Processing fluency as a predictor of salience asymmetries in the Implicit Association Test

Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions

Two decades ago, the introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) sparked enthusiastic reactions. With implicit measures like the IAT, researchers hoped to finally be able to bridge the gap between self-reported attitudes on one hand and behavior on the other. Twenty years of research and several meta-analyses later, however, we have to conclude that neither the IAT nor its derivatives have fulfilled these expectations. Their predictive value for behavioral criteria is weak and their incremental validity over and above self-report measures is negligible. In our review, we present an overview of explanations for these unsatisfactory findings and delineate promising ways forward. Over the years, several reasons for the IAT's weak predictive validity have been proposed. They point to four potentially problematic features: First, the IAT is by no means a pure measure of individual differences in associations but suffers from extraneous influences like recoding. Hence, the predictive validity of IAT-scores should not be confused with the predictive validity of associations. Second, with the IAT, we usually aim to measure evaluation ("liking") instead of motivation ("wanting"). Yet, behavior might be determined much more often by the latter than the former. Third, the IAT focuses on measuring associations instead of propositional beliefs and thus taps into a construct that might be too unspecific to account for behavior. Finally, studies on predictive validity are often characterized by a mismatch between predictor and criterion (e.g., while behavior is highly context-specific, the IAT usually takes into account neither the situation nor the domain). Recent research, however, also revealed advances addressing each of these problems, namely (1) procedural and analytical advances to control for recoding in the IAT, (2) measurement procedures to assess implicit wanting, (3) measurement procedures to assess implicit beliefs, and (4) approaches to increase the fit between implicit measures and behavioral criteria (e.g., by incorporating contextual information). Implicit measures like the IAT hold an enormous potential. In order to allow them to fulfill this potential, however, we have to refine our understanding of these measures, and we should incorporate recent conceptual and methodological advancements. This review provides specific recommendations on how to do so.

Effect of local fluency gradient of objects creates search asymmetry

Search asymmetry is a phenomenon in which search efficiency in a visual-search task differs for searching for an X target among Y distractors from search for a Y target among X distractors. Previous research shows that search asymmetry is mainly produced by a difference in the whole signal strength of items or a difference in item familiarity. This study reports that a difference in the local fluency within items also affects search efficiency and generates search asymmetry. Fluency is a value that correlates with the processing efficiency of an item. In particular, five experiments reveal that search efficiency for two part items depends on whether a fluent part is the top or bottom portion of a target (vs. distractor). We argue that this type of search asymmetry implicates the operation of an unknown mechanism that detects local fluency gradient in visual processing.

A Thousand Words Are Worth More Than a Picture? The Effects of Stimulus Modality on the Implicit Association Test

Implicit Association Tests (IATs) employing pictures as target stimuli usually yield smaller scores than those with verbal target stimuli, suggesting weaker attitudes in the former compared to the latter case. As the attribute dimension of attitude IATs is typically represented by words, we hypothesized the target modality effect to be actually due to a modality match between targets and attributes. We manipulated stimulus modality independently for targets and attributes and confirmed our assumption in two attitude IATs (Experiment 1: flower/insect, Experiment 2: old/young): Employing verbal attributes, IAT scores were smaller for pictorial compared to verbal targets. However, the target modality effect disappeared or was even reversed if pictures were employed as attributes. Applying the ReAL model revealed that this modality match effect is mediated by recoding processes. Importantly, evaluative associations remained unaffected by modality match and reflected equal or even stronger preferences for pictorial compared to verbal targets.

The Insect-Nonword IAT Revisited

In 2001, Brendl and colleagues reported a reversed compatibility effect for an insect-nonword Implicit Association Test (IAT), apparently indicating more positive attitudes for insects than for neutral nonwords and therefore calling into question the validity of the IAT. According to a prominent alternative account of IAT effects, this reversed effect reflects task recoding based on salience asymmetries. To disentangle the contributions of associations and recoding, we analyzed data of an insect-nonword IAT with the ReAL model and discovered that (1) recoding is responsible for the unexpected direction of this IAT effect and (2) insects still activated negative associations. Applying the ReAL model helps to avoid misleading interpretations of IAT effects by providing independent estimates for different processes within an IAT.

Understanding and using the brief Implicit Association Test: recommended scoring procedures

A brief version of the Implicit Association Test (BIAT) has been introduced. The present research identified analytical best practices for overall psychometric performance of the BIAT. In 7 studies and multiple replications, we investigated analytic practices with several evaluation criteria: sensitivity to detecting known effects and group differences, internal consistency, relations with implicit measures of the same topic, relations with explicit measures of the same topic and other criterion variables, and resistance to an extraneous influence of average response time. The data transformation algorithms D outperformed other approaches. This replicates and extends the strong prior performance of D compared to conventional analytic techniques. We conclude with recommended analytic practices for standard use of the BIAT.

What Is Implicit Self-Esteem, and Does it Vary Across Cultures?

Implicit self-esteem (ISE), which is often defined as automatic self-evaluations, fuses research on unconscious processes with that on self-esteem. As ISE is viewed as immune to explicit control, it affords the testing of theoretical questions such as whether cultures vary in self-enhancement motivations. We provide a critical review and integration of the work on (a) the operationalization of ISE and (b) possible cultural variation in self-enhancement motivations. Although ISE measures do not often vary across cultures, recent meta-analyses and empirical studies question the validity of the most common way of defining ISE. We revive an alternative conceptualization that defines ISE in terms of how positively people evaluate objects that reflect upon themselves. This conceptualization suggests that ISE research should target alternative phenomena (e.g., minimal group effect, similarity-attraction effect, endowment effect) and it allows for a host of previous cross-cultural findings to bear on the question of cultural variability in ISE.

Conflicts as aversive signals: conflict priming increases negative judgments for neutral stimuli

Botvinick, Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 7:356-366 (2007) recently suggested that competing theories of the monitoring function of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for cognitive control might converge on the detection of aversive signals in general, implying that response conflicts, a known trigger of ACC activation, are aversive, too. Recent evidence showing conflict priming (i.e., faster responses to negative targets after conflict primes) directly supports this notion but remains inconclusive with regard to possible confounds with processing fluency. To this end, two experiments were conducted to offer more compelling evidence for the negative valence of conflicts. Participants were primed by (conflict and nonconflict) Stroop stimuli and subsequently had to judge the valence of neutral German words (Experiment 1a) or Chinese pictographs (Experiment 1b). Results showed that conflict, as compared with nonconflict, primes led to more negative judgments of subsequently presented neutral target stimuli. The findings will be discussed in the light of existing theories of action control highlighting the role of aversive signals for sequential processing adjustments.

Keep your hands crossed: the valence-by-left/right interaction is related to hand, not side, in an incongruent hand-response key assignment

The body-specificity hypothesis (Casasanto, 2009) associates positive emotional valence and the space surrounding the dominant hand, and negative valence and the space surrounding the non-dominant hand. This effect has not only been found for manual responses, but also for the left and right side. In the present study, we investigated whether this compatibility effect still shows when hand and side carry incongruent information, and whether it is then related to hand or to side. We conducted two experiments which used an incongruent hand-response key assignment, that is, participants had their hands crossed. Participants were instructed to respond with their right vs. left hand (Experiment 1) or with the right vs. left key (Experiment 2). In both experiments, a compatibility effect related to hand emerged, indicating that the association between hand and valence overrides the one between side and valence when hand and side carry contradicting information.

Discriminating between the Effects of Valence and Salience in the Implicit Association Test

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most widely used indirect measure of attitudes in social psychology. It has been suggested that artefacts such as salience asymmetries and familiarity can influence performance on the IAT. Chang and Mitchell (2009) proposed that the ease with which IAT stimuli are classified (classification fluency) is the common mechanism underlying both of these factors. In the current study, we investigated the effect of classification fluency on the IAT and trialled a measure—the split IAT—for dissociating between the effects of valence and salience in the IAT. Across six experiments, we examined the relationship between target classification fluency and salience asymmetries in the IAT. In the standard IAT, the more fluently classified target category was, all else being equal, compatible with pleasant attributes over unpleasant attributes. Furthermore, the more fluently classified target category was more easily classified with the more salient attribute category in the split IAT, independent of evaluative associations. This suggests that the more fluently classified category is also the more salient target category.

It’s Brief But Is It Better? An Evaluation of the Brief Implicit Association Test

Sriram and Greenwald (2009) introduced a new variant of the Implicit Association Test, which they termed the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT). The BIAT differs from a standard IAT by using less trials and by instructing participants to focus on only two of the four categories in each block. We argue that the focus manipulation of the BIAT does not suffice to fully control for focusing and recoding processes in the task. Compatibility effects in the BIAT are therefore still subject to influences that are unrelated to the conceptual relation between the target and attribute categories of the task (e.g., salience asymmetries and stimulus-based effects). Highlighting these nonassociative influences, findings with the BIAT revealed strong asymmetries in compatibility effects, reliability, and convergent validity, depending on which of the two attribute categories was selected as a focal category in the BIAT. To eliminate these problems, we recommend the use of other, recently developed variants of the IAT that prevent recoding effects by eliminating the dual-block structure of the task.

Predicting pilots' risk-taking behavior through an implicit association test

OBJECTIVE

The Implicit Association Test (IAT), in combination with a battery of additional psychometric tests, was employed to examine the accuracy with which it predicts pilots' risk-taking behavior.

BACKGROUND

Risk management is an integral part of piloting. Many factors affect pilots' risk management, including individual differences. Therefore, employing a unique methodology from social cognition, the present study examined the influence of attitude, as measured implicitly through the IAT, personality, and flight experience variables on pilots' risk-taking behavior.

METHOD

In addition to a simulated flight on a computer-based flight simulator, 35 pilots completed a battery of psychometric tests.

RESULTS

Among the 6 risk perception variables, 10 risk attitude variables, and 2 experience variables, only 2 variables were found to be significantly related with in-flight risk-taking behavior: everyday risk (risk perception) and the IAT effect (attitude). Of these, the IAT effect was the strongest predictor of flight behavior.

CONCLUSION

The results indicate that implicit attitudinal measures, such as the IAT, provide a more accurate forecast of pilot behavior than do the more traditional explicit attitudinal or personality measures.

APPLICATION

An implicit attitudinal measure can be proactively employed to identify pilots who are potentially more likely to engage in high-risk activities, hence permitting a more strategic approach to pilot training.