Created for LTCS 130 (Literature and Cultural Studies: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Culture) at UCSD.
Speeddatr is an interactive website that allows people to explore their biases in six different categories: race, height, build, income, education, and political orientation. This project engages the issue of racial bias, which has been a repeating theme in this course. This course has underscored that racial bias permeates communities (Week 3: Virtual Communities), impacts identities (Week 4: On and Offline Identities), and plays a major role in romance (Week 6: Digital Intimacies). The speed-dating theme of this website was inspired by the topic of online dating and its connection to racial bias in Week 6 (Digital Intimacies). While Omi and Winant assert that racial formation (and the racial bias that follows) can never be eliminated, Speeddatr allows users to at least acknowledge the existence of their racial biases. This acknowledgement not only takes place when users evaluate their results, but also subconsciously when users are initially making their choices. This project also expands upon the theme of racial bias by exploring other areas susceptible to bias such as education or income.
The interactive medium of Speeddatr prompts users to critically examine (and potentially mitigate) the multiple biases they may hold, and it demonstrates that certain characteristics are more susceptible to biases than others. While written essays can only ask readers to consider their own biases, websites that require user input forces users to reveal their biases on the spot. While Speeddatr prompts its users in the lighthearted context of online speed dating, the revelations of bias could be a powerful factor in changing biased perceptions in dating and beyond.
In this study, you will complete a speed dating-themed Confounding Biases Test (CBT)
in which you will be asked to choose one of two potential "dates" as fast as you
can. This CBT measures 6 different categories of biases: race, height, build, income,
education, and political orientation. There are 20 comparisons in total, and this
study should take about 5 minutes to complete. At the end, you will receive your CBT
result with your 3 strongest biases.
Click "Begin" to start.
In the subsequent pages, click on the name of the "date" you prefer. All names are
gender-neutral.
This website uses Python Flask, with deployment through AWS Elastic Beanstalk.