The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is an experimental method within social psychology designed to measure the strength of automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory. The IAT requires the rapid categorization of various stimulus objects, such that easier pairings (and faster responses) are interpreted as being more strongly associated in memory than more difficult pairings (slower responses). The IAT is a tool in the development of theories of implicit social cognition, a body of results that suggest that many cognitive processes that affect behavior are unconscious in nature and are inaccessible to observation by the actor. These implicit processes affect perception, influence behavior, and color interpretation of past events. The IAT has been profiled in major media outlets (e.g. in the Washington Post[1]) and in the popular book Blink. The most prominent implicit association test is one that measures bias on race. Other popular tests look at gender and age bias. A recent meta-analysis has suggested that the IAT is a better predictor of some forms of behavior (e.g. discrimination) than traditional 'explicit' self-report methods,[2] but there are some questions as to the fitness of the explicit measures used in the studies reviewed by this meta-analysis (e.g., "feeling thermometers). The IAT has been used to measure attitudes toward objects in the environment, self-esteem, self-identity, and stereotypes. In applied settings, the IAT has been used in marketing and industrial psychology.
Criticism and controversy
The IAT has engendered some controversy (e.g. in the Wall Street Journal; Science News Article). More specifically, it has been interpreted as assessing familiarity[3], perceptual salience asymmetries[4], or mere cultural knowledge regardless of personal endorsement of that knowledge[5]. A more recent critique argued that there is a lack of empirical research justifying the diagnostic statements that are given to the lay public [6]. Proponents of the IAT have responded to these charges [7], but the debate continues.
External links
- Project Implicit - Take the test
- [1] Article by Hart Blanton critiquing the IATs metric
- Project Implicit Research Site
- Project Implicit in the media
- IAT Validity Debates Implicit Association Tests, Validity debates, reaction to validity criticisms, etc from the creators of the IAT. Includes PDFs of original papers critiquing the IAT as well as the rebuttals and commentary from the creators of the IAT.
- "Screen Test", Slate.com, January 26, 2006.
- JournalReview.org - An on-line journal club where studies related to Implicit Association Tests can be discussed. An Example
- Science News Article
- American Psychologist Article
- Wall Street Journal article
- Test of Unconscious Identification- similar to the IAT using open source software
- Implicit association test video: video 1
References
- ^ Shankar Vedantam, "See no bias," Washington Post, January 23 2005.
- ^ http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/pdf/IAT.Meta-analysis.16Sep05.pdf
- ^ http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/iat_validity.htm#famil
- ^ http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/IATmaterials/PDFs/R&W.JEPG(2004).pdf
- ^ http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/IATmaterials/PDFs/Karpinski&Hilton.JPSP(2001).pdf
- ^ http://psychology.tamu.edu/Faculty/blanton/bj.2006.arbitrary.pdf
- ^ http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/iat_validity.htm
