Measures like the IAT have been drawing social psychologists who study group prejudice due to its large effect size and also because those who know that the IAT is intended to assess group prejudice still reliably produce the IAT effect, thus indicating its rigidity and robustness. Also, McConnell and Leibold note that the IAT as a result avoids many of the issues of traditional, explicit measures of prejudice.
2. Briefly describe how an IAT (Implicit Association Test) measures attitudes. (5 points)
The IAT measured attitudes through a word-based task, presenting participants with 96 stimulus words consisting of 24 Black-associated names, 24 White-associated names, 24 desirable words and 24 undesirable words. The researchers note that names were presented in uppercase letters while adjectives were always presented in lowercase letters. The stimulus words were presented in a randomly determined order, and word types were alternated across trials. Each word was presented in the center of a computer window and participants were told to use the “D” or “K” key on the keyboard for their responses. The task was structured such that participants encountered five types of trial blocks across seven different blocks. These blocks were composed of 48 trials. Half of the participants were exposed to Blocks 3 and 4 which presented the prejudice-inconsistent combination and Blocks 6 and 8 presented the prejudice-consistent combination. Participants were prefaced with the instruction to complete these trials in terms of category judgments and do so as rapidly as possible without allowing for mistakes. Participants were also given a self-paced break and instructions for the next block.
3. Briefly describe the importance of “relativity” (____ in relation to ____) in both the IAT scores themselves, and behavior towards a White vs. Black experimenter. If you haven’t already answered how this concept relates to scoring the IAT in item #2 above, make sure you answer it here (5 points)
It is important to assess the IAT in relation to the latency of responses between two sets of key mappings, i.e. when “Black or undesirable” and “White and desirable” key mappings are used vs. “Black and desirable” and “White and undesirable” key mappings are used. This relationship indicates the amount of time it takes to cognitively process what the question and what response the individual wishes to submit. It also indicates the participants’ implicit attitudes, whether conscious or not, as it is revealed in how quickly or slowly it takes for them to answer. Thus, when “Black or undesirable” and “White and desirable” key mappings are used participants answer quickly and when “Black and desirable” and “White and undesirable” key mappings are used participants respond more slowly, and therefore when larger IAT effects present, participants’ scores reflect stronger associations in memory between the concept pairings. In a similar vein, it is also important to investigate how the White individual will respond to Black or White experimenters and how they differ to therefore gauge racial biases.
4. What three questions were the researchers hoping to answer? (10 points)
The researchers’ primary investigation was concerning the examination of the extent to which the IAT relates to intergroup behavior and to explicit measures of racial attitudes. Additionally, the researchers identified two other empirical questions they intended to examine. The first being the extent to which the IAT relates to explicitly reports of prejudice and the second being the extent to which explicit reports of prejudice relate to behavior toward the Black experimenter.
5. What were the explicit measures, the implicit measure, and behavioral variables? (15 points)
Explicit measures of prejudice included a semantic differential scales for Blacks, and a semantic differential scales for Whites, consisting of a seven-point scale comprised of word pairs, for example, beautiful—ugly. Researchers also used a feeling thermometer for Blacks and a feeling thermometer for Whites, which ranged from 0o to 100 o, 0o indicating extremely unfavorable and 100 o indicating extremely favorable.
The implicit measure was the Implicit Association Test (IAT) which was comprised of 96 stimulus words, 24 of which were Black-associated names, 24 of which were White-associated names, 24 of which were desirable words and 24 of which were undesirable words.
The behavioral variables included friendliness during the interaction, general comfort level, abruptness of participants’ responses to questions, amount of laughter in response to the experimenter’s joke, the amount of the participant’s eye contact with the experimenter, forward body lean toward the experimenter, the openness of the participants’ arms, extent to which participants’ bodies faced the experimenter, expressiveness of the participants’ arms, distance between the experimenter and the participant’s chair at the end of the interaction, participant speaking time, number of smiles, number of speech hesitations, number of speech errors, amount of fidgeting body movements and number of unprepared social comments made on part of the participant.
6. Briefly describe, chronologically, the activities participants would experience. (15 points)
To begin the procedure, participants were told that they would be involved in a “word perception” experiment and were greeted by a White female experimenter. Participants were unaware at this point that a hidden video camera was positioned to record the interactions and that a unidirectional microphone was placed to record their dialogue. Participants were then directed to a rolling desk chair originally positioned 120 cm away from the experimenter’s chair, allowing the participant to adjust their preferred distance from the experimenter. Participants then responded to a series of innocuous questions that were prefaced with the information that the Department of Psychology was requesting interviews about students’ experiences in psychology. Participants’ responses were recorded on a report form and the interaction took no longer than 3 minutes. After this, participants were to complete a booklet of questionnaires that participants were under the impression were to be used to develop future experiments. Honesty and the privacy of their responses was stressed. Upon completion, participants submitted their booklets in a sealed enveloped and dropped it into a covered box, entirely free of experimenter interaction. After several pages of the booklet, participants were to complete the semantic differential scales and the feeling thermometer measures. While completing the booklet, the White experimenter assessed the interaction with the participant. After completing the booklet, participants were instructed to find the experimenter in the waiting area. The experimenter then led participants to a computer in order for completion of the IAT, though the participants were under the impression these were “word perception” tasks. Following this prompting, the experimenter delegated the fourth task to the Black experimenter, who greeted the participants after they returned upon completion of the IAT. Again, the participants were then led to a chair originally positioned 120 cm from the experimenter’s chair. Then, the Black experimenter asked the participant seven questions about the experiment, recording the responses on an interview form. Finally, participants were informed that both social interactions had been videotaped and permission to use the videotapes were obtained and participants were debriefed.
7. Experimenters’ ratings of the interaction and judges’ ratings of the interaction were checked for consistency by what method of reliability discussed in class? (5 points)
Inter-rater reliability, in which two scorers independently score the same test was assessed in this research. Specifically, two trained judges evaluated the videotapes for both positive and negative behaviors that might have been exposed through the social interaction.
8. Briefly describe the overall results of the researchers’ three main questions. (15 points)
The results that correspond with the researchers’ primary question reveal that significant racial bias was found in participants’ explicit and implicit measures of prejudice. In other words, participants exhibited more positive attitudes towards Whites than Blacks on the IAT, semantic differential and feeling thermometer measures.
In terms of the second question the researchers were concerned with, a significant correlation between the IAT and explicit measures of prejudice was found. Particularly, as more positive attitudes towards Whites than Blacks were observed on the IAT, participants reported more positive assessments of Whites than Blacks on explicit measures.
In regards to their third question the researchers investigated, the explicit measures of prejudice was positively related to experimenters’ ratings of biased interactions, thus revealing that those who reported more positive evaluations of Whites on explicit measures were perceived as more positive in social interactions by the White experimenter than by the Black experimenter.
9. What explanation do the researchers give to explain differences in their findings regarding the correlation between the IAT and explicit measures compared to previous research? (5 points)
The researchers explain that other researchers did not observe as strong of evidence of racial prejudice in explicit measures. Furthermore, participants completed the explicit measures after completing the IAT, thus indicating that possible sensitization occurred, thus increasing the likelihood that explicit reports were altered by social desirability concerns rather than their honest attitudes. Thus, by having participants complete the IAT subsequent to the explicit measures, these concerns are circumvented.
10. What are the strengths of the current study? (10 points)
A strength would be that a significant amount of participant social behaviors were measured, many of which had not been researched by the literature. Also, the current study, with its significant correlation between the experimenters’ evaluations and the trained judges’ assessments, there is indication that the labor-intensive task requiring coding of specific social behaviors may not be warranted. Also, the researchers note that given the reliable relation of independent assessments of social interactions offered by experimenters and trained judges and the IAT, the IAT exhibited predictive validity. Finally, given that this research is behavioral based, it can be concluded that the IAT, a personal attitude measure is related in a meaningful way to social behaviors.
11. What are the limitations of the current study? (10 points)
One of the major limitations of this study is that the sequence of events participants experienced were fixed as a way to mitigate suspicion about the purpose of the research. Another drawback is that participants completed the explicit measures and the IAT before interacting with the Black experimenter, hence activating racial attitudes and making them more accessible when encountering the Black experimenter and leading to more attitude and behavioral consistency. Thus, it seems that manipulation of order must be further researched to evaluate outcomes in regard to the sequencing of events.