ask status quo bias for help.

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Travelling and Religions