Review of implementation of an Implicit Association Test as a tool for assessing Attitudes, Essays (university) of Psychology

Download Review of implementation of an Implicit Association Test as a tool for assessing Attitudes and more Essays (university) Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Implicit Association Tests: Can the Public Rely On it? Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a prominent psychological test for assessing implicit biases— attitudes and beliefs that exist without conscious awareness. As society struggles with issues of inequality and prejudice, the importance of understanding hidden biases and addressing them has increased. Even though the IAT has gained much traction with researchers and decision-makers, there is still debate over its validity and whether it should be suggested to the public. In this blog, we will explore attitude measurement, the history of the IAT, and its methodology. We also examine the test's criticism and see if it can be used in contexts other than research. Our main goal is to provide readers with a comprehensive review of the IAT so they may decide whether it is a useful tool for understanding and overcoming implicit biases. Attitude Measurement We all have preferences. These preferences are not just the things we share with other living beings, but the unique attitudes that we express through art, how we judge ourselves, and the language we use to describe our fantasies (Banaji & Heiphetz, 2015). In recent years, the technological functionality of attitude evaluation has advanced significantly. Owing to the importance and utility of evaluation psychological science has emphasized the way these attitudes are formed, stored, assessed, activated, and modified (Cummins et al., 2022). Direct or self-report measures and indirect or implicit measures are the two main ways to measure attitudes. The most basic way is to ask participants to mark, check off, or provide a behavioural indicator of their accessible mental states, such as the Likert Scales, Semantic Differential, and Thurstone's attitude scales. The indirect technique involves inferring participants' attitudes from their responses to various stimuli, with the participant unaware that a certain attitude is being assessed, such as evaluative priming and IAT (Alcock and Sadava, 2014). One method for evaluating attitudes indirectly is the implicit association test, which has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. As a result of this growing interest, more than 25.8 million people have tested themselves on the IAT's official website. Why indirect measurement tests are developed? Due to their simplicity, direct measurement techniques are widely used in psychology disciplines that focus on the study of attitudes (Robinson, Shaver, & Wrightsman, 2013 as cited in Cummins et al., 2022). These measures have their applications, but they also have certain downsides. With the cognitive resources used direct measuring methods usually produce results that are deliberate, slow, predictable, and ineffectual (Cummins et al., 2022). As a result, alternative techniques, such as IAT, were developed to track assessment processes under automaticity conditions. What is IAT and how does it work? In 1998, Dr Tony Greenwald (University of Washington), Dr Brian Nosek (University of Virginia), Dr Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which measures the time it takes for someone to classify ideas into two categories to identify implicit attitudes, automatic preferences, and hidden biases. In computer-assisted categorization tasks, the IAT measures response latencies (the time it takes to respond to a word in milliseconds) to decide the strength of associations between concepts. In the first section of the test, participants are required to swiftly classify two contrasted concepts (such as pictures of White and Black faces) by pushing one of two keys (e.g., an E key for Black studying attitudes or beliefs in a situational sense is typically insufficient to accurately predict how an attitude object will behave in a scenario (Meissner et al., 2019). Criticisms surrounding IAT In general, researchers must consider the significance of the information they obtain. They usually do this by evaluating its statistical reliability (the extent to which test results occur repeatedly) and statistical validity (the extent to which evidence from a test measures what it is supposed to measure). In comparison with other response-latency measures which are frequently utilized in attitude measurement, IAT has stronger (within-persons) test-retest reliability (Bar-Anan & Nosek, 2014 as cited in Jost, 2019). At the aggregate level, the IAT is quite reliable since it consistently generates comparable means within the same population across samples. In terms of psychometric features, the standard IAT outperforms many other measures of implicit attitudes, such as brief IAT, single-category IAT, personalized IAT, and pencil-and-paper IAT (Jost, 2019). Additionally, IAT has proven effective in identifying evaluative distinctions between recognised groups as well as between ingroups and outgroups. Its capacity to predict behaviours based on variations in IAT scores has generated further debate. A case of a successful prediction is the McConnell and Leibold (2001) study. Contrarily, research employing a comparable methodology have not managed to detect differences (Karpinski and Hilton, 2001 as cited in Cooper, Blackman, & Keller, 2015). To access the predictive validity of the test Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Jaccard, and Tetlock (2013) used IAT among 46 papers that used 86 different samples in a meta-analytic evaluation. Their objectives were to measure six distinct criterion areas which are frequently used to assess the predictive validity including interpersonal behaviours, person perception, policy preferences, micro-behaviours, response times, and brain activity. They discovered that the performance of the IAT was no better than direct measures and only a marginally reliable predictor of brain activity was identified. As a result, Oswald et al. (2013) concluded that the IAT does not fulfil the field's aspiration of an unobtrusive predictor of bias. (Cooper, Blackman, & Keller, 2015) The test itself is ethical as it is unlikely to cause any physical or mental effects, but the results of the test may harm a person on a psychological basis as participants could negatively interpret it. Concerns have been raised regarding using IATs to measure individual attitudes due to their low construct validity. So far, millions of test takers have received results regarding their IAT with the conclusion that they may have some unintentional biases against specific races (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013 as cited in Schimmack, 2021). Therefore, opponents argue that it is challenging that respondents are not told of the likelihood that their test results are inaccurate given the low validity of the racial IAT and the absence of data for discriminant validity (Schimmack, 2021). What does this mean for the public? Since its "birth" 25 years ago, implicit measures, which were designed to give a window with unrestricted access to a person's attitude, have sparked an enormous amount of research. Even though this research has provided valuable insights into both basic and applied psychology, some significant questions remain to be answered. IATs cannot be regarded as completely accurate measures of the unconscious. They have been tried and evaluated, reliable, and fairly accurate. The problem the researchers would encounter is that the study of implicit views has the potential to unfairly accuse individuals as well as society. It is controversial because a person's opinion is frequently evaluated without their knowledge. Without them even being aware of it, they are being judged for their opinions and associations. These tests are useful tools to learn about human psychology, but only those who administer the test should think about how the results will affect the individual. Additionally, as there are no established rules on what constitutes a valid test, many academics advise the public to be sceptical when interpreting the results of the test. Despite its drawbacks, IAT has advanced the study of attitudes, especially around racial discrimination, and sparked discussion regarding the definition of the attitude construct. A concentrated attempt to tackle outstanding concerns could help in the progression of the field. References Alcock, J., & Sadava, S. (2014). An Introduction to Social Psychology. SAGE Publications, Ltd. (UK). https://essexonline.vitalsource.com/books/9781473907355 Andreychik, M. R., & Gill, M. J. (2012). Do negative implicit associations indicate negative attitudes? Social explanations moderate whether ostensible “negative” associations are prejudice-based or empathy-based. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(5), 1082–1093. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.05.006 Banaji, M. R., & Heiphetz, L. (2015). Attitudes. In Handbook of Social Psychology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470561119.socpsy001010 Blanton, H., Jaccard, J., & Burrows, C. N. (2015). Implications of the Implicit Association Test D- Transformation for Psychological Assessment. Assessment, 22(4), 429–440. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191114551382