The Turban Myth

Overview

In response to the rise in hate crimes against Sikh Americans due to a lack of knowledge about the Sikh Faith, I decided to conduct the Turban Myths experiment: a project designed to evaluate the level of explicit and implicit biases Americans have against Sikhs. Two groups of individuals were given a "Sikh Implicit Association Test" and "Choose Your Seat Test" that shed light on factors that may lead to discrimination against Sikh Americans In the "Choose Your Seat" study, participants were asked to rapidly choose their seating preference in relation to a Sikh man. In the "Sikh Implicit Association Test" we asked participants to rapidly categorize between Sikhs and Other People with a positive or negative attribute. My results show that: 1. Knowledgeable Subjects about Sikhism (KAS) experienced an Evening of Enlightenment at a Sikh Temple prior to completing both experiments chose a seat next to a Sikh 42.7% of the time compared to only 25% by Unknowledgeable Subjects (UAS) from Grandview University. 2. Unknowledgeable subjects were significantly faster at negative/Sikh responses than Knowledgeable subjects.

Awards (1)

• Third Award of $1,000 $1,000

Competition history

• ISEF 2017 Behavioral and Social Sciences · Entry BEHA044

Resources

• ISEF abstract page ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.