The Implicit Association Test - IAT (Intro Psych Tutorial

www.psychexamreview.com
In this video I discuss the implicit association test (IAT) as well as some of the controversies surrounding interpretations of results and widespread use of the test. Negative attitudes may not always be directly expressed and the implicit association test is meant to be a way of assessing negative attitudes in a way that is difficult to consciously suppress or hide. But while the test may potentially reveal implicit associations, the causes of these associations or their potential impact on actual behavior remains unclear and many claim the test is frequently misused by employers and human resource departments. Lastly I consider an intervention described by Goff, Steele, and Davies for reducing the discomfort of engaging in difficult discussions by focusing on the potential for individual growth and the opportunity for learning from others with different viewpoints.
Project Implicit website: implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
Greenwald & Banaji's book Blindspot: amzn.to/2GxW3jv
Roff, Steele, & Davies (2008) The Space Between Us: www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~claudes...
Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel to see future videos! Have questions or topics you’d like to see covered in a future video? Let me know by commenting or sending me an email!
Check out my full psychology guide: Master Introductory Psychology: amzn.to/2eTqm5s

[@ZoiusGM]

12:34 We can say the researchers planted a mew viewpoint, persuaded the subjects to think a certain way: and thus reduce the chair distance. In other words it's like the researcher gave a thought to the subjects who in turn (some) adopted it. My question is, what is the topic or sub-discipline of psychology that investigates the conditions; 'requirements' (psychological and biological) for a person to adopt a new mindset or viewpoint or interpretation of an event or an opinion about something; like some subjects did in the experiment you described who reduced the distance of the chairs. Do you have any videos about this or is this a very specific topic? The answer to this question I'm guessing includes information from consciousness / subconscious / unconscious studies, cognitive and social psychology.

[@PsychExamReview]

We could interpret this as the researchers implanting a particular way of thinking, or creating an expectation for participants, or perhaps activating an existing attitude in participants. It's difficult to know which of these is occurring (or some combination of these or other possibilities like response to novelty if some participants have less prior experience with certain groups), in addition to considering whether results may be showing that people vary in their susceptibility to these kinds of cues, rather than differing in their implicit attitudes. This is a big challenge for this type of research, so we should be very skeptical of anyone claiming to know for sure what these kinds of results mean or trying to draw broad conclusions about stereotypes or prejudices. As for which areas of psychology these kinds of studies would fall under, this will depend on the particular variable being investigated, though in general these would probably be considered cognitive psychology or social psychology if the variable relates to social attitudes/cognitions (as in this case). Other implicit assessments like polygraphs could also fall into the subfield of forensic psychology. Hope this helps!

[@ZoiusGM]

@PsychExamReview Indeed it helps!

[@richiepropster4313]

I question this to the utmost. My concern is with a maintenance of guilt. I feel like this would automatically maintain a guilt. And, while it's important that we realize our biases, there may be a better approach to telling people that they have an implicit bias. Maybe, these ideas are really not helpful. Obviously, it's an outdated test. But, if they are still used, that's scary. We should rethink these ideas and our approach to generational maltreatment of minorities. This is an ever-evolving topic. Our approach needs to evolve with the topic.

[@troopernate8046]

How is Implicit Assoc. different than "priming" ?

[@PsychExamReview]

This is a great question that reveals a weakness of the IAT, which is that the design of the task may actually be priming particular associations for certain groups, even if participants wouldn't consciously agree with those associations. For more on priming, I discuss some of the research on it in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e5mVXnaVabannsU Research on priming has been mixed and hasn't replicated well, but it may be the case that certain associations can be activated by a task and this could influence responses. So if participants are aware of negative stereotypes for a group (even if they don't believe them), the IAT could be priming them to respond in particular ways and this may be part of the explanation for differences in reaction time for some tasks. Thanks for commenting!

[@vaishnavidang8864]

sir , in this video are you questioning the validity of implicit association test? can we simply compare its results with test(like attitude tests, or of similar context) whose validity are stronger

[@PsychExamReview]

Yes, we have to be careful about the conclusions we can draw from the implicit association test. The implicit association test is meant to identify biases that might be hidden on explicit tests like self-reports, since people may not openly express negative views of certain groups in order to avoid appearing racist, misogynist, etc. (this is an example of social desirability influencing participant responses). This makes the IAT difficult to compare with other test results. When this comparison is done, there isn't a very strong relationship between showing an implicit association and engaging in explicit behavior related to that association. This might mean that people form implicit associations but are able to consciously override them. It's also important to remember that the IAT involves making rapid judgments that may not be relevant to most real-life interactions.

[@monikique]

PsychExamReview what are the studies that demonstrate that the IAT is not related/predictive of behavior? Is the behavior self-reported? This seems like a straw man argument since as it stands it’s difficult to prove discrimination and self report in this area is def going to be skewed.

[@monikique]

Here is one recent study examining the relationship between implicit association test and patient-care outcomes. The effects of oncologist implicit racial bias in racially discordant oncology interactions

[@PsychExamReview]

@@monikique Some of the studies have looked at behaviors interacting with others in a lab setting. The evidence supporting the ability to predict behavior is weak and can't be applied to individuals, and this is admitted by the creators of the IAT, who then shift to the argument that tiny average differences might still add up to larger societal differences: implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/faqs.html#faq12 For a more detailed look at the arguments and controversies, along with links to papers, Jesse Singal has an excellent summary here: www.thecut.com/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-tool-isnt-up-to-the-job.html