Smart, Hot, Honest, or Not?
Play the Game: Find out more about your inherent biases by rating the intellect, attractiveness and trustworthiness of men and women of different races. This game can be played at Buzz kiosks on the museum floor or from a computer at home.
Click here to play the game
Participate in the Game: Take a photo of your face and upload it to the "Smart, Hot, Honest, or Not?" Buzz blog. Experimonth staff will use identity morphing software to change your race. Your original image and your new image will then be uploaded into the game. Click on the link and log in with the email address associated with your Buzz account to see your morphed photo and results: http://experimonth.lifeandscience.org/race/lookup
Return to the "Smart, Hot, Honest, or Not?" Buzz blog to comment on your experience, and reply to others posts.
*Note: Morphing does not take place immediately. Allow 1-2 days before your image appears in the game. Any images that do not meet the technical specifications will not be used. Any photos of people under age 13 will be deleted. Anonymous users cannot submit photos.
Image specifications: In order for the morphing software to work, the image of your face must be: well lit, entire head must fill the image frame, not smiling. See the examples in the right sidebar. The first example is too dark and face is smiling. The second headshot is too small. The third headshot is evenly and well lit, as well as the proper size. The fourth is morphed to be East Asian in appearance.
Welcome to "Smart, Hot, Honest or Not!" My name is Margaret, and I work at the Science Museum of Minnesota and I'll be the community host for Smart, Hot, Honest or Not? As host, I'll also have my photo in the game and will stop by everyday this month (weekends, too) to read what you have to say about the game and your results as well as to contribute my own thoughts and experiences. Please know that this experimonth is, at its core, an experiment. You are invited to design and test it right along with me.
We're still debugging some errors in the game, so the first thing to do today is to make sure you've got a photo of yourself uploaded so that it can be morphed. Click on the green plus sign below to submit your photo for morphing. Morphing does not take place immediately. Allow 1-2 days before your image appears at the link or in the game.
Return to the "SHHN" Buzz blog anytime this month to discuss your experience of playing the game or, participating and having your image morphed.
SHHN: ShanaCourtesy Shana West
EastAsian-youCourtesy Experimonth
Wow...I don't think I look very East Asian? Maybe if my eyes and hair were brown it would help?
Hey Shana, try the link again.
How do you feel seeing yourself depicted as another race?
Do you think its a fair representation of how you might look or is it too far fetched?
My photoCourtesy Lukas Johnson
EastAsian-youCourtesy Experimonth
What do you think Lukas?
While we wait on the game to be finished, let's explore one of the big inspirations for it - the Harvard IAT (Implicit Association Test). Has anyone even taken the test before? You can do so here if you're unfamiliar: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1
Close Up 11.04.11: Picture for "Smart, Hot, Honest, or Not"Courtesy Myself
Southeast Asian youCourtesy Experimonth
Kiki, sorry for the delay. This is your image morphed to be Southeast Asian. Would you rate yourself as smart, hot, or honest in this picture?
u are so smart
haha....i never feel smart, so that helps!! thanks!!
MeCourtesy Lu Holter
Truttagal, here's your image morphed to be Southeast Asian. How do you feel about the transformation?
Southeast Asian youCourtesy Experimonth
I would like to have this photo removed, please. How can I do that?
I think I look like Aziz Ansari!!
So do you think you look particularly smart, hot, or honest?
I think I look smart....and this is going to make me sound bad, but I think it is because I look Indian, and not like a "dumb blonde". People usually don't believe me when I tell them what I do and what my title is. People that only know me outside of work see a crazy, fun, child-like attitude and can't picture me as an accountant. I had one person tell me that I would make a really good clown at Shriner's and I should look into that. haha
To give you a better perspective on this, here is a picture of me at the beach one day when I was bored (this is why I say I look smart in that photo you made, because I am not doing sh*t like this!!):
Krazy Kiki!!Courtesy Myself
Has anyone tried the game yet? How was your experience?
You know, I've played the Harvard Implicit Bias Test games a lot. So I have those to compare this to. And I think that, while this game is good, there are three things that detract from the experience. One is that you don't have to play through enough photos. I feel like 10 of them isn't enough to really get a groove going. I never really lose my self-consciousness and just pick. Another is that there's no pressure to go fast. I can consider my choices for quite a long time. Which of course affects my scoring, in the end, but I think it works better to make people choose quickly. And the third issue is that the photo quality is pretty poor. It's hard to say that someone is "hot" or "honest" when all the images look like mug shots or worse.
Liza, thank you for your feedback on the game. Your comments about losing your self-consciousness and having too long to choose made me do some searching for "split second decisions" on Google.
I found an article by B. Keith Payne called "Weapon Bias: Split-Second Decisions and Unintended Stereotyping." This is a quote from the abstract: "Split-second decisions magnify the bias by limiting people’s ability to control re- sponses. Such a bias could have important consequences for decision making by police officers and other authorities interacting with racial minorities. The bias requires no intentional racial animus, occurring even for those who are actively trying to avoid it."
I think the designers gave you 6 seconds to decide so that choices did not occur so randomly. I often found myself feeling confused on how to categorize a person and needed the time to give it some thought. Even with my hesitations, my average speed was only about 3 seconds.
What I really wonder is how beneficial it is for people who submit their photo to get results of how others rated them and their doppleganger in the Smart, Hot, Honest or Not? game. My results were not that flattering.
Here's one. I tried to make sure there wasn't anything distracting and weird going on in the background, and I tried to make the rest as neutral as possible (i.e. no glasses, no logos, etc.)
SHHN photo: for the gameCourtesy Liza Pryor
East Asian LizaCourtesy Experimonth
I think the images would be much cleaner if we started with a high resolution image. When I cropped your image for the morphing software, it became all pixelated. This might be the reason your morphed face is so swirly.
how do i look up my results? what is my experimonther ID?
nevermind, i figured it out....too early in the morning!! haha
i should have used a better picture of myself!! ha!
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