All right, I found the supplemental doc with the stuff I was wondering. The prompt for the questions (they alternated the names given to the story's characters) was "We will next ask you questions about Eric Williams, Michael Robinson, and the interview.
Although you may not know the answers to these questions, we want you to try your best."
So they tell the subject to go ahead and try to answer despite the lack of information.
Now, for the first two questions, the race of the characters, they do at least give the option of 'it's not clear.' But pretty soon we are getting questions constructed like this:
"4. Was Michael Robinson's rejection influenced or not influenced by Eric Williams's biases against People of Color?
- Not at all influenced
- Probably not influenced
- Unclear whether influenced
- Probably influenced
- Definitely influenced"
They have written the idea that the admissions guy is biased, into the question. You're allowed to say it's not clear if his bias affected his decision, but you're TOLD he is biased against people of color. This isn't just 'seeing racism where none exists,' this is 'seeing racism where you've just been told it exists.'
The questions later, to decide how you score on a left wing authoritarian evaluation, are apparantly genuinely used to evaluate extremism, but if I were participating in this study I would not be able to take it seriously. They sound like Teen Lister in Red Dwarf, angry about crypto-facists.