Project Implicit is an online timed “Implicit Associaton Test” that lets you compare your conscious preferences to what they call “automatic” preferences — preferences of which you are not conscious.

The IAT was originally developed as a device for exploring the unconscious roots of thinking and feeling. This web site has been constructed for a different purpose — to offer the IAT to interested individuals as a tool to gain greater awareness about their own unconscious preferences and beliefs.

It works by flashing words at you; you assign the words to categories. Some of the words are obviously positive or negative. Some of the words are not. The test is looking for when you “accidentally” miscategorize a word. It’s kind of like inducing Freudian slips.

The topic of each session is assigned randomly. I got “coffee vs. tea.” My test results read:

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Tea compared to Coffee.

That’s news to me.

I drink a cup of coffee every morning . I often drink a cup of tea in the afternoon. I enjoy my afternoon tea — I view it as a treat. But I don’t look forward to it with the same, ahem, intensity that I seek my morning coffee.

OTOH, I’ve been exposed to a lot of claims that tea is the more healthful drink, and perhaps my ambivalence about my coffee dependency bled through a bit. Plus I’m, ahem, something of an Anglophile. For a variety of reasons, some too delicate to mention. So maybe that’s skewed me toward the cuppa . . . still, “strong preference”? That’s pretty . . . strong.

The test has been used to identify more controversial “automatic preferences,” including detecting unconscious racism. Is it valid for such applications? I don’t know.

If you try it, drop a note in the comments about your experience, or blog about it and I’ll link back to you.