Changing the affective valence of the stimulus items influences the IAT by re-defining the category labels

Cassandra Govan, Kipling D Williams

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    138 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) is a computer-based categorization task that measures concept association strengths. Greenwald et al. (1998) demonstrated that participants completed the categorizations more quickly when pleasant and flower shared a response key than when pleasant and insect shared a response key, and when pleasant and White shared a response key than when pleasant and Black shared a response key. In Study 1, we reversed the typical IAT effect for flowers and insects, and eliminated the typical IAT effect for White and Black, by changing the affective valence of the stimulus items. In Study 2, we replicated the reversibility effect for an animal and plant IAT, and supported a category re-definition hypothesis. Our results have implications for understanding the IAT, and suggest that the IAT not only measures stereotypic responses, but can also be influenced by individuating information of the stimulus items.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)357-365
    Number of pages9
    JournalJournal of Experimental Social Psychology
    Volume40
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2004

    Keywords

    • Category IAT
    • Implicit Association Test (IAT)
    • Implicit attitudes
    • Stereotyping and individuating

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