Marissa Cuno

When I first took the Implicit Socal Aptitude test I had a difficult time accepting my results. Personally, I’m an atheist but I scored favoring Christianity. If anything I believe I have a negative bias toward Christianity, but I think why my results favored it because it is what I am most familiar with compared to other religions. I think there will always be that hint of skepticism when taking these tests though because it is showing our implicit bias, which by definition is something that is automatic and unintentional that we don’t pay attention to.

I have had to use Harvard’s Implicit Socal Aptitude test’s in a few different classes now. Most notably would be when I became a search advocate for Oregon State University. A search advocate is a person on a search committee that is from a different department and whose job is to make sure the search is following a fair and equitable process when hiring. Not all positions require a search advocate, but a majority of postings through OSU-Cascades use a search advocate anyway. With that being said I am aware that everyone has bias, and it does pose a risk to a search and selection process when hiring.

To end I’m going to share the link on how to become a search advocate through Oregon State University. Even if you don’t work for OSU, I had several people from private companies and other universities in my class. I have found this very beneficial to have gone through this training to highlight how to see past your own implicit bias.

https://searchadvocate.oregonstate.edu/