Assignment #3 Tolerance Tests

I found the Tolerance quizzes to be fun and enlightening. It makes perfect sense due this sort of assignment at the beginning of the Women’s Studies course, because often times people can be taught, lectured at, or read about a certain topic but never actually absorb the information. This quiz allowed us to see a glimpse of how we naturally feel. Hopefully those who discovered that they do have a bias towards women will be able to use this course to either break down that bias or at least reach a level where they are more consciously aware of it and its impact on the world. Now I do not think these tests are perfect because so much depended on your computer skills, state of mind, and ability to comprehend words at a fast pace.

The gender test gave me the strongest feedback. I showed a strong association of males with careers and females with families. At first these results were a bit of a shock because I don’t feel like I was raised in a society or a household in which women are restricted to the home. My mother has had a full time job since before I was born. I was raised to believe that I could have any job I wanted; doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc. I grew up in a college town were a good percentage of my friends’ mothers were scientists, professors, or possessed some other high end University occupation. The more I thought about it the more I think that my results stem more from just my own liking. I’ve known since I was little that I either want a lot of children of my own or to work in setting in which I interact with children on a daily basis. I think it’s natural for me to association women with families and men with careers because internally that is part of what I want for myself. On the other hand I really respect women with major careers, so I wouldn’t say that I have a bias towards them. I was shocked by the general public results, saying that less than one percent of the total poll takers showed a strong link between females and careers. I would have thought with all the advances women have made in the last 50 or so years that the number would have been greatly higher. I also took a quiz relating men and women to science and liberal arts. My results were that I moderately associated women with liberal arts and men with the sciences. I wanted to see if my results would match what I had received on the gender-career test. I think these results were closer to my hometown and internal beliefs. I still think that it is a bit ironic that I showed a slight bias against women and sciences when I am thinking about entering a science major.

The last quiz I took was on discovering if you have a preference between thin and obese people. My results were that I had no automatic preference between the two, but yet again I was shocked by the general statistics. Twenty five percent of the people polled had a strong association with thin people and only one percent had a strong association with obese. I think this mostly had to do with pop culture at the moment, with everyone’s attention on celebrities, fitness, and diets. Also I find that weight is one of the few biases that seem to be almost socially acceptable. Many people view weight as an aspect of one’s life that can be controlled. Also since weight has a dominate influence on other health issues it make sense to want to be healthy, and healthy is often mistaken as thin.

I think that many biases are acceptable because there hasn’t been a big enough voice in the media or public to acclaim them unacceptable. Racism was widely regarded as normal until the issue was raised in enough campaigns, protests, and debates until a majority of people agreed that it was unacceptable. I know these tests made me question some of my assumptions and beliefs on people and the world around me. I also hope that everyone else who take the test will take the time to consider their results and how they achieved them.