measuring individual differences in implicit cognition

Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test

A. Greenwald, D. McGhee, J. Schwartz

Presented By: Steven EntezariInfo-I 563 The Psychology of Human Computer Interaction

October 26th, 2010

Photo: http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/

Definitions• What is Implicit Attitude?• Attitudes that manifest as actions of judgments that are under the

control of automatically activated evaluation without the performers awareness of that causation.

• What is Association?• A linking in memory; conditioned

• Example of Implicit Attitude Association• Female + Family vs. Males + Careers• Flower/Instrument + Pleasant vs. Insect/Weapon + Unpleasant• White Name+ Pleasant vs. Black Name+ Unpleasant

• For White Subjects• In-group Bias• Give Preferential Treatment of Those Perceived to be in Our Own Group

• IAT Video• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCdylsNy4mg#t=13s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCdylsNy4mg#t=13s

Measuring Implicit Attitudes• Implicit Association Test• Measure implicit attitudes by measuring their underlying

automatic evaluation• Similar to Cognitive Priming• Stronger association between two items increases likelihood of

the second items rise in consciousness due to the presence of the first.• Key• Stronger Association with House or Car• Less with pitch of voice or area in front of basketball hoop

• IAT May Resist Masking by Self-Presentation Strategies• The implicit association method may reveal attitudes and other

automatic associations for subjects who prefer not to express those attitudes.

Design of the IAT• Purpose: Assess the association between a target-concept

discrimination and attribute dimension.• Sequence (from Experiment 3 – Black First Names vs. White First Names + Pleasant Words vs. Unpleasant Words)

1. Introduction of the Target-Concept Discrimination• First Names• Black vs. White

2. Introduction of the Attribute Dimension• Pleasant Words vs. Unpleasant Words (in meaning)

3. Target-Concept + Attribute Dimension• Pleasant + Black vs. Unpleasant + White

4. Reversal of Target-Concept Response Assignments • First Names• White vs. Black

5. Reversal of Target-Concept + Attribute Dimension• Pleasant + White vs. Unpleasant + Black

Design of the IAT (con’t)

• The Measure of the difficulty difference provides the measure of implicit attitudinal difference between the target categories.

Overview of Research• Each experiment investigated attitudes that were expected to be

strong enough to be automatically activated• Experiment 1• Two attitudinally positive concepts

• Flowers and Musical Instruments• Two attitudinally negative concepts

• Insects and Weapons

• Experiment 2• Two ethnic attitudes assumed to be mutually opposed

• Korean American and Japanese American• IAT was expected to reveal measures regardless of self report measures

denying antipathy towards one another• Experiment 3• White subjects implicit attitudes towards White and Black racial categories• IAT was expected to reveal measures regardless of self report measures

Experiment 1• Target Concepts• Flower Names

• e.g. rose, tulip, marigold• Insect Names

• e.g. bee, wasp, horsefly

Vs.

• Musical Instrument Names• e.g. violin, flute, piano

• Weapon Names• e.g. gun, knife, hatchet

• Each target-concept discrimination combined with pleasant words and unpleasant words. (family, happy, peace vs. crash, rotten, ugly)

Experiment 1• Method• Desktop Computers, Small Room, Instructions on Computer,

Responses via Keyboard• Subjects • 13 male, 19 female

• Excluded• 8 additional subjects due to error rates• 1 subject neglected to complete

• Materials• 150 Stimulus Words

• 25 Insect Names, Flower Names, Musical Instrument Names, Weapon Names, Pleasant-Meaning words, Unpleasant-Meaning words. • Pleasant and Unpleasant words from Bellezza, Greenwald, and Banaji (1986)

Experiment 1• Overview• Two IAT Measures

• Flowers vs. Insects• Musical Instruments vs. Weapons

• First IAT used complete sequence of five steps1. Introduction of the Target-Concept Discrimination2. Introduction of the Attribute Dimension3. Target-Concept + Attribute Dimension4. Reversal of Target-Concept Response Assignments 5. Reversal of Target-Concept + Attribute Dimension

• Second IAT skipped the Introduction of the Attribute Dimension (Step 2) due to exposure in the first run

Experiment 1 - Procedure• Trial Blocks• Trial block = 50 trials• Instructions given describing category and response key assignments (left vs. right)

• Timing Details• Throughout the experiment, after an incorrect response, the word “error”

replaced the stimulus for 300ms.• Stimuli• Words selected randomly without replacement (until needed)

• Explicit Attitude Measures• After tasks, subjects completed paper-and-pencil questionnaire on measure of

their attitudes for the four target concepts• “Feeling Thermometer”

• Warmth vs. Coolness towards flowers, insects, musical instruments, weapons.• 7-point scale anchored with polar opposite words

• Mark with respect to relevancy to the category.• Examples

• Beautiful-Ugly, Good-Bad, Pleasant-Unpleasant, Honest-Dishonest, Nice-Awful

Feeling Thermometer

Example of feeling thermometer for Anxiety. The IAT’s version would have values such as:• Warm or Favorable• Neutral• Cold or Unfavorable

Experiment 1 - Results• Data Reductions• Recode Values due to Impurities (outliers)

• Anticipations• Below 300ms recoded to 300ms

• Momentary Inattention• Above 3,000ms recoded to 3000ms

• Log Transformation done for stability of variance for analyses• Frist two trials of each block were dropped due to lengthened

latencies in the systems

Experiment 1 – Results (con’t)• Summary Measure of IAT Effect

• Subjects performed faster for• Flower + pleasant and instrument + pleasant

• than for • insect + pleasant and weapon + pleasant

Non-Compatible Presented first on Left, Last on Right

Experiment 1• Correlations among Explicit and Implicit Attitude Measures

Experiment 2• Target Concepts• Japanese American Names

• e.g. Hitaka, Yokomichi, Fukamachi• Korean American Names

• e.g. Hwang, Hyun, Choung


• Revisions from Experiment 1• Using Opposite Key Assignments for initial target concept

discrimination (on second IAT)• Experiment 1 demonstrated that order of performance for the target

discrimination and it’s reversal influenced the magnitude of observed IAT effect

Experiment 2• Ethnic Identity and Attitude Questionnaire• Subjects asked to provide initials of “up to twenty people, not

family members, that you know”• Ethnicity was requested later, but not mentioned during

questionnaire• Subjects asked to indicate number of members of family

described by:• Korean, Korean American, Japanese, Japanese American, American

• Subjects asked to respond to eight yes-no items• Whether subjects could understand, speak, read, write each

language. (No, Somewhat, Yes)• Subjects asked to complete 23 item Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity

Questionnaire.

Experiment 2 – Results• Summary Measure of IAT Effect

• Korean Subjects performed faster on Korean + Pleasant• Japanese Subjects performed faster on Japanese + Pleasant


Unexplained Correlation:• Feeling Thermometer -> IAT Measure (.59)• Feeling Thermometer ->Semantic Differential (.43)• Semantic Differential -> IAT Measure (.04)

IAT diagnosed ethnicity most effectively for subjects who were highly involved with Asian American culture.

Experiment 3• Already talked about parts in beginning

• Target Concepts• Black American Names

• Male• e.g. Darnell, Lamar, Malik

• Female• e.g. Ebony, Latisha, Tawanda

• White American Names• Male• e.g. Brandon, Ian, Jed

• Female• Betsy, Katie, Nancy


• Identical to Experiment 2, with exception of names

Experiment 3• Subjects Responded to five questionnaire measures of race-

related attitudes and beliefs after IAT• Feeling Thermometer• Semantic Differential Measures• Modern Racism Scale• Diversity Scale

• Assesses attitudes about the value of multiculturalism• Discrimination Scale

• Assesses beliefs about the causes and pervasiveness of discriminations in American Societies

Experiment 3 – Results• Summary Measure of IAT Effect

• White subjects displayed an implicit attitude difference between Black and White racial categories

• Larger than those observed for Korean-Japanese contrast in Experiment 2

• Smaller (in Log Latency) than those of Experiment 1


• The Semantic Differential Index indicated a virtual absence of racial preference• Implicit Measures were no more than “weakly” correlated with Explicit Measures for

attitude or racist belief.• Possible Alternative to Finding

• White college students in Experiment 3 were much less familiar with African American names than with White American Names

Experiment 3• Implicit White Preference Among Subjects who Explicitly

Disavowed any Black-White Evaluative Difference

• A majority (19/26) of the White subjects explicitly endorsed a position of either Black-White indifference or Black preference

• Only 1/26 subjects had a positive IAT score

Immunity to Self-Presentational Forces

• Self-Presentational Forces • What people do to control how they are (or could be) perceived by others.

• Experiment 1• Subjects should have had little concern about being perceived as liking flowers

more than insects or musical instruments more than weapons• Experiment 2• Subjects sought to asses socially more sensitive attitudes involving mutual

ethnic regard of Japanese and Korean Americans• Experiment 3• Assessed a presumably even more socially sensitive attitude domain

• The Explicit Measures might have been more responsive to self-presentational forces that can mask subjects’ attitudes

• The Self-Presentation forces here may actually be private self-presentational forces (self presentation to self)• Due to the anonymity and privacy conditions for the IAT and explicit

measurements of data

General Discussion• Convergent Validity• Established by demonstrating that it displays theoretically expected

correlations with other measures• Experiment 1• Expected correlation demonstrated

• Experiment 2• Expected correlation was in relationship of IAT measure and self described ethnic identities

• Experiment 3• Expected correlation demonstrated even though the in-group bias was not expressed on

the explicit attitude measures.

• Discriminant Validity• These Merit Consideration

• IAT and self-report measures assessed different constructs• IAT is sensitive to differential familiarity with the stimulus items used to represent

target concepts• White American’s lack of familiarity with Black American Names may have affected the

results.

• Explicit vs. Implicit• Correlations should be taken as evidence for divergence of constructs

Differential Familiarity with IAT Stimuli

• Does the IAT measure implicit attitude or is it an artifact of the amount of exposure to the stimuli used to represent target concepts?• Experiments 2 & 3

• Subjects were more familiar with names associated with their own ethnic group

• Experiment 1• Does not apply• Can not be explained using same alternate theory as Experiments 2 & 3

Extension of the IAT Method to Stereotypes and Self-Concept• Potential for easy extension both to additional attitude-object

categories and to attribute dimensions other than evaluation• Examples• Male vs. female + Strong vs. Weak

• Assess stereotypic differentiation between males and females on Strong-weak attribute dimension

• Me vs. Not Me + Pleasant vs. Unpleasant• A measure of evaluative associations that underlie self-esteem

• Self vs. Other + Any Attribute Dimension• Determine if attribute dimension is associated with a persons self-

concept• Self-Schema

Questions vs. Comments• Question + None vs. Comments + Good

measuring individual differences in implicit cognition

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