A Review of the Implicit Association Test
Explicit cognition refers to an individual’s deliberate and fully conscious associations. Conversely, implicit cognition refers to an individual’s unconscious associations. These unconscious associations are significant because they can unknowingly influence an individual’s attitude and behavior. The implicit association test is a test designed to measure these unconscious, automatic associations, including the explicit concepts that an individual is fully aware of but unwilling to disclose. Some common automatic association concepts include self- esteem, memory, perception, attitudes, stereotypes, and racial bias. Subsequently, the implicit association test can detect any of these automatic association concepts. Like most psychological tests, the implicit association test, in order to demonstrate that it has meaning, must first and foremost have reliability. Thus, once liability has been
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Furthermore, the implicit association test is usually administered via a computer. Consequently, the typical design of the implicit association test involves the juxtaposition of images with either negative or positive words representing both good and bad attributes. Subsequently, during the course of the test the individual is given several tasks which prompt them to select or match a word with an image. However, the word and image association periodically changes throughout the test. As a result of the frequent change of word and image association, the individual automatically selects the image and word combination that they unconsciously associate together. Thus, revealing any associations that are unknown to the individual and or any associations that the individual is unwilling to
Hogg, M.A., Abrams, D., & Martin, G.N. (2010). Social Cognition and Attitudes. In Martin, G.N., Carlson, N.R., Buskist W., (Ed.), Psychology (pp 646-677). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Issues involving race found in today’s society often stem from historical conflicts. Christopher Edley, Jr. supports this idea in The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism, “… We can also see in recent developments how … racial and ethnic differences are socially constructed out of, or in midst of, conflict” (Edley, Jr. 171). An ethnic group that is often falls victim to racial profiling in the United States are African Americans. Initially, the transatlantic slave trade sparked this modern practice. The transatlantic slave trade, also known as the triangular trade, included three stages, beginning in Western Europe. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the trade began when ships departed
An Implicit Association Test (Race) will be administered to students of national public school systems and DoDEA facilities, with parental consent. The study will take DoDEA high school facility children ages 14 to 18, and test at least 1000 for participation (n=1000). This means that at two DoDEA high school facilities will participate in the study.. The same IAT (Race) will be administered to two public schools with children ages 14 to 18 (n=1000). In order to participate, all the students from DoDEA facilities will have to have been enrolled in DoDEA facilities for all of their school aged careers and all public school students will also be required to have spent their school aged career within the public school system. One of the DoDEA high school’s ( n=500)and one of the public schools (n=500) will be held as a control group and all of the students from both schools will also be pre and post-tested before the beginning of the program, dur...
Spielberger, C. D. (1959). Evidence of a practice effect on the Miller Analogies Test. Journal of Applied Psychology, 43(4), 259-263. doi:10.1037/h0042419
The Project Implicit, Harvard Education is a non-profit organization that seeks to collect data on an individual’s subconscious chooses. The test that I took was the Race IAT (Implicit Association Test), which measures and shows an individual’s implicit belief and attitudes that one may not be unwilling to admit that they have (Teachman, Nock, 2011). So, this test was an attempt to see if I have biases that I do not really know about. This is interesting and scary at the same time. To have someone basically interpret your thoughts through a series of unrelated responses.
For instances, in one study, volunteers were required to stare at a computer screen as different phrases quickly appeared and disappeared without their knowledge. These phrases such as “violent” and “elderly” influenced their minds when they complete different types of tasks, such as writing or walking. Their behaviors changed according to the flashing words because the unconscious mind was affected by it, even though they were unaware of these influences. Since their conscious minds were not able to pick up the words on the screen, they created reasoning with the knowledge they did have. As Daniel Gilbert stated, “ their brains quickly considered the facts they are aware and draw out the same kinds of plausible but mistaken inferences about themselves that an observer would probably draw about them” (131). Daniel Gilbert proves that the unconscious mind takes the knowledge one is aware of and creates a logical reasoning behind it, even if it is not true. When Daniel Gilbert says "mistaken inferences" he means that the person is unaware of the factors that influence one's behavior, thus creating a false sense of understanding. The volunteers believed their false reasoning, thus affecting the truth behind their
I chose to participate in two IAT tests on the Project Implicit website. The website states Project Implicit was started by Tony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji as a way to virtually perform scientific testing. Project Implicit is a non-profit dedicated to exploring unconscious bias. The tests I took from the site focused on automatic preference of the elderly or young and gay or straight people. Each test required me to sort pictures and phrases using the “E” and “I” key. The first groupings were between the two groups of people, followed by two sets of words labeled “good” and bad”. After completing those two sets, groupings were combined and switched. For example, the first group was elderly and good words. The second round grouped elderly and bad words. At the end, results determined the group I was more inclined to.
Implicit Bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions unconsciously. (Kirwan, 2015) The implicit bias, which includes both favorable and unfavorable being personal, are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or voluntary control. The implicit interaction subconscious
Taking an Implicit association test may not be something that we would want to base any serious decisions off of; it is a useful tool in being able to learn about ourselves better. By being made aware that we may unconsciously hold views that we are not proud of, we can inoculate ourselves and make a personal change for the better.
According to Devine (1989), automatic processing involves the unconscious retrieval of obtained associations that develop through memory repetition; this process links with stimulus cues in the environment. The intense nature of automaticity is that an individual cannot escape or try to ignore the process (Devine, 1989). People build and enforce stereotypes through this automatic process and have no conscious control of memory retrievals. Human bodies take a lot of effort to function, but automatic processing requires little effort. People, therefore, mostly rely on automatic thinking, rather than controlled. This is why some researchers argue that automatic processing is why stereotyping is inevitable; because automaticity is easier, it does not mean controlled thinking cannot disband stereotypes (Devine, 1989). Controlled thinking is intentional and requires active participation of an individual. This proce...
As discussed earlier, our participants will be randomly assigned into a ‘health goal’ condition. The participants in this condition will be primed with a health goal. “Priming” and its effects have been thoroughly studied in social psychology. As Bargh , Chen and Burrows argue (1996:230) , ‘priming refers to the incidental activation of knowledge structures, such as trait concepts and stereotypes , by the current situational context.’ This activation of knowledge structures shapes the behaviour of people (Bargh et al. 1996 ; Bargh et al 2001). For example , the automatic activation of a trait concept can affect the behaviour of a person in such a way that his behavioural acts are more in line with this activated trait ; participants in whom the concept of rudeness had been activated , interrupted a conversation , between other people , more (Bargh et al. 1996). It is important to mention that these effects of priming are passive and automatic (Bargh et al.1996) . As Fitzsimons , Chartrand and Fitzsimons (2008:22)
A study by Memon, Holiday and Hill (2006) has proven that stereotyping can influence recall of memory. In the study, children aged five read one version of a story about a character called Jim by their class teacher. The three different versions described Jim as either careful – a positive stereotype; clumsy – a negative stereotype; or neither careful nor clumsy – a neutral stereotype. A few days later, ‘Jim’ visited their class and introduced himself. He performed some neutral activities, such as showing them a photo of his dog or playing the flute. One and three days later the children were read a description about Jim’s visit by a researcher. The description was the same for all three groups of children, and it contained misleading details; some of these details were positive and some were negative. Three days later, the children were tested on two sets of yes or no questions by a different experimenter. It was made clear to the children that one set of questions related to what happened during Jim’s visit and one related to what they were told about his visit. This procedure was done to find out whether stereotyping affects a child’s memory positively, negatively or both. They found that the children who had heard the positive details about Jim gave answers that were prone to fitting the stereotype. The children were more likely to say ‘yes’ to positive statements about Jim. However, the
Numerous research and investigations were conducted on the topic of stereotype threat. In the articles connected to this paper, experiments were performed to see how stereotype threat affected test results. During tests some participants were exposed to variables that activated a negative stereotype while others were not. Those exposed to the negative stereotype had lower results. Therefore stereotype threat resulted in weaker performance. It is proven the threat exists but so...
The theoretical and practical implications of inconsistent and consistent information in the Psychology of Stereotypical Behavior differentiates in two ways. With consistent information, a group is known for certain behaviors (negative or positive), and the subject who is analyzing the behavior may lose interest since the known behavior is consistent with the stereotype. However, when a group shows inconsistencies of the perceived stereotypical behaviors, then the analyzer will question the inconsistencies, and give specific attention to the group.
Implicit attitudes are positive and negative assessments that occur outside of one’s conscious cognizance and controls. The affirmative or adverse views, feelings, or actions towards individuals ...